Famicom

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16/07/2022 04:16

Jeremy Parish, August 21, 2017

The Famicom Timeline

1977: Nintendo releases the Color TV Game 6 system, a dedicated console with six built-in games: Their first home game system.

1980: Nintendo debuts the Game & Watch series, dedicated LCD-based handhelds.

1981: Nintendo launches Donkey Kong, introducing the eponymous ape and a jumping man named Mario.

1982: Designer Gumpei Yokoi creates the cross pad controller for the Donkey Kong Game & Watch, which would be transplanted directly onto the NES controller.

1982: Hiroshi Yamauchi assigns Masayuki Uemura to the Family Computer project.

July 1983: The fruits of his labor, known colloquially as Famicom, debuts in Japan.

January 1984: Nintendo demonstrates their prototype for the American version of the Famicom, the Advanced Video System. The American toy industry shrugs and orders more U.S.S. Flaggs to crowd everything else off their shelves.

July 1984: Lode Runner, the first third-party Famicom title, debuts.

Mid-1984: Nintendo recalls all Famicom consoles at considerable cost to address a hardware defect.

September 1985: Super Mario Bros. debuts in Japan.

October 1985: Nintendo test markets the Nintendo Entertainment System in a handful of major cities, primarily New York. It sells nearly 100,000 units despite practically zero marketing or promotion: Such is the American audience's hunger for new console games.

February 1986: The Famicom Disk System debuts in Japan alongside The Legend of Zelda.

May 1986: Dragon Quest debuts in Japan. Sales are sluggish until the game receives heavy promotion in Shonen Jump magazine, at which point it becomes a phenomenon.

August 1986: Nintendo finally brings its landmark Disk System games (Zelda, Metroid, and Kid Icarus) to America, using cartridges with built-in batteries or complex passwords to allow retention of progress that was standard for the Japanese versions' rewriteable diskettes.

May 1988: Nintendo launches Nintendo Power magazine, sending millions of copies for free to customers. Super Mario Bros. 2 -- a different Super Mario Bros. 2 than the one released in Japan in 1986 -- gets the cover story.

Fall 1988: The first unlicensed NES games, released by Tengen (which has ties to Nintendo rival Atari and sour-grapes third party Namco), make their debut.

April 1989: Nintendo launches its first handheld console, the Game Boy, in America.

August 1989: Dragon Quest debuts in America as Dragon Warrior. Despite heavy promotion by Nintendo, it fails to become a phenomenon equal to that in Japan, and Nintendo gives away unsold copies for free with Nintendo Power subscriptions.

December 1989: Feature-length theatrical Super Mario Bros. 3 commercial The Wizard debuts in American theaters.

March 1990: Super Mario Bros. 3 comes to the U.S. and becomes the best-selling individually packaged video game to that point in history. Apparently The Wizard did the trick.

November 1990: Nintendo launches the Super Famicom in Japan, the 16-bit successor to the NES. Early plans for backward compatibility fail to make the cut for the final product.

August 1991: The Super Famicom comes to America as the Super NES.

July 1993: The first-ever remake of NES games, Super Mario All-Stars, debuts for Super Famicom, followed by an American version shortly thereafter.

June 1994: Hudson releases the final Famicom game, Takahashi Meijin No Boukenjima IV.

December 1994: The final NES game, Wario's Woods, makes its debut.

April 2001: Doubutsu No Mori (Animal Crossing) debuts on the Japanese N64, featuring unlockable NES games.

September 2002: Nintendo launches the Game Boy Advance e-Reader, which allows players to load early NES games onto their GBA temporary by scanning paper cards.

November 2003: Game Center CX (aka Retro Game Master) debuts on Japanese TV. Initially a general game history show, it quickly changes its focus to feature comedian Shinya Arino's desperate struggles to conquer difficult Famicom games.

February 2004: Nintendo launches a series of 30 Game Boy Advance cartridges, the Famicom Mini line, packaging Famicom classics in tiny reproductions of their original boxes. A limited selection of these games makes its way to the U.S. as the NES Classics line.

December 2004: Cave Story, an indie free-to-play game inspired heavily by NES classics such as Metroid, debuts on PC.

November 2006: The Nintendo Wii makes its debut, with a Virtual Console featuring NES classics (and other old games) positioned front and center.

October 2007: Nintendo officially ends customer support for the NES.

February 2010: Sivak Games releases homebrew NES adventure Battle Kid & The Fortress of Peril.

The original publication.