History of Nintendo
Their first video arcade game was 1975's "EVR Race"; a handful of others followed in the next several years, "Radar Scope" and "Donkey Kong" being among the most famous of these. The early 1980s saw Nintendo's video game division (led by Yokoi) creating some of its most famous arcade titles. The massively popular "Donkey Kong" was created in 1981, with Shigeru Miyamoto as its mastermind, and released in the arcades and on the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and ColecoVision video game systems (although Nintendo themselves generally had no involvement with these early console ports). This release method would be used on several later Nintendo arcade games of this same period, including the original "Mario Bros." (not to be confused with the later "Super Mario Bros.") In addition to this arcade and dedicated console game activity, Nintendo was testing the consumer handheld video game waters with the Game & Watch.
1980s
The 1980s also was prominent for spawning several popular children's cartoons such as "The Smurfs", "ThunderCats", "Voltron", "The Transformers", "Masters of the Universe", "", "Inspector Gadget", "Muppet Babies", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", "DuckTales", "Garfield and Friends", "The Raccoons", "Heathcliff" and "Beetlejuice".Popular video games include: "Pac-Man", "Super Mario Bros.", "The Legend of Zelda", "Metroid", "Donkey Kong", "Frogger", "Digger", "Tetris", and "Golden Axe".
"Pac-Man" (1980) was the first game to achieve widespread popularity in mainstream culture and the first game character to be popular in his own right.
Handheld electronic LCD games was introduced into the youth market segment.
The primary gaming computers of the 1980s emerged in 1982: the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.
Nintendo finally decided in 1985 to release its Famicom (released in 1983 in Japan) in the United States under the name Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was bundled with "Super Mario Bros." and it suddenly became a success. The NES dominated the American and Japanese market until the rise of the next generation of consoles in the early 1990s, causing some to call this time the "Nintendo era".
Sega released its 16-bit console, Mega Drive/Genesis, in 1988 in Japan and in North America in 1989.
In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, a monochrome handheld console.