So much to say about this company who's name has become synonymous with video games, so I will keep it brief here. They have been in existence since 1889, although the word 'Nintendo' didn't appear in their name until 1907. Back then, they used to sell japanese playing cards, but in the 1970's the one and only Gunpei Yokoi created their first toy release - The Ultra Hand (an arm-extending mechanical toy). They started making stand-up arcade games (othello, radar scope) when the video game market exploded in about 1978. |
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Their stand-up release 'Radar Scope' didn't fare too well in the market, so they efficiently re-used the leftover hardware to build out their next release - DONKEY KONG!!! This is my all-time favorite video game, in case you couldn't tell from the miniarcade.com main menu :) Around this same time, Gunpei Yokoi invented a new toy - the Game & Watch, which of course became a very successful toy. With the convergence of these 2 historic events, they secured their place in video game history. Donkey Kong was a title that gamers of the day just couldn't get enough of, and the Game & Watches were just too neat to pass up. They were small and superbly designed - with cute little characters and simplistic yet elegant gameplay logic.
This was not all that Nintendo wished to accomplish in the competitive video game industry. They saw importance and opportunity in the home console system market, so in 1984 they set their sights on Atari, the market leader at the time. They released the Famicon in Japan, and soon thereafter the NES in other countries. It had very nice graphics and great titles to choose from, and its marketing simply outsmarted that of Atari, Coleco, and Mattel. Nintendo had created great, successful games once again, as they still do today - releasing new systems that keep millions of gamers happy.
One final note...Gunpei Yokoi not only designed the Game and Watches, but also the Gameboy, the VirtualBoy, and the Bandai Wonderswan. Sadly, he died in 1997 from a car accident at age 57. You can thank him for the fabulous games featured below. God bless him :)
Here are the nintendo games that I have, grouped
by model type:
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