The SNES and the Nintendo 64!
A new era - (1990 -97)
The SNES and the Nintendo 64!
One year after that Sega has released their Genesis (a.k.a. Mega Drive) in USA Nintendo releases their Super Famicom (SNES). 1993 Nintendo starts planning on their new "Ultra 64" (Later renamed Nintendo 64). Later (around christmas 1995) Sony releases their Playstation and Sega their Saturn and in 1996 Nintendo enters the 64 bit market with their Nintendo 64.
| 1990 | The Super Famicom is out in Japan and Super Mario Bros 3 is released. |
The SNES/Super Famicom is released
On the 21:th of November The Super
Famicom is finally released in Japan but it would take 2 whole
years for the console to be released "world-wide"! The machine was so popular
that it sold out in 3 days. Many shops actually had to run a lottery to see
who that was the lucky ones to get a copy!
Super Mario Bros 3 is released
The great Super Mario Bros 3 is also released and revenued 500 dollars
in USA only which is beaten in the field of entertainment only by ET (at
least until 1993)! Much thanks to movie "The Wizard" showed at
cinemas last year every kid wanted a copy of the new game and it sold in
18 million copies world wide which makes it the most sold stand alone video
game ever!
The Nintendo World Championship
This year Nintendo arranged a similar competition like the competition
in the "The Wizard" movie. The show was called the Nintendo World
Championship just like in the movie and was arranged in 30 major cities
across USA. The players competited in a special Thriatlon gamepak consisting
of point collecting event in SMB1, Rad Racer and Tetris. Insufficient rules
on how to play allowed smart players to get incredibly big scores (around
850.000p when others got around 350.000!).
After a period of chip shortages where the publishers only were allowed to manufacture specified number of cartridges and titles, Nintendo informs third party publishers that it will end its policy of chip allocation at the end of the year.
Color Dreams "pulls a Tengen"
Nintendo sues Color Dreams for producing unlicensed NES games.
Nintendo lost the suit so Color Dreams could continue to produce games
that was not licensed by Nintendo.
The Game Genie
At the SCES Lewis Galoob Toys announces the Game Genie. Nintendo
claims that the Game Genie lessens the life of a game by allowing
players to use codes making the games too easy and tries to prevent them
from releasing it which they fail to do. A company called Camerica helps
Galoob to distribute the Game Genie. Later on Nintendo manages to prevent
Galoob from releasing their Game Genie in the US.
Facts and Stats.
Nintendo has at least 85% of the video game market.
7.5 million Nintendo Entertainment Systems (NES) and 70 million NES games
are sold this year. 3.2 million Game Boys are sold. According to an
article written by Ms. Lorianne Denne in the December 17 issue of The
Puget Sound Business Journal, 70% of all American homes with children
between ages 8 and 15 have Nintendo products and that last year (1989), on
every dollar spent on toys 16 cents went to Nintendo! According to figures
provided by Nintendo of America, video game sales this year are $3.4 billion.
Games of importance released this year:/ Super Mario World SNES ,
Nintendo / Mega Man 3 NES , Capcom / Super C NES , Konami / Super Mario Bros
3 NES , Nintendo / Bubble Bobble GB , Taito / Bionic Command NES , Capcom
/ Rad Gravity NES , Interplay / Shadow of the Ninja/Blue Shadow NES
Taito/(developer)Natsume / Duck Tales NES , Capcom / Dr. Mario NES/GB , Nintendo
/ Contra NES , Konami ? / Little Nemo The Dream Master NES , Capcom / Gremlins
2 NES , Sunsoft / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 NES , Konami / Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles GB , Konami / Gargoyles Quest GB , Capcom / Gremlins GB , Sunsoft
/ North and South NES , Kemco/(developer)Sieka
| 1991 | The SNES hits the shores of USA |
In September the Super Famicom hits
the shores of the USA were it´s renamed Super
NES and was redesigned in an awkward purple box. Thanks to Super
Mario World (sold in 17 million copies world wide!) which came bundled
with the console and an big 25 million dollars advertising campaign the SNES
became a real blockbuster! Yoshi appears for the first time in the SNES flagship
Super Mario World! The Game Boy is
released in the US. Nintendo establishes World Class Service Center locations
across the U.S. Metroid 2 -Return of Samus were released for the Game
Boy.
