The History of Nintendo 8

Game Boy Is Unexpectedly Successful


The Game Boy is finally out in the market in 1989 accompanied by Tetris, and it starts selling like crazy. Never before had gamers seen such detailed, smooth graphics on a handheld system. Later on Super Mario Land, and Final Fantasy were released for the Game Boy. Remember how in the beginning of this I said that Mario would become more familiar to kids than Mickey Mouse? Well, this is the year when it happened. Along with Mario’s growing popularity, Nintendo Power became the largest magazine company of its type.


Also in this year, Sega released the Genesis in Japan, or Megadrive as it would be known in Europe, for the price of about $250. That’s more than twice what the Famicom/NES cost! Nintendo’s answer to this was the Super Famicom/SNES.


Good Advertising


Nintendo were in for a treat this year. They would get free advertising, no, they would actually get paid. This happened with the movie, The Wizard. It’s about a kid who competes in the Nintendo World Championship. The kid makes it through all the way to the final, and there, they play the game Super Mario Bros. 3 and he wins. In reality, Super Mario Bros. 3 still had one more year for it to be released. Soon after the movie, everyone was talking about the new Mario game they had had a glimpse of. In addition to the free advertising, Universal Studios had to pay Nintendo a hefty amount for using their characters in The Wizard. Super Mario Bros. 3 ended up selling over 18 million copies, which made it the most successful stand-alone (meaning it was never sold with the system) game up to date.


Super Famicom Is Released In Japan


In the year of 1990, the Super Famicom is released in Japan. Nintendo had stores at their feet, because they didn’t supply them with anywhere near the Super Famicoms they needed. In 3 days they were all sold out and people were getting desperate to get their hands on the Super Famicom. Japanese gamers would camp outside of stores for days, even weeks just to get a system from the next shipment before they all ran out. Different stores were doing different things. Some of the greedier stores would make you buy the system along with a whole bunch of other crap. The nicer stores would simply use the lottery method to decide who was the lucky man who walked away with a Super Famicom. Some places even auctioned them!


SNES Hits American Shelves


American gamers had to wait a year for the SNES, everyone else (except Japan, duh) had to wait ANOTHER year. This meant that in 1991, the SNES hit the face of North America. For American release, the SNES was redesigned to a more box-like shape. The launch game that for a while came bundled with it was Super Mario World. Gamers got to see Yoshi for the first time in this game, where Bowser had taken all of his friends. Another system released in America this year was the trendy Game Boy. Nintendo spent millions on advertising these two and it paid off, they left all the other systems back in the dust in sales. Studies show that in Japan, Nintendo is the company that is making the most profit, even more than Toyota, which previously held first place in profit!


Super Famicom Travels The World


1992 was the year when the SNES landed on European shores and was available to everyone else in the world. More things that were released this year are The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario Land 2, the Super Scope, and the SNES Mouse. Nintendo announce the Super FX Chip that would raise the SNES’s speed, and also announce that Gunpei and his R&D team are working on a virtual reality console (the Virtual Boy which sadly was a flop).