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".
Nintendo video game consoles
Released June 23, 1996, The Nintendo 64, commonly called the N64, and codenamed Ultra 64, was Nintendo's third home video game console for the international market. It was released with three launch games in Japan ("Super Mario 64", "Pilotwings 64" and "Saikyo Habu Shogi") and two in North America ("Super Mario 64" and "Pilotwings 64"). PAL regions also had three launch titles ("Super Mario 64", "" and "Pilotwings 64") with "" delayed until three days after launch. Other key games included "Donkey Kong 64", "Diddy Kong Racing", "Banjo-Kazooie", two games in "The Legend of Zelda" series, "GoldenEye 007", "Mario Kart 64", "Super Smash Bros." and "Star Fox 64". The Nintendo 64 sold 32.93 million systems.