History of the Nintendo Entertainment System
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".
History of video games
In efforts to make the Famicom marketable in the US, Nintendo created a completely redesigned version of it, called the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), to be sold in the country as a product unrelated to video gaming. For this same reason, the company also developed a toy robot accessory called the R.O.B. to be sold together with some versions. The NES was released on 18 October 1985 in the US, reviving the video game market in the country and proving successful to the American audience, peaking in popularity between 1987 and the early 1990s. The console was later released in other Western countries, but because of heavy competition from home computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64, and a lack of marketing, the NES was prevented from having as much success in Europe.