Nintendo
From Nintendo
| Nintendo | |
| |
| Founded: | September 23, 1889 |
| Headquarters: | Japan: Kyoto USA: Redmond Europe:Germany Australia: Victoria Canada: Richmond China: Suzhou South Korea: Seoul |
| Employees: | 3,013 |
| Current President: | Satoru Iwata |
| NOA President: | Reggie Fils-Aime |
| Current Products: | Wii and Nintendo DS |
| Key Designer: | Shigeru Miyamoto |
| First Game: | Laser Clay Shooting |
| Best Selling Game: | Super Mario Bros. |
| Console Info | |
| First Generation: | Color TV Game Game & Watch |
| 3rd Generation: | NES Game Boy |
| 4th Generation: | Super NES |
| 5th Generation: | Nintendo 64 Game Boy Color |
| Sixth Generation: | Gamecube Game Boy Advance |
| Seventh Generation: | Nintendo Wii Nintendo DS |
For a list of games published by Nintendo, see List of Nintendo games
Nintendo (任天堂株式会社, Nintendō Kabushiki kaisha) is a video game developer, publisher, and home console and handheld manufacturer. They were founded in 1889 in Kyoto, Japan by Fusajiro Yamauchi as a manufacturer of hanafuda playing cards. Following the success of their cards, Nintendo attempted to jump into various other businesses with little to absolutely no success until their entry into the video game market. Translated to English, Nintendo means "Leave luck to heaven".
They entered the video game market with the permission to distribute the Odyssey to the Japanese audience. Soon enough they'd make their own consoles and handheld units such as the NES, Game Boy, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Advance, among many others. They've developed quite the name for themselves for their multitude of video game series including but certainly not limited to Mario, Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda and various others.
At the moment they're statistically one of the most powerful video game companies in the business. Their current generation consoles, which consists of the Wii and Nintendo DS, soar to the top of the charts each week, something that hadn't occurred for quite some time.
[edit] History
Nintendo opened their doors in Kyoto, Japan in 1889 as a hanafuda card creator. Initially they were known as Nintendo Koppai, and throughout their history the name would change on various occasions, though at all times retaining Nintendo as the primary title. According to Nintendo's Touch Generations website, the name Nintendo translates to "leave luck to heaven", appropriate for a company that made playing cards.
Each card was handmade, which could be attributed to the success of the cards. Fusajiro Yamauchi, the president and founder of the company, was forced to hire more employees to keep up with the demand. To keep with Japanese tradition, Yamauchi's son in law, Sekiryo, became president after being formerly adopted by him and after he retired. During his reign as president, he brought the company through their first name change and called the company Nintendo & Company. Eventually he created Marufuku Company, Ltd, which would be used to distribute their cards.
[edit] A new direction
Sekiryo, like his father in law before him, didn't have any sons, so he chose to adopt his son in law, Shikanojo Inaba. Shikanojo left the family before taking control of the company, which resulted in his son, Hiroshi Yamauchi, to take control of the company at the befitting time. That time came when his grandfather, the president of the company, died. Hiroshi was only 21 - very young to run a company.
As president, Hiroshi changed the name once more to Nintendo Playing Card Company, Limited. Hiroshi's decision to create cards made out of plastic caused Nintendo to become the most successful company in the industry. Eventually Nintendo made a deal with Disney to create cards with their properties on them. This allowed Nintendo to sell the cards to standard families - whereas the prominent market were those who wanted to gamble with their cards. Following their outstanding success, Yamauchi took Nintendo public.
Nintendo eventually wanted to venture into other industries, which resulted in yet another name change, this time to Nintendo Company, Limited. They attempted to launch into the taxi cab business, make love hotels and rice, and even created a vacuum. None of these things, however, were successful, and were in fact downright failures. The only thing that was successful for them was the toy market, which they decided to focus on almost exclusively.
