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 commercial failures in video gaming
In 1991, electronics company Philips entered the console gaming business by creating the "Compact Disc Interactive" console, better known as the "CD-i". Like the 3DO, the CD-i was marketed as not only a video game console, but also a multimedia console. Besides CD-i discs, the console was capable of playing Video CDs. The launch price was $700. It was originally intended to be an add-on for the Super NES, but the deal fell through. Nintendo, however, did give Philips the rights and permission to use five Nintendo characters for the CD-i games. In 1993, Philips released two Zelda games, "" and "". A year later, Philips released another Zelda game, "Zelda's Adventure", and a few months later, a Mario game titled "Hotel Mario". All four of these Nintendo-themed games are commonly cited by critics as being among the worst ever made. Much criticism was also aimed at the CD-i's controller. Although it was extensively marketed by Philips, consumer interest remained low. Sales began to slow by 1994, and in 1998, Philips announced that the product had been discontinued. In all, roughly 570,000 units were sold, with 133 games released.