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Nintendo, a Japanese company that began as a playing card manufacturer in 1889, released a number of important video game franchises still around today, such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid. Nintendo imposed various regulations on third-party games developed for its system, helping to combat rushed, low-quality software.
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Developers at Sanders Associates, led by Ralph Baer, invented a prototype multiplayer, multi-program video game system that could be played on a television. Baer licensed his device to Magnavox, which sold the system to consumers as the Odyssey, the first video game home console, in 1972. Over the next few years, the primitive Odyssey console would commercially fizzle and die out.
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One of the Odyssey’s 28 games was the inspiration for Atari’s Pong, the first arcade video game, which the company released in 1972. In 1975, Atari released a home version of Pong. It was as successful as its arcade counterpart.
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Magnavox, along with Sanders Associates, would eventually sue Atari for copyright infringement. Atari settled and became an Odyssey licensee. In 1977, Atari released the Atari 2600, a home console that featured joysticks and interchangeable game cartridges that played multi-colored games. This effectively started off the second generation of the video game consoles.
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In 1989, Nintendo made waves again by popularizing handheld gaming with the release of its 8-bit Game Boy video game device and the often-bundled game Tetris. Over the next 25 years, Nintendo would release a number of successful successors to the Game Boy, including the Game Boy color in 1998, Nintendo DS in 2004, and Nintendo 3DS in 2011.
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In 1989, Sega released its 16-bit Genesis console in North America as a successor to its 1986 Sega Master System, which failed to adequately compete against the NES. With its technological superiority to the NES, clever marketing, and the 1991 release of the Sonic the Hedgehog game, the Genesis made significant headway against its older rival. In 1991, Nintendo released its 16-bit Super NES console in North America, launching the first real “console war.”
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In 1995, Sega released in North America its Saturn system, the first 32-bit console that played games on CDs rather than cartridges, five months ahead of schedule. Though Sega and Nintendo each released their fair share of highly-rated, on-brand 3D titles, such as Virtua Fighter on the Saturn and Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64, the established video game companies couldn’t compete with Sony’s strong third-party support, which helped the PlayStation secure numerous exclusive titles.
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In 2005 and 2006, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3, and Nintendo’s Wii kicked off the modern age of high-definition gaming. Though the PlayStation 3—the only system at the time to play Blu-rays—was successful in its own right, Sony, for the first time, faced stiff competition from its rivals.
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despite being technologically inferior to the other two systems, the Wii trounced its competition in sales. Its motion-sensitive remotes made gaming more active than ever before, helping it appeal to a much larger slice of the general public, including people in retirement homes.
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The Xbox 360, which had similar graphics capabilities to the PlayStation 3, was lauded for its online gaming ecosystem and won far more Game Critics Awards than the other platforms in 2007; it also featured the Microsoft Kinect, a state-of-the-art motion capture system that offered a different way to play video games.