Nintendo video game consoles
Although the company had earlier released Color TV Game and Game & Watch, which were their first and second systems respectfully, they did not achieve worldwide success until the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1983. The NES restarted the video game industry after the video game crash of 1983, and was an international success. In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, which became the first handheld console to sell in large numbers. In the early 1990s, Nintendo's market lead began to decrease; although the 1990 Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was a strong seller, the Mega Drive/Genesis was a very strong contender. Nintendo and Sega would both lose a significant portion of the console market towards the end of the 1990s, as Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation became the most popular console, beating the Nintendo 64, though Nintendo managed to sell more than Sega Saturn.
History of video games
A 16-bit generation of video game consoles starts in the late 1980s. The TurboGrafx-16, named the PC Engine in Europe and Japan, debuted in 1987 as the first commercial 16-bit game system. It had a large following in Japan, but, did poorly in North America and Europe because of its limited library of games and because of excessive distribution restrictions imposed by Hudson Soft. Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis sold well worldwide early on after its debut in 1988. Nintendo responded with its own next generation system named the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), in 1990.
This time was one of intense competition and not entirely truthful marketing. The TurboGrafx-16 was billed as the first 16-bit system but its central processor was an 8-bit HuC6280, with only its HuC6270 graphics processor being a true 16-bit chip. Also, the much earlier Mattel Intellivision contained a 16-bit processor. Sega used the term "Blast Processing" throughout its marketing to describe the simple fact that their console's CPU ran at a higher clock speed than that of the SNES (7.67 MHz vs 3.58 MHz).