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.
History of Nintendo
In 1982, Nintendo developed a prototype system dubbed the "Advanced Video System" (or AVS for short) and had controllers much like the NES. There were accessories such as a tape drive, a joystick and a lightgun, and along with all of that, the system was made of a computer, much like the Atari 400, Commodore Vic-20 and Commodore 64. It was never released and is on display at the Nintendo World Store in New York. In July 1983, Nintendo released the "Famicom" ("Family Computer") system in Japan, which was its first attempt at a cartridge-based video game console. The system sold over 500,000 units within two months at a price around $100 USD. However, after a few months of favorable sales, Nintendo received complaints that some Famicom consoles would freeze when the player attempted to play certain games. The fault was found in a malfunctioning chip and Nintendo decided to recall all Famicom units that were currently on store shelves, which ultimately cost them approximately half a million USD .