Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: What was the first Nintendo video game?
In 1972, the first commercially available video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, had a light gun accessory, the Shooting Gallery. This was the first involvement of Nintendo in video games. According to Martin Picard in the "International Journal of Computer Game Research": "in 1971, Nintendo had -- even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States -- an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey (released in 1972), since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in 1970s".
In 1975, Nintendo moved into the video arcade game industry with "EVR Race", designed by their first game designer, Genyo Takeda, and several more games followed. Nintendo had some small success with this venture, but the release of "Donkey Kong" in 1981, designed by Miyamoto, changed Nintendo's fortunes dramatically. The success of the game and many licensing opportunities (such as ports on the Atari 2600, Intellivision and ColecoVision) gave Nintendo a huge boost in profit and in addition, the game also introduced an early iteration of Mario, then known in Japan as Jumpman, the eventual company mascot.
Kondo was the third person hired by Nintendo to create music and sound effects for their games, joining Hirokazu Tanaka and Yukio Kaneoka. However, he was the first at Nintendo to actually specialize in musical composition. The first game he worked on was the arcade game "Punch-Out!!", although it was before he had officially joined Nintendo. Despite creating mostly jingles and sound effects, he was able to overcome the challenges of early arcade sound hardware. As the Famicom had become highly popular in Japan, Kondo was assigned to compose music for the console's subsequent games at Nintendo's new development team, Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD). Kondo also wrote an instruction manual on how to program Japanese popular music into the Famicom using the peripheral "Family BASIC". To conclude his first year at Nintendo, he created the music to "Devil World" alongside Akito Nakatsuka. In 1985, Nintendo started marketing the Famicom abroad under the name the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to capitalize on the 1983 video game crash that devastated Atari, Inc. He composed the music for the hit releases "Super Mario Bros." (1985) and "The Legend of Zelda" (1986), which helped the system to sell 60 million copies in total and established some of the most well-known melodies in the video game industry.
Nintendo was the last to release a fifth generation console with their Nintendo 64, and when they finally released their console it came with only two launch titles. Partly to curb piracy and partly as a result of Nintendo's failed disc projects with Sony and Phillips, Nintendo used cartridges for their console. The higher cost of cartridges drove many third party developers to the PlayStation. The Nintendo 64 could handle 3D polygons better than any console released before it, but its games often lacked the cut-scenes, soundtracks, and voice-overs that became standard on PlayStation discs. Nintendo released several highly acclaimed titles, such as Super Mario 64 and , and the Nintendo 64 was able to sell tens of millions of units on the strength of first-party titles alone, but its constant struggles against Sony would make the Nintendo 64 the last home console to use cartridges as a medium for game distribution.
The list of best-selling Nintendo 64 games consists of 45 titles which have yielded 1 million or more unit sales each. The best-selling video game on the Nintendo 64 is "Super Mario 64". First released in Japan on June 23, 1996, it was a launch title for the system and the first "Super Mario" game to use three-dimensional graphics. The game went on to sell 11.91 million units worldwide. "Mario Kart 64", the second in the "Mario Kart" series, is the second best-selling game on the platform, with sales of more than 9.8 million copies. The console's top five is rounded out by Rare's "GoldenEye 007" at third, with sales of just more than 8 million units, "" in fourth, with 7.6 million units sold worldwide, and "Super Smash Bros." in fifth, with sales of more than 5.5 million units.
The series revolves around Yoshi, a green dinosaur-like character. He was first introduced in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game released in 1990, "Super Mario World", where Mario and Luigi can ride on him. The antagonists of the series are Baby Bowser, the young king of Koopas, and Kamek, a Magikoopa who was Bowser's caretaker as a child. The first Yoshi game was the Nintendo Entertainment System puzzle game released in 1991, "Yoshi", which was developed by Game Freak. The first game in what is considered the main series, as well as the first to feature Yoshi in a playable main-character role, is the game released in 1995, "", which introduces the universe staples which are used in many following games. These staples include colorful storybook graphics, and several gameplay elements. One of the earlier games in the series, "Yoshi's Safari", differs heavily from the rest, as it is a Light gun shooter game. The latest game in the series is "Poochy and Yoshi's Woolly World", a port of the Wii U game "Yoshi's Woolly World", released in 2017 for the Nintendo 3DS. An upcoming title, "Yoshi's Crafted World" is set to be released for the Nintendo Switch on March 29, 2019.
In the late 80s, Nintendo's dominance was threatened by newer, technologically superior consoles. 1987, NEC and Hudson Soft released the PC Engine, and a year later, Sega released the 16 bit Mega Drive. Both were introduced in North America in 1989, where they were respectively marketed as the "TurboGrafx-16" and the "Genesis." Facing new competition from the PC Engine in Japan, and the Genesis in North America, Nintendo's market share began to erode. Nintendo responded in the form of the Super Famicom ("Super Nintendo Entertainment System" in North America and Europe), the Famicom's 16-bit successor, in 1990. Although Nintendo announced their intention to continue to support the Famicom alongside their newer console, the success of the newer offering began to draw even more gamers and developers from the original NES, whose decline accelerated. However, Nintendo did continue support of the NES for about three years after the September 1991 release of the Super NES, with the NES's final first-party games being "" and "Wario's Woods".