In the meantime, Nintendo's card business was doing horribly thanks to the economic boom in Japan. This was brought on by the Tokyo Olympics of 1964, which caused a dramatic alteration in Nintendo's stock from 900 yen to 60, but Nintendo had their ticket to success in an unusual location - an assembly line.
Gunpei Yokoi began working at Nintendo in 1965 as an engineer on assembly lines that produced hanafuda cards (by now the cards were no longer handmade). Hiroshi visited the factory he was working at and noticed an odd toy that Yokoi created himself that resembled an extending arm. Yamauchi loved the idea so much that he ordered Yokoi to create the product for the forthcoming Christmas. Nintendo managed to sell over a million units of their so called "Ultra Hand". Hiroshi promoted Yokoi so that he'd oversee product development, which was an intelligent move on his part.
Gunpei was quite advanced when it came to the electronic department, and thus was assigned to create electric devices. This was a plus for Nintendo, as they tended to cost much more for the consumer, resulting in more profit for Nintendo. These electric devices, which consisted of the likes of love testers to the Beam Gun Game (basically an early version of the NES Zapper) can be considered the predecessor to the video games Nintendo would soon release.
Soon enough in 1977, Nintendo hired the company's next living legend Shigeru Miyamoto, who would become crucial for the survival and the eventual success of the video game industry. He was hired thanks to a few toys and concepts that he constructed. Gunpei Yokoi taught Miyamoto in the R&D division of Nintendo, and would be very helpful to his creations early on.
[edit] The video game market
Meanwhile, video games were starting to become very successful worldwide. Nintendo wanted a piece of the pie and entered via permission to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey in Japanese territories in 1975. This occurred during a time when availability of consoles was at a bare minimum. In fact, at the time of its release, Atari's Pong console had yet to be released. This was a successful move, and influenced Nintendo to not only create their own console, but their own video games as well. The final result was the Color TV Game series, which consisted of a multitude of different units released at different times. They were best sellers, and caused Nintendo to unanimously be considered a part of the industry.
Later on their next move was on the arcade industry, which at the time was the most successful portion of the business. Their first foray onto this format was Computer Othello, though Nintendo would become more successful with other titles such as Shigeru Miyamoto's Donkey Kong.
[edit] The plumber (carpenter) and ape that started it all
Nintendo wished to enter the American market, and needed a huge game in order to do so. They attempted this by constructing Radarscope, though by the time it reached western shores it was already out of date. Nintendo had thousands of unused arcade units on their hands, and needed to fill them with a more advanced video game. They turned to Miyamoto, who was unfamiliar with video game development. They went to Miyamoto because they literally had no one else. Yokoi assisted him in creation of a title that has become one of the most noteworthy titles of all time. This game was Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong starred a plump protagonist named Jumpman (later Mario, and later a plumber) and a disgruntled ape named Donkey Kong who was simply tired of being controlled by the carpenter, and thus resorted to a course of villainy by kidnapping his beloved Pauline, Mario's original love interest. The game included, for a first, a plot in a video game, and the interesting platforming aspects put it on the top of retailers' lists. Nintendo placed their first unit in an American bar to see how well it went, and within a couple of days the machine was full of quarters. Nintendo had not only found their initial arcade success, though they also found the man who would become the driving force for Nintendo and the industry's triple A titles.
Donkey Kong was popular enough to be ported to various video game consoles, though Nintendo wasn't directly involved with them other than giving the developers permission to port. The game spawned a multitude of sequels for arcades, including Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, and Mario Bros., the latter a game which would introduce Mario's identical twin brother Luigi.
[edit] The introduction to handhelds
Nintendo's third pillar in video games were handheld units, which were introduced with the Game & Watch units. Like the Color TV Games, the Game & Watches did not feature interchangeable cartridges, an innovation that would be introduced later on in video games. Instead, players had to purchase each unit individually. It got its name from the fact that players can not only play their LSD handheld titles, though also view the time via a handy watch. The games ranged from early titles like Ball (the initial game) to later, more advanced titles that starred Nintendo, Disney and even Snoopy characters. Many of the games were huge successes, some selling over 2.5 million units. The Game & Watch series was the beginning of Nintendo's handheld market, which would soon consist of the Game Boy.