At the end of this year Nintendo lets 53 U.S. liscensees manufacture their
own cartridges (before Nintendo produced all the cartridges themselves!).
Nintendo maintained the control over the game production by its patented
"lock-out" chip which Nintendo was the sole distributer off.
The State of New York sues Nintendo!
An New York State Attorney General sues Nintendo, claiming they have
an illegal monopoly on the video game market which leads to that Nintendo
has to give each customer a 5 dollars certificate good on any licensed
NES game.
America Video Entertainment sues Nintendo for violating antitrust
laws!
A.V.E. sues Nintendo for violateing antitrust laws with its lockout chip.
A.V.E. wants $105 million dollars in damages from Nintendo.
More Game Genie...
In the Federal Court of Canada, Galoob/Camerica wins over Nintendo which
claimed that the Game Genie reduced game profits and the GG is released in
Canada. To really piss Nintendo off Galoob/Camerica puts up a series of adds
in magazines with messages like: "Thank you Canada". In October
the same year after that the U.S. District Court judge Fern Smith had removed
all previous restrictions from the GG the cheating device is finally released
in the US.
The SNES CD -Read more about Nintendo's CD plans
here!
At first Philips and Nintendo developed a SNES CD-Rom that was going to be
compatible with Philips's CD-I machine. they were planning to introduce the
machine on the C.E.S. in June, but unfortunately the deal that they had struck
with Philips recently, inflicted with a previous deal with Sony, Philips's
worst competitor...
Nintendo switched sides and teh Playstation was instead introduced at the
CES exhibit in June. Unfortunately a deal which Nintendo had struck with
Sony in 1988 granted Sony the right to control all the CD based games for
the Playstation which was unexceptable for Nintendo. So Nintendo switched
sides again but they promised Sony that Nintendo's co-operation with Philips
wouldn't interfere with their CD plans... At the next CES press conference
about the Playstation however, Nintendo betrayed Sony! Instead of promoting
for the Playstation as Sony thought that they would, Nintendo announced that
they would work exclusively with Philips. Sony commented the incident by
claiming that they had an exclusive deal with Nintendo that Nintendo had
violated! Due to the special circumstances (japanese companies handel this
stuff differently) Sony didn't sue Nintendo for violating their contract
with Nintendo. This was also due to several other reasons which you can read
about here. Nintendo managed to extricate
itself from the bad parts of their contract and Nintendo continued to work
with Philips...
Facts and Stats.
Nintendo passes Toyota and becomes the most profitable company in Japan and
earned 400 million dollars MORE than the big Sony corporation! Nintendo´s
profit was sizzling 1,5 million dollars per employee (!) and since they had
around 850 employee´s Nintendo earned around 1,2 billion dollars!
Nintendo has now "only" 79% of the video game market!
Nintendo sells this year: 2.7 million NES, 28 NES games, about 4 million
Game Boys, about 25 million Game Boy games and about 4 million Super
Nintendo Entertainment Systems (SNES). In October this year every 5 seconds
1 SNES unit was sold! A survey done this year shows that Nintendo spends
about $1 billion on semiconductors a year!
