Nintendo
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.
List of Donkey Kong video games
"Donkey Kong" is a video game series created by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. It is published by Nintendo, with entries in the series developed by Nintendo, Rare, Namco, Retro Studios, and Paon. The series debuted in 1981 with the arcade game "Donkey Kong", which was a sales success that brought Nintendo into the North American market. Most "Donkey Kong" games have either been arcade games or released for Nintendo consoles and handhelds dating from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the current generation of video game consoles. However, some of the original arcade games were ported into versions on third-party home consoles and developed by several companies. "Donkey Kong" is among the best-selling video game franchises, with more than 48 million games sold worldwide.