[edit] Family Computer...NES
Meanwhile in Japan, Nintendo decided to develop a cartridge based console that would eventually be called the Family Computer, or Famicom for short. The designer of the console was a man named Masayuki Uemura. The designer is noted for development of the console, though soon enough he would vanish from the company. Along with the console they also released ports of classic arcade games such as Donkey Kong and Popeye among many others. Distribution started with a rocky start - the initial chips were broken, thus resulting in a recall of all the units. With the second shipment, however, the Famicom soared to the top of the charts, quickly becoming the best selling console in Japan. Despite being the best selling console, it still wasn't nearly as successful as Nintendo had hoped. This changed, though, with the release of one particular game.
Over in America, things weren't looking entirely good. Video games were considered a fad, and the quality of each video game was decreasing. Atari was the cause of all of this mess, partly for releasing a terribly rotten version of Pac-Man on their consoles and a game based on E.T. that was rushed to the market because of the impending release of the movie. So it came to a surprise that Nintendo was eying the country in which the industry was doing so terribly in. Though they did, and they understandably had to do a lot of convincing to the distributors as well. One of the primary things they used to draw in companies was a device called R.O.B. This was considered a toy, and they hoped that they could convince everybody that rather than a home console, the Famicom, named NES in America, was a children's toy rather than a video game. Nintendo quickly came to find that children, coupled with the marketers, didn't appreciate R.O.B. very much, with one kid in product testing calling it complete "shit" and another saying that it "sucks". Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa, however, didn't seem to care to much for the kids' opinions and released it with the NES anyway.
While R.O.B. has become a cultural phenomenon among Nintendo gamers in the 21st century, appearing as a playable character or minor cameo in many video games such as Mario Kart DS and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it wasn't the robotic buddy that made the NES such a huge success, but was rather a side-scrolling platform video game that starred the hero from Donkey Kong. Shigeru Miyamoto once again headed the project, called Super Mario Bros., which was also released with the NES. To this day it is considered the best selling video game of all time, and brought in a whole new generation of video gamers. Miyamoto, Mario, and Nintendo had brought the industry back in the country that started it all, and best of all consumers were happy.
Back in Japan, Super Mario Bros. caused the Famicom to be entirely successful, carving the path for future video games to be released.
[edit] The beginning of a legend
Soon after Super Mario Bros. was released, Nintendo needed to come up with another hit, and to do so they turned once more to Shigeru Miyamoto. His next game was inspired by his adventures into mountains as a young kid. He called the game The Legend of Zelda, and it starred Nintendo's new protagonist Link. The game, which is argued to be the first game with an overworld, infused RPG elements with action adventure aspects as well.
Next Nintendo introduced to the world Metroid, Kid Icarus, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, and many others.
[edit] A growing fanbase
With the launch of the NES and its various first and third party titles, Nintendo quickly became the most noteworthy video game developer the industry has to offer. To cater to their fans' needs for information, news and hints on their games, Nintendo of America created a bimonthly newsletter that fans could subscribe to. Then came the release of an issue announcing Nintendo Power, a bimonthly magazine which would cover all things Nintendo. Fans became instantly excited for the new magazine, and subscribers of the newsletter got the first issue for free, which featured Super Mario Bros. 2 on the cover. Nintendo Power was the first video game magazine of all time and to this day is one of the most popular. After a couple of successful issues, Nintendo Power became monthly. To this day Nintendo Power becomes one of the more popular magazines that cover the industry, despite being exclusive to Nintendo (whereas many others cover all consoles and PCs).
[edit] Portable power
Gunpei Yokoi, creator of the Game & Watch, vaulted Nintendo back into the handheld market by creating yet another portable video game console titled Game Boy. The Game Boy is to this day one of the best known video game consoles in history. Along with it's portable allurement the game also featured a title that shot itself to the top - and it surprisingly didn't feature a plumber named Mario. Rather, it was an addicting puzzle video game called Tetris. The game had been released before, though it didn't gain much momentum until it was released on the Game Boy, which sold over 33 million copies (more than any other portable video game in history). Another hit title that was released on the Game Boy was Super Mario Land, which, while didn't sell nearly as much, did sell a whopping 13 million units.
The Game Boy more than doubled Nintendo's sales expectations - with over 60 million copies sold. Originally, Nintendo expected they'd only sell 25 million.
[edit] Super Nintendo
In 1989 Nintendo was still doing successful with their NES and even more-so their recently released Game Boy. Super Mario Bros. 3 was released during this time and would quickly become the best selling standalone video game that wasn't packaged with a console at a whopping 18 million units sold. During this time Nintendo also announced a successor to the Famicom titled, simply, the Super Famicom. In America it would be known as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES for short. The launch title was the hit Super Mario World, which would be packaged with the console. The popular game introduced many new aspects to the series, most notably the inclusion of Yoshi.
Proof of Nintendo's success with the Super Famicom can be seen by the fact that after three days on sale, it was sold out across all of Japan. The next year in America in 1991, Nintendo released the console in America and finally in Europe in 1992. In classical Nintendo fashion, the console's price was low though offered, arguably, more than many of the others on the market, including tons of quality games such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, EarthBound, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, the formerly mentioned Super Mario World, and plenty of third party titles such as Street Fighter II, the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger and many others.
[edit] Project Reality
In 1992, a year in which Nintendo purchased a majority of the shares of the Seattle Mariners, Nintendo's Gunpei Yokoi started work on a new project that would eventually turn out to be the Virtual Boy. In 1993, the rest of Nintendo would start working on what they called Project Reality, which would in time become the Nintendo 64. Project Reality would be able to completely render 3D images. More advanced than their Super FX chip that was featured within some SNES titles such as Donkey Kong Country and Star Fox, the Nintendo 64 could render a 3D space unlike ever before with 64 bits. Eventually they'd change the name to Ultra 64, which officially became the codename for the console. It is possible that it'd be the final name for the console, though Nintendo soon found out that third party developer Konami owned the rights to the Ultra title, and thus had to change it to the simpler title of Nintendo 64.
In 1995, Nintendo showed the world the Nintendo 64 and it's primary title Super Mario 64, the first game in the series to be completely rendered in 3D thanks to the capabilities of the console. Also this year Nintendo purchased part of Rare, developers of the Donkey Kong Country series and various other Nintendo published titles. Rare would go on to develop many titles for the Nintendo 64, including hits such as GoldenEye 007, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Meanwhile at E3, Nintendo showcased both the Nintendo 64 and the Virtual Boy to the public. The Nintendo 64's booth was crowded, while the same cannot be said about the latter handheld. The Virtual Boy was eventually released in 1995 and was Nintendo's first commercial failure in the handheld/console market. They had a back up plan, of course, which was obviously the Nintendo 64.
[edit] Get N or get out!
The Nintendo 64 was released in 1996 with great success thanks to its launch title - Super Mario 64. It incorporated beautiful 3D imagery for its time and was the first 3D rendered Mario platformer. It included plenty of awe inspiring levels and epic battles against the malevolent Bowser. Despite it being haled as one of the best video games of all time, however, it was not enough for the forthcoming mega success of Sony's platform the PlayStation.
Before the PlayStation was released, Nintendo and Sony had a partnership to create a CD based platform together. The plan was to create a home entertainment system that could play both SNES video games and CD based games as well. Because of Sony's major control over the CD market, this would give them an uncomfortably large amount of control over this new console. Instead of working with Sony, Hiroshi Yamauchi canceled all plans that they had together and decided to team up with Philips. The partnership with Philips would give Nintendo full control over their console. At first Sony had planned to halt the progress of the console altogether, though decided it would be a mistake to do so and launched it themselves.
This was not good for Nintendo on multiple accounts. For one, Nintendo's upcoming Nintendo 64 would feature cartridges while the PlayStation featured the more advanced CD's. Major developer Square, creator of the Final Fantasy series, decided to abandon Nintendo and create games exclusively for the PlayStation, and urged and eventually convinced Enix (Dragon Quest series) to do the same. Nintendo was left in the dust and had a small amount of developers to work on the Nintendo 64 other than themselves.
But, the games that they've created on the console have been hailed as some of the best titles of all time. Other than Super Mario 64 and the aforementioned Rare titles, we were also offered The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 64, Paper Mario, 1080: TenEighty Snowboarding and Star Fox 64, among others.
[edit] The Game Boy just got lighter (and brighter)
In the same year of the Nintendo 64's release, Nintendo developed a smaller version of the already pocket sized Game Boy called the Game Boy Pocket, which other than being smaller than the original unit also required less batteries that would provide up to 10 hours of exciting gameplay. Unlike the original Game Boy, the color was also more traditionally black and white, where as the Game Boy was infamous for it's "pea soup" color. Eventually Nintendo included an LED light that showed how much power is left in the Pocket due to demand of the consumers, along with different colored units.
The next year Japan would get yet another remodel of the Game Boy called the Game Boy Light. Not only was it about the same size as the Game Boy Pocket, though it also featured a light behind the screen that allowed for use in dark areas. The player could switch the lights on and off, which would alter the amount of power the batteries would deliver. With them on, players would get an estimated 12 hours, though with them off you'd get about 20. Oddly, a light was not included with the Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance years later. However, all handhelds released by Nintendo after the GBA featured a light (starting with the Game Boy Advance SP).
[edit] Farewell Gunpei
Around this time Gunpei Yokoi, out of shame because of the Virtual Boy's failure, left Nintendo and headed to Bandai to create a device called the Wonder Swan in order to compete with his previous creation, the Game Boy. It inevitably became a failure, though soon later an even worse event would occur when Gunepi Yokoi was tragically killed in a car accident at the age of 57. His legend continued on as more video games based off his creations were created.
[edit] Pocket Monsters
Also in 1996 was the release of a series which would eventually become Nintendo's second best selling franchise of all time: Pokémon (known as Pocket Monsters in Japan). With the release of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green on the Game Boy, Nintendo had create an instant success. In the video game, the goal was to, using a starter species, find, battle, and eventually catch all of the different types of Pokémon (the species of the game) in the entire region. Each Pokémon species was different from one another, possession unique skills and attacks, as well as a different appearance. As they level up they'll eventually evolve into another, more powerful creature. The series' name was changed elsewhere in the world due to an anime episode of the series that caused over 700 children to have a seizure. Once word spread out throughout the various news outlets in America and Europe, it would be likely that the children's parents wouldn't want their kids to play such a game, and thus Nintendo merged the two words together.
Initially the mascot for the series was undecided when the first video games were released. With the release of the anime, however, the creators decided that the species known as Pikachu would be ideal for the role of the starring Pokémon. Fans became extremely attached to the cute mouse-like creature and flocked to their video games to catch him/her. He became so successful that GameFreak, the creators of the series, put him on the cover of various video games such as Pokémon Yellow and multiple spin-off titles. In Japan Jigglypuff has been deemed by gamers as the second most popular species, resulting in its appearance as a playable character in all three Super Smash Bros. video games as an unlockable character.
[edit] Color me surprised!
Nintendo finally managed to include color in their handheld titles in 1998 with the release of the Game Boy Color. It was not only capable of playing games made specifically for it, though could also play games made for the original. Compared to Nintendo's other handheld units, the Game Boy Color didn't feature too many exclusive video games. Major first party video games on the Game Boy Color included Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons and the various Pokémon titles. Despite being spelled differently in countries outside of America, Nintendo didn't change the name Game Boy Color into Game Boy Colour for the European audiences.
[edit] Advanced technology
A few years after the Game Boy Color was released, Nintendo was ready to come out with another entry in their Game Boy franchise titled the Game Boy Advance. The handheld sold over 81 million units and has been hailed as one of the best systems of all time thanks to its wide variety of triple A quality titles such as Metroid Fusion, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$, Golden Sun, Advance Wars and various other titles - first and third party included.
Initially the Game Boy Advance was titled Project Atlantis as early as 1996. The description announced that the handheld could play games similar in style to the SNES. The handheld was finally released to the public in 2001.
[edit] The GameCube
On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four airplanes and crashed three of them into world renowned United States buildings. The fourth was taken over by the passengers and crashed landed. Three days later, the GameCube was released in Japan, and due to the recent events it was widely unsuccessful in the beginning. The attacks greatly out shadowed the recent events. Over time, however, sales gradually picked up as more popular games were released such as Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Animal Crossing and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. In November of 2001 it was released in America, and in May the next year in Europe and Australia.
In 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi named Satoru Iwata, former president of HAL Laboratories, the new president of Nintendo worldwide. Satoru would become famous for leading the company into a new and interesting direction once the GameCube and GBA's time had passed. He would create a bridge that would bring in newcomers into the world of video game via titles that would become known as "casual". Though before this would happen, he had to focus on the current generation consoles.
The GameCube and Game Boy Advance would eventually become the first consoles and handhelds made by Nintendo to enter the Chinese market. This would occur when Nintendo and a Chinese-American scientist founded a new company named iQue that they would distribute the consoles through. It was quite successful and eventually the company would release Nintendo's other future consoles and handhelds as well.
[edit] GBA: redesigned
Eventually, like the Game Boy before it, the Game Boy Advance would be redesigned twice - once as the Game Boy Advance SP and again as the Game Boy Micro. The SP could be opened and closed like a book and featured a back light. Rather than being longer horizontally the GBA Sp, when opened, was longer vertically. Of course when closed it resembled a square. The Game Boy Micro was once again longer horizontally, though was much smaller - in fact to date is the smallest Game Boy ever released. It featured a back light like the SP, though could not play Game Boy or Game Boy Color games because of its small size. Both consoles were successful.
[edit] Touching is good
In 2004 Nintendo announced a new handheld called the Nintendo DS. The handheld would be, according to Nintendo, their third pillar - the first would be their consoles, the second the Game Boy, and the third this new type of handheld that would innovate more than any handheld prior to it. It featured two screens - the bottom one a touch screen, and also housed a microphone as well as the traditional four buttons, d-pad and L and R buttons. Games could be played by using your stylus to trace, touch and rub on the touch screen. For example, in Yoshi Touch & Go players draw clouds that Yoshi can walk on, and blow on the microphone to rid of them. As time went on developers found more unique uses of the DS, causing it to be hailed as one of the best handhelds and even systems of all time. The Nintendo DS was the first Nintendo system to fully go online worldwide via Nintendo Wifi Connection, with the first title to do so being Mario Kart DS.
The DS was also the first Nintendo handheld to feature three dimensional graphics, similar to those of the Nintendo 64, though arguably improved in some cases. Despite this, many developers, Nintendo included, tended to create a multitude of video games that retained classic SNES styled graphics to appease the players who wanted them.
[edit] Playing is believing
Nintendo had been promoting their Nintendo DS quite heavily, though Nintendo's next generation console, codenamed the Revolution, was still forthcoming. Nintendo touted that the game would revolutionize the way we play games, and at E3 announced that Nintendo's vast library of video games would be up for download for a reasonable price via an online shop. The controller, however, was still unrevealed. Later that year Nintendo showed it off at the Tokyo Game Show, accompanied by an unanimous shock among the gaming community. It was unlike any other gaming controller before it, and it understandably received much criticism.
The controller was separated into two parts - the standard remote control and what Nintendo called the Nunchuk attachment. The remote's primary feature is motion sensing, allowing players to manipulate the images on screen by simply moving your arm. To play a game of golf the player simply needs to swing his arm in the same motion. To aim your gun the player will just need to point at the screen. With this Nintendo touted that "playing is believing", suggesting that while this may seem new, it is indeed innovative and, more importantly, fun and precise.
The next parade of criticisms occurred in April of 2007 before that years' E3 when they announced the new name of the console. Instead of the Revolution, Nintendo uttered the new name to the world - Wii. The name was to symbolize the connection of people playing together with the two lowercase i's representing the two Wii Remote attachments. Nintendo rep Reggie Fils-Aime thanked everyone for their appreciation for the name change at E3: "both of you!".
Despite the criticism, it was an extremely smart move on Nintendo's part - the day of the name change news outlets everywhere in the world announced this astonishing new name. It gained Nintendo the press they wanted, and caused people to be interested when the channels also showed off the innovative new controller. Nintendo had gotten hold of the new consumers who would have otherwise probably not have known about it.
During that year's E3 - everyone's fears were put to rest as they experienced the likes of Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Wii Sports and a multitude of other titles that awed players from around the globe. The Wii section of the event was the most crowded, and everyone who had played the games loved the new concepts.
[edit] Wii would like to play
Later that year in November the Wii was released in America with games such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, ExciteTruck and Rayman Raving Rabbids shooting to the top of the charts. Wii Sports came packaged with the console, which featured a new mascot under the name of Mii, which would become one of the many driving forces behind the new system. In June of 2008 the Wii would successfully pass the Xbox 360's sales and become the world leader in the console business, just as the DS had done in the handheld market.
[edit] Nintendo owned companies
The following are companies that Nintendo has 51% ownership of, excluding the actual company. These developers create video games that Nintendo publishes for their various consoles. They include:
- Brownie Brown - Consists of former members of Square, and best known for creating Magical Vacation and Magical Starsign, among other titles.
- Intelligent Systems - Creates various famous Nintendo titles including the Fire Emblem series, the WarioWare series, the Paper Mario series, and the Advance Wars series, as well as early Metroid titles.
- Monolith Soft - Nintendo's most recently purchased developer. Known for working on the Baten Kaitos series among other titles such as the upcoming Disaster: Day of Crisis.
- Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development - The largest Nintendo-owned company. These people are under the management of Shigeru Miyamoto and create the Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, Wii, and Animal Crossing video games among others.
- Nintendo Software Technology Corporation - Redmond based company known for Metroid Prime: Hunters and Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis.
- Retro Studios - Austin based company known for the three primary Metroid Prime video games.
[edit] Systems
Nintendo's video game systems consists of both home consoles and handhelds. They entered the market with the Color TV Game series, which quickly became a smash hit among consumers. Their first entry into the handheld market was the Game & Watch video games. Eventually Nintendo developed interchangeable consoles and handhelds with the release of the NES and Game Boy. Their next generation console included the SNES, followed by the Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii. In the handheld industry, following the Game Boy, Nintendo released, in the respective order, the Virtual Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. The Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and NIntendo DS all had redesigns, which included Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light, Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Micro, DS Lite, and Nintendo DSi.
[edit] Famous People
This is a minor list of famous Nintendo people, for a bigger list, see Nintendo People.
- Fasajiru Yamauchi - Founder
- Hiroshi Yamauchi - Second president
- Satoru Iwata - Third and current President NCL
- Gunpei Yokoi - Game Boy engineer
- Shigeru Miyamoto - Video game creator
- Reggie Fils-Aime - President of Nintendo of America
- Koji Kondo - Composer of music tracks in Nintendo games
- Howard Phillips - Creator of Nintendo Power
- Takashi Tezuka - Head of Nintendo's EAD division