Pokémon is a series of video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo as part of the "Pokémon" media franchise. First released in 1996 in Japan for the Game Boy, the main series of role-playing video games (RPGs), also referred as the "core series" by their developers, has continued on each generation of Nintendo's handhelds.
The history of game making begins with the development of the first video games, although which video game is the first depends on the definition of "video game". The first games created had little entertainment value, and their development focus was separate from user experience—in fact, these games required mainframe computers to play them. "OXO", written by Alexander S. Douglas in 1952, was the first computer game to use a digital display. In 1958, a game called "Tennis for Two", which displayed its output on an oscilloscope, was made by Willy Higinbotham, a physicist working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1961, a mainframe computer game called "Spacewar!" was developed by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students led by Steve Russell.
In 1989, Nintendo and Sony agreed to develop a CD-ROM-based add-on for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), known as the SNES-CD or Nintendo Play-Station, that would allow for full motion video (FMV) and larger games. However, Nintendo instead signed with Philips to make the add-on, and Sony redesigned their console as the PlayStation. By 1993, Nintendo had abandoned plans for the add-on. As part of dissolving the agreement, Nintendo licensed Philips to use some Nintendo characters for their CD-i console, resulting in three "Legend of Zelda" games as well as "Hotel Mario". Another "Mario" game, "Super Mario's Wacky Worlds", was canceled at the prototype stage. Nintendo had no part in the games' development; they were instead created by inexperienced developers.
Nintendo executives were initially reluctant to design a new system, but as the market transitioned to the newer hardware, Nintendo saw the erosion of the commanding market share it had built up with the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo's fourth-generation console, the Super Famicom, was released in Japan on November 21, 1990; Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours. The machine reached North America as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System on August 23, 1991, and Europe and Australia in April 1992.
Throughout the rest of the 1960s, digital computer games were created by increasingly numerous programmers and sometimes sold commercially in catalogs. As the audience for video games expanded to more than a few dozen research institutions with the falling cost of computers, and programming languages that would run on multiple types of computers were created, a wider variety of games began to be developed. Video games transitioned into a new era in the early 1970s with the launch of the commercial video game industry in 1971 with the display of the coin-operated arcade game "Galaxy Game" and the release of the first arcade video game "Computer Space", and then in 1972 with the release of the immensely successful arcade game "Pong" and the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, which launched the first generation of video game consoles.
In 1989, Nintendo signed a deal with Sony to begin development of a CD-ROM-based system known as the "Nintendo Play Station" (or the "SNES CD") to be an add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would allow for FMV and larger games. However, Nintendo broke the agreement and instead signed with Philips to make the add-on, which caused Sony to spin off their add-on into its own console called the PlayStation. Witnessing the poor reception of the Sega Mega-CD, Nintendo scrapped the idea of making an add-on entirely. As part of dissolving the agreement with Philips, Nintendo gave them the license to use five of their characters, including Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganon, for games on Philips's console, the CD-i, after the partnership's dissolution.
"The Legend of Zelda", the first game of the series, was first released in Japan on February 21, 1986, on the Famicom Disk System. A cartridge version, using battery-backed memory, was released in the United States on August 22, 1987, and Europe on November 27, 1987. The game features a "Second Quest," accessible either upon completing the game, or by registering one's name as "ZELDA" when starting a new quest. The Second Quest features different dungeons and item placement, and more difficult enemies.
That same year saw the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console which could be connected to a television set. The inventor, Ralph H. Baer, had initially had the idea in 1951 to make an interactive game on a television set. Unable to do so with the technological constraints at the time, he began work on a device that would attach to a television set and display games in 1966, and the "Brown Box", the last prototype of seven, was licensed to Magnavox to adapt and produce. They announced the console in May 1972, and it went on sale that September. The console and its games featured numerous innovations beyond being the first video game device for home consumers: it was the first game to use a raster-scan video display, or television set, directly displayed via modification of a video signal; it was also the first video gaming device to be displayed in a television commercial. It sold for US$100 and shipped with several games, including "Table tennis", which Bushnell had seen a demo of and which "Pong" had been based on. The Odyssey sold over 100,000 units in 1972, and more than 350,000 by the end of 1975, buoyed by the popularity of the table tennis game, in turn driven by the success of "Pong". "Pong" and the Odyssey kicked off a new era of video gaming, with numerous other competitors starting up in the video game industry as it grew in popularity.
In 1989, Nintendo signed a deal with Sony to begin development of a CD-ROM-based system known as the "Nintendo PlayStation" or the SNES CD to be an add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would allow for FMV and larger games. However, Nintendo broke the agreement and instead signed with Philips to make the add-on, which caused Sony to spin off their add-on into its own console called the PlayStation. Witnessing the poor reception of the Sega Mega-CD, Nintendo scrapped the idea of making an add-on entirely. As part of dissolving the agreement with Philips, Nintendo gave them the license to use five of their characters, including Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganon, for games on Philips's console called the CD-i, after the partnership's dissolution. Contracting out to independent studios, Philips subsequently used the characters to create three games for the CD-i, with Nintendo taking no part in their development except to give input on the look of the characters based on the artwork from Nintendo's original two titles and that of their respective instruction booklets. Philips insisted that the development studios utilize all aspects of the CD-i's capabilities including FMV, high-resolution graphics, and CD-quality music. Because the system had not been designed as a dedicated video game console, there were several technical limitations, such as laggy controls (especially for the standard infrared controller), and numerous problems in streaming-audio, memory, disc access, and graphics.