Games of importance released this year:/ Metroid 2 - The return of
Samus GB , Nintendo / Simpsons vs the Spacemutants NES , Acclaim / Sim City
SNES , Nintendo / Final Fantasy 4 SNES , Square / Rainbow Island -the story
of Bubble Bobble 2 NES , Taito / Actraiser SNES , Enix/Quintet / Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 GB , Konami / Mega Man 4 NES , Capcom / Adams Family
SNES , Ocean / R-Type GB , Irem / Eliminator Boat duel NES , Electro Brain
/ Super Castlevania SNES , Konami / NES Open Tournament Golf NES , Nintendo
/ Duck Tales GB , Capcom / Joe and Mac SNES , Data East / BattleToads NES
, Rare / Roller Games NES , Konami(Palcom) / Willow NES , ? / Super R-Type
, Irem / Final Fantasy Legend GB , Square / Final Fantasy - Mystic Quest
GB , Square / F-Zero SNES , Nintendo / Castlevania GB , Konami / Castlevania
2 GB , Konami / Contra GB , 91 / Micro Machines NES , Code Masters / Area
66/UN Squadron SNES , Capcom / Gradius GB , Konami / Lemmings GB , Psygnosis
/ Super Ghouls and Ghosts SNES , Capcom
| 1992 | The SNES is out in Europe and Zelda 3 is here! |
In June 1992 the SNES is released in Europe and the Super Scope and the Super NES Mouse launched with Mario Paint is released. The long awaited Zelda 3 - A Link to the Past is finally released. Nintendo of America developed special Portable Fun Centers to assist Starlight Foundation in their work to make life easier for hospitalized kids. That way the kids could still play their favorite Nintendo games even though they was in a hospital (Isn´t Nintendo just plain great!)! Super Mario Land 2 is released (and sold in 7 million copies world wide) and the new Mario villain Wario is introduced. Super Mario Kart the most sold SNES game ever is released! Gunpei Yokoi and his R&D1 team with the aid of the people at Reflection Technology Inc. began planning on a new VR console (the Virtual Boy). Big companies like Electronic Arts, Disney and Lucas Arts signed up to do Nintendo games. Nintendo was now bigger than both IBM, Apple and Disney!
Hiroshi buys share of the Seattle Mariners!
Nintendo President, Mr. Hiroshi Yamauchi, offers to buy 60% share of the
Seattle Mariners baseball team and says that he some day would like to
move Nintendo’s headquarters from Japan to Seattle! In June that year Yamauchi
and some other investors purchases the Seattle Mariners baseball club
and for the first time in history a U.S. major league team is allowed majority
ownership outside of North America!
The SNES CD -Read more about Nintendo's CD plans
here!
Philips together with Nintendo and announced that the release date would
be by Christmas that same year which was later they changed to 1993. Sega
releases their Mega CD for $300 and Sony takes their revenge on Nintendo
by making games for Sega's CD system! After a lot of pressure from other
companies Nintendo began negotiating with Sony again and in October the two
companies had come to an agreement (an agreement that would put Nintendo
in control of the games released for the Playstation): Sony commented
it by saying: "We concluded that we had to ally ourselves with Nintendo
when we saw that it was going to be the 16-bit winner.
Super-FX chip
In August this year Nintendo announces the advent of the
Super FX Chip that raised the
SNES´s speed from 3.58 to sizzling 10.5! This leads to another delay
for Nintendo's CD addon because it had to be upgraded to be better than the
S-FX chip!
Galoob/Camerica are still not happy!
Galoob/Camerica takes Nintendo to trial demanding compensation for
the losses that Nintendo had caused them trying to stop the release of the
Game Genie etc. A U.S. 9th Circuit Court judge in San Francisco awards Galoob
Toys a $15 million judgement against Nintendo of America.
Camerica releases their Aladdin
System
At the WCES Camerica (that before had helped Galoob with the lauch of the
Game Genie) announced a new "mystic" NES device called the Alladin
System. The Alladin System was an addon that you plug in to NES's
cartridgeslot. You could then plug in the NES game on top of the addon. So
what, you might think but the smart thing about this was that the Alladinsystem
contained all the 5 different MMC chips, so that the game themselves didn´t
had to. The system also included a 64K upgrade for better graphics and bigger
games and came bundled with an game called "Dizzy the Adventurer"
that was based on an old C64, Amiga game. After a while Camerica went out
of business and allthough that Codemasters were planning on releasing it
in whole North America it was only released in small quantities in some stores
and not many games were actually released for the system (Camerica assured
that 30 games were in production for the Alladinsystem but only 6 of them
were ever completed).
Facts and Stats.
Nintendo had 90 - 95% of the Japanese video game market and had around the
end of this year they had about 75-80% of the whole video game
market.
This year Nintendo was more profitable than any American filmstudio
and it´s pretax profits was at least 1 billion dollars. Around this
year Nintendo netted as much as All the American movie industries combined!!!!
However since manufacturing games is so expensive, Nintendo "only" profited
more than any american movie studio or as much as 3 TV networks combined.
