From Game & Watch to Wii U: a history of Nintendo in 14 objects
The Japanese gaming giant set older gamers’ hearts racing earlier this year with the announcement of the NES Classic Edition, prompting some misty-eyed reminiscing. Do you remember all these devices? How many did you play?
On October 18, 1985, Nintendo unveiled the console that almost single-handedly revived the gaming market following the disastrous video game crash of 1983. And more than three decades later, on November 11, 2016, Nintendo will be bringing back that ingenious piece of kit – and now it will fit in your hand.
The internet practically exploded when the NES Classic Edition was announced earlier this month. It’ll definitely bring back memories of the 1980s, and will give younger generations a peek at how we fared with games that didn’t take weeks or even just days to beat, or how we lived with the fact that we had no way of saving our games.
Nintendo’s in the news a lot lately – thanks to Pokemon Go, which single-handedly disrupted the gaming market and increased the value of the company’s stock by as much as 120 per cent. So in honour of this upcoming blast-from-the-past offering, and the rumoured release of its next-generation console the Nintendo NX in March next year, let’s look at the consoles released to date by the Japanese gaming giant.
Color TV-Game, 1977-80 (US$31-US$177; US$122-US$703 in 2016 dollars)
Yes, the NES wasn’t the first gaming machine from Nintendo. Five consoles were released in this Japan-only series – 6, 15, Racing 112 (complete with a steering wheel), Block Breaker and Computer TV-Game. Obviously, there were not a lot of games at that time, but there were at least 21 versions of Light Tennis, which you may also know as Pong.