Back in the early 1980's, Atari basically owned the console business. But under new management, they failed to catch any second wind, and in 1983, it was believed that gaming was dead in North America. Meanwhile, Nintendo, who had been in the background making LCD Game & Watch portable games and arcade hits such as Donkey Kong, set out to make the most powerful, practical, and inexpensive gaming console on the market. Unlike the trash currently coming out for the Atari systems, Nintendo also had decent games on their side. Simply, they wanted to make a machine that would capture the arcade feel and bring it into your home. The idea of course blossomed into the Famicom ("Family Computer") that first took Japan by storm and then convinced Americans that video games were truly here to stay.

Around that same time, a very ambitious game designer was moving his way up in the company. This man was Shigeru Miyamoto. He had gained a lot of power in the business from the Donkey Kong games that were incredibly popular, and had something new up his sleeve that would change the market forever. Taking Donkey Kong's antagonist "Jumpman", giving him a proper name, and turning him from carpenter to plumber, Miyamoto created the arcade game Mario Bros., which was a launch title for the Famicom and the first in what would become the best-selling, most tenacious video game series ever. Two years later, Miyamoto set out to redefine just what video games could offer in the form of Super Mario Bros. Featuring a Lewis Carrol-esque setting explored in 24 rich, action-packed side-scrolling levels, it completely revolutionized the scope with which an adventure game could play. Americans and Japanese ate this stuff up. Soon Mario became a household name. By the end of the '80s, a study showed that more children recognized the face of Mario than the face of Mickey Mouse (a popular Disney cartoon character, for those of you who I happen to be referring to).

Several other smash hit games were released for the Famicom/NES as well. Miyamoto's fantastic non-linear adventures, Legend of Zelda and Adventure of Link, made it big worldwide, while Ice Climber was big primarily in Japan, and space pirate Samus Aran's dark action/sci-fi game Metroid impressed players mainly in America. There was even room for immense hits in 2nd party games like Castlevania, Dragon Warrior, Mega Man, and Final Fantasy. These relatively primitive games would go on to spawn series and spin-offs that are still continued today and in some cases are as popular as ever. In providing the revolutionary NES platform, Nintendo had become the biggest thing for video games. It seemed they could do no wrong.

As with the release of any good system, a big line of peripherals followed. NES seemed to hit biggest in this area with tools like the "Zapper" light gun, which came with the popular American NES package deal alongside a Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cartridge. This is probably the most well-known accessory, but one of the strangest was the R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy), a robot that's movements would show up on your T.V. Strange? Of course. Not much of a function? Yeah. Nintendo decided to stop production of R.O.B. a year after it was released, which makes it a very rare collecters item, and sort of a mascot to the early days of the NES. There were gloves that acted as controllers, 2-player running pads for Track 'n Field games, the list goes on. All of these were very unique, but as with most things quirky, not many of them ever really got off the ground.

Nintendo released great games for the system right up to the end of its shelf life. In 1991, with much more powerful technology available in Sega's competing Genesis system, Nintendo made the Famicom obsolete by releasing the Super Famicom, which, although generating more success for Nintendo, naturally detracted gamers from the original Famicom, perhaps more quickly than Nintendo would've liked. Nintendo tried to do something about this in 1993, ten years after the launch of the original, by releasing a new version of the system with a sleeker, more SNES-like look. But, despite their best efforts, the NES was inevitably being pushed out of the picture. In its lifetime, though, it left a path hard to follow. The NES still holds the record for the best-selling game, Super Mario Bros. 3, which sold at least 11 million copies. Comparing that to the music industry, Michael Jackson is the only artist to have ever sold so many copies of a record. Players today still remember that golden decade of fun that the NES all but took over, and as evident by the great shape the console market is currently in, we still owe so much to Nintendo for their boldness and innovation.