Advertisement
1 - Introduction
1.1 Nintendo Entertainment System History
In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai and began manufacturing Japanese
playing cards, hanafuda, in Kyoto [10]. By 1950, when Hiroshi Yamauchi became president,
Nintendo was a successful manufacturer of both western and Japanese playing cards. In
1963, after several name changes, the company settled on Nintendo Co. Ltd. (NCL). By
1970, the company was producing electronic games and in 1973 they introduced a laser clay
shooting system which they hoped would replace bowling as a major pastime [11].
Nolan Bushnell was a student at the University of Utah when he first had the idea of a coin
operated computer game. Pong, which was released in 1972, quickly became a hit and
inspired the release of a wave of arcade games. Bushnell's company, Atari, wanted to
replicate this success by releasing a system to play games in homes. By 1976 several
companies had tried, and failed, to release a successful console. Bushnell was aware that
Atari lacked the capital to produce a console and sold the company to Warner
Communications, retaining the position of chairman [12].
In 1977, Atari released the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), an 8-bit console which
succeeded in opening up the home console market, aided by the home version of Space
Invaders, released in 1980. Bushnell disagreed with the direction Warner were taking and left
the company in 1978.
In 1979, Nintendo made their first attempt to break into the arcade game market but by 1981
their success had been limited. Hiroshi Yamauchi asked Nintendo graphic artist, Shigeru
Miyamoto, to design a new game. The result was Donkey Kong in which players controlled a
carpenter called Jumpman and tried to rescue a captive girl from Donkey Kong, a large ape.
Jumpman was renamed Mario after the landlord of Nintendo's newly created American
subsidiary, later to be called Nintendo of America Inc. (NOA), run by Yamauchi's son in law,
Minoru Arakawa.
By 1982, third party development had led to several sub-standard games being released for
Atari's VCS and competition with other consoles was leading to saturation of the market. By
1984 the industry was suffering enormous losses and most product lines were discontinued.
Nintendo, meanwhile, had enjoyed success in the arcade market and in the home market
with the Colour TV Game 6. The Japanese console market was still doing well and Yamauchi
felt that Nintendo could become the market leaders through a combination of quality games
and improved hardware sold at a lower price than competitors (profit would be made on the
games).
Figure 1-1. The Nintendo Entertainment System and the Famicom [13].
3
Advertisement