In 1989, Nintendo signed a deal with Sony to begin development of a CD-ROM-based system known as the SNES-CD (also known as the "Nintendo Play-Station", with separated words) to be an add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would allow for FMV and larger games. However, Nintendo broke the agreement and instead signed with Philips to make the add-on, which caused Sony to spin off their add-on into its own console called the PlayStation (with "PlayStation" as one word due to a copyright issue with the trademark "Play-Station" owned by Nintendo). Witnessing the poor reception of the Sega Mega-CD, Nintendo scrapped the idea of making an add-on entirely. As part of dissolving the agreement with Philips, Nintendo gave them the license to use five of their characters, including Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganon, for games on Philips's console called the CD-i, after the partnership's dissolution.
In 1971, the arcade game, "Computer Space was released." The following year, Atari, Inc. released the first commercially successful video game, "Pong", the original arcade version of which sold over 19,000 arcade cabinets. That same year saw the introduction of video games to the home market with the release of the early video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. However, both the arcade and home markets would be dominated by "Pong" clones, which flooded the market and led to the video game crash of 1977. The crash eventually came to an end with the success of Taito's "Space Invaders", released in 1978, sparking a renaissance for the video game industry and paving the way for the golden age of video arcade games. The game's success inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants and convenience stores during the golden age. "Space Invaders" would go on to sell over 360,000 arcade cabinets worldwide, and by 1982, generate a revenue of $2 billion in quarters, equivalent to $4.6 billion in 2011.
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), also known as the Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Australasia (Oceania), and 1993 in South America. In Japan, the system is called the Super Famicom (SFC). In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent the different versions from being compatible with one another.
Miyamoto went on to become the company's first artist. He helped create the art for the company's first original coin-operated arcade video game, "Sheriff". He first helped the company develop a game with the release "Radar Scope". The game achieved moderate success in Japan, but by , Nintendo's efforts to break it into the North American video game market had failed, leaving the company with a large number of unsold units and on the verge of financial collapse. In an effort to keep the company afloat, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to convert unsold "Radar Scope" units into a new arcade game. He tasked Miyamoto with the conversion, about which Miyamoto has said self-deprecatingly that "no one else was available" to do the work. Nintendo's head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi, supervised the project.
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and video game console and home computer development company which operated between 1972 and 1984. During its years of operation, it developed and produced over 350 arcade, console, and computer games for its own systems, and almost 100 ports of games for home computers such as the Commodore 64. Atari began its operations by developing and producing some of the first arcade video games; the first commercial arcade video game, "Computer Space", was released in November 1971 by Atari founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering. The game in part marked the end of the early history of video games and the start of the rise of the commercial video game industry. After its founding in 1972, Atari released "Pong", believed to be the third arcade video game after "Computer Space" and a clone game and the first commercially successful arcade video game machine, and thereafter produced numerous arcade games, including video games and pinball machines.
Nintendo released a series of arcade games in the 1970s and 80s. The company made toys and trading card games prior to their film projection-based light gun games from 1973 to 1978. Nintendo released its first electronic arcade game in 1978, an adaptation of the board game "Reversi". Many of Nintendo's first video games were knockoffs, or "clones", of existing games with slight variations, including "Breakout" clones and clones of "Space Invaders" and "Galaga". Nintendo also successfully released its first Japanese home consoles, the Color TV series, which brought arcade games to personal televisions.
Nintendo's first venture into the video gaming industry was securing rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey video game console in Japan in 1974. Nintendo began to produce its own hardware in 1977, with the Color TV-Game home video game consoles. Four versions of these consoles were produced, each including variations of a single game (for example, Color TV Game 6 featured six versions of "Light Tennis").
This was also the first involvement of Nintendo in video games. According to Martin Picard in the "International Journal of Computer Game Research": "in 1971, Nintendo had -- even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States -- an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey (released in 1972), since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in 1970s".
Their first video arcade game was 1975's "EVR Race"; a handful of others followed in the next several years, "Radar Scope" and "Donkey Kong" being among the most famous of these. The early 1980s saw Nintendo's video game division (led by Yokoi) creating some of its most famous arcade titles. The massively popular "Donkey Kong" was created in 1981, with Shigeru Miyamoto as its mastermind, and released in the arcades and on the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and ColecoVision video game systems (although Nintendo themselves generally had no involvement with these early console ports). This release method would be used on several later Nintendo arcade games of this same period, including the original "Mario Bros." (not to be confused with the later "Super Mario Bros.") In addition to this arcade and dedicated console game activity, Nintendo was testing the consumer handheld video game waters with the Game & Watch.