A Timeline of
Nintendo's Consoles
1974
Nintendo releases Wild Gunman, a simple skeet shooter style game which signals the segway to Nintendo's more techy side
1981
At this point Nintendo has gotten onto the arcade scene and has created the Donkey Kong arcade game which goes on to be a success and leads to the rise of jumpman, later known as Mario.
1985
The NES was released this year with hit games like Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. Due to the video game crash in 1983, Nintendo wanted this console to be unique and decided to use catridges, technology that had yet to be used in the video game scene.
1989
This was the year that Nintendo released the Gameboy. This was one of the first portable consoles and it was an instant success with 300k sales in just two weeks. The decision to add Tetris as a third party game only helped to boost the already skyrocketting sales
1990
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was created in retaliation to competition from companies like SEGA. This new console was called the Super Famicom back in Japan. It boasted 16 bit graphics and released with hit games like Super Mario World and F-Zero.
1993
At last, the Nintendo 64 (N64) had been released this year. The N64 boasted 64-bit architecture which meant better graphics, music, and more. Needless to say, it sold incredibly well with a massive 33 million sales at the end of its production.
1995
The Virtual Boy is one of Nintendo's biggest failures. It was a VR headset but all the games were in red and critics often found theirselves recieving headaches after using it. On top of this, it had to strap which made using it a pain. It quietly went out of production soon after its release causing Gunpei Yokoi, the Virtual Boy's designer, to formally retire from Nintendo.
1998
The gameboy color released with...
- Backwards cartidge compatability
- Vastly increased storage
- and color!
All this combined caused some great sales for the gameboy color.
2002
This year was filled with double the surprises from Nintendo as they released the gamecube. This powerhouse used a 128-bit processor and came with fancy features like a disc tray. However, even with this, it sold less than its predecessors.
As its 2nd surprise, Nintendo released the gameboy avdance which had a different model compared to the last two but was vastly faster. Just in the first week, 500k copies of it were sold, making it one of the fastest selling consoles to date.
2004
In this year, the remains of the original Nintendo headquarters had been demolished. Amid this sad event, Nintendo release the DS, a portable, lightweight, successor to the gameboys. DS stands for dual screen, an innovation brought to the table by Nintendo along with wireless multiplayer.
2006
The Wii launched in 2006 with 33 launch titles. This console was not aimed at serious gamers like the Sony and Microsft. Instead, it was aimed as a family console with fun for everyone. To top this off, the Wii came with new innovations in its controller which has an acceleromete and infared sensors which really elevated the games that could be played. $200 million was spent on advertising alone and this payed off immensly which resulted in record sales for Nintendo.
2012
2012 was the year of the Wii U. This hybrid console used a gamepad as a controller and was a bit unconventional. The naming of this console confused many customer so that along with poor marketting resulted in the Wii U being one of the worst selling consoles for Nintendo with only 13.5 million units sold.
2017
The Virtual Boy is one of Nintendo's biggest failures. It was a VR headset but all the games were in red and critics often found theirselves recieving headaches after using it. On top of this, it had to strap which made using it a pain. It quietly went out of production soon after its release causing Gunpei Yokoi, the Virtual Boy's designer, to formally retire from Nintendo.
All images used here are liscened under creative commons or have been released to public domain.
Donkey Kong Arcade Machine Source
NES Source
Gameboy Source
SNES Source
Nintendo 64 Source
Virtual Boy Source
Gameboy Color Source
Gamecube Source
Gameboy Advance Source
Nintendo DS Source
Wii Source
Wii USource
Nintendo Switch Source