This year 170 million Nintendo games were released worldwide. These games
were worth all together 7 billion dollars and Nintendo got there share of
the money for all the games released (the companies had to pay Nintendo for
each game they released for Nintendo´s consoles)! Studies by Nielsen
Media Research showed that in a particular age group the kids spent more
time playing Nintendo games than they did watching cartoons on TV!
Games of importance released this year:/ Final Fantasy 5 SNES , Square
/ Zelda 3 - A link to the past SNES , Nintendo / Kirby´s Dreamland GB
, HAL/Nintendo / Mega Man 2 GB , Capcom / Bubsy SNES , Accolade / R-Type
2 GB , Irem / Darkwing Duck , Disney / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 NES
, Konami / Dej'a Vu NES , Kemco/(developer)Seika / RC Pro Am 2 NES ,
Rare/Nintendo / Mega Man 3 NES , Capcom / Gargoyles Quest 2 NES , Capcom
/ Maniac Mansion NES , Jaleco / Mega Man 1 GB , Capcom / Street Fighter 2
NES , Capcom / Super Mario Kart SNES , Nintendo / Flintstones NES , Taito
/ Mega Man 5 NES , Capcom / Bucky O'Hare NES, Konami / Chip n Dale RR NES
, Capcom / Final Fantasy Mystic Quest SNES , Square / Contra 3 - Alien Wars
(Super Probotector) SNES , Konami / Axelay SNES , Konami / Super Adventure
Island SNES , Hudson soft / Star Wars NES , Lucas Arts
| 1993 | The Super FX chip´s announced and Zelda 4 and Super Mario Allstars is released! |
Nintendo continues to promote for their new Super FX Chip. The first game using this chip is released in April and the name was, Star Fox (renamed Star Wing in Europe). This year Nintendo celebrates their 100 millionth Mario game sold and releases the Mario game collection named Super Mario Allstars featuring SMB1, SMB2 (both US/European and Japanese game) and SMB3, all with improved graphics and sound!
Nintendo announces their 64-bit plans!
In August this year Nintendo announces that they and Silicon Graphics will
develop a new console under the name Project
Reality. The machine will have a 100Mhz 64 bit MIPS RISC-processor
and be able to create great 3dimensional worlds never seen before in the
history of video gaming. The release is planned to the end of 1995.
The NES is re-released!
In a last attempt to regain life to the NES, Nintendo released a new
redesigned NES in Japan and USA. It came bundled with a gamepak including
both Final Fantasy 1 & 2 (The NES games). With the aid of this
FF collection the NES sold 1 million copies that year, outselling the SNES
in some cities!
The fourth Zelda game: Zelda 4 - Links Awakening is released for the Game Boy. Another title released for the Game Boy was Super Wario Land (SML3) with Wario as the hero instead of Mario, which was liked by some and disliked by some. Personally i think he´s just so cool!
On Friday the 28:th May the Super Mario Bros- The Movie was released. This year the Mortal Kombat game was released for the SNES and the Genesis, but Nintendo´s policies removing the blood and gore from the SNES version lead to that the Genesis version out -old the SNES version at a factor of 8 to 1 in many places!
The SNES CD -Read more about Nintendo's CD plans
here!
In early 93 Nintendo together with Philips announced some new tech specs
for the machine and there were rumours about a new Zelda game and a Street
Fighter 2 sequel for the SNES CD. The release date was set to Autumn 1993
but the price was still $200. Nintendo promises to show the CD addon on the
S.C.E.S show later the same year...
They later changes the release date to be early 94.
When the S.C.E.S. at last came Nintendo didn't showed any CD system at all instead
they introduced new S-FX games like FX-Trax (a.k.a. Stunt Race FX) and Super
Mario Allstars but not a word about any CD...
Later that year Nintendo announced that they wouldn't release any SNES
CD at all!
Facts and Stats.
In the beginning of this year Nintendo had about 75-80% of the market.
Games of importance released this year:/ Secret of Mana SNES , Square
/ Super Mario Allstars SNES , Nintendo / Final Fantasy Legend 3 GB , Square
/ Super Wario Land SNES , Nintendo / Jurrasic Park NES , Ocean / Kirby´s
Adventure NES , HAL / Zelda 4 - Link´s Awakening GB , Nintendo / Breath
of Fire (Japan) SNES , Capcom / Alfred Chicken NