The year was 1985 and the video gaming fad was beginning to decline after the short-lived but fast rise to fame (known as the crash of video gaming). But then some Japanese men, crazy Japanese that they are (no offense meant, I actually have the highest respect for the Japanese), decided to try to bring their Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, to the United States. At first they weren't greeted with high regards, but suddenly the NES was a smash hit! Nintendo had single-handedly revitalized the gaming world! I just won the console war single-handedly right there I do believe. Neither Sony nor Microsoft saved the gaming world as we know it. Anywho, back to the topic at hand, the NES sold over 60 million NES units worldwide. It also set the standard for every subsequent console in everything game design to business practices to follow.
A few years later the NES sales began to even out and so Nintendo thought it was time to upgrade. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was their answer. Where the NES was only 8 bits, the SNES was twice as much. Rating in at 16-bits it was the highest graphical console out there. Where the NES failed to take root, the SNES was a worldwide master hit. The SNES sold over 49 million systems worldwide. Not as great as its predecessor, but a console that demanded and deserved the respect of the gaming world.
Next up is the Nintendo 64 (called so because of its 64-bit processor). This console brought us out of the 2-D era and into the wide (not to mention tall and deep) world of 3-D. Some of the best game titles made 3-D appearances on this console, such as Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and its direct sequel Majoras Mask. The N64 sold well over 33 million games as of March 31st, 2005.
The Nintendo Game Cube was hailed as the supreme gaming device. It was released at the same time as the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox. But it was largely over looked due to the hype of the competition. It gave us such great hits as the first two Metroid Prime games (Thank you from the bottom of my heart Retro Studios), Beyond Good and Evil, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (Yes, I liked the "cartoon-ish graphics". It's called cel-shading, get over it.) , and the largely over looked Tales of Symphonia. It was the first Nintendo console to use CD's (smaller than the PS2's and the Xboxes with twice the size). The design projects name was called Project Dolphin - this can still be seen in the console and accessories' model numbers. Even though it only sold 22 million systems in the 6 years of its release it was still considered a success.
Seeing as the Wii isn't history (not yet anyways) I'm not going to cover it here. Nintendo started off at meager beginnings as a TCG in Japan, to the large and very successful gaming company it is today and for that I salute the current head of Nintendo; Satoru Iwata for creating the Nintendo and Mr. Miyamoto for making our favorite gaming characters. Thank you, thank you all for so much.
