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nintendo (founded in 1889) started to develop videogames in 1977. in this year,
they released two pong systems. they were both sold over 1 million times
but the real big success happend a few years later: gunpei yokoi (developer
for nintendo's fun-games) tried to create
something new - a revolutionary game...he did! the result was a liquid
crystal game, small as a calculator - a watch included: game & watch
was born in spring 1980. 59 different game & watch were released within
the next ten years (releaselist). 1983 over 40
million game&watches were already sold in asia and the success of this
addictive game-novelty continued worldwide - even if nintendo of america
first seemed to have problems with the sale. a few tv commercials were
produced (nintendo staff is playing game&watch). the next important
year was 1983! after the big videogame-crash nintendo dared to present
a new system that allowed to play nintendo's arcade-hit donkey kong at
home. they called it family computer (short: famicom). this 8-bit system
became a big succes soon and in the middle & late eighties the famicom
was also available in the united states and europe. the name: nintendo
entertainment system (short: nes). up to 1995 nintendo and many other companies
developed games for the entertainment system (about 1200 different were
released) among them super mario bros. which was probably the best sold
nes cartridge (over 40 million were sold). one of the last released games
was wario's woods in 1995! yes! a real 8-bit cartridge between 32-bit cd's.
in 1989 nintendo came out with the next surprise: the gameboy
- today it is actually the best sold videogame system ever!! the gameboy
was a mixture of game & watch (portable lcd game) and nes (cartridge
system). i recommend the book 'game over' by david sheff, 1993 for more information
about nintendo.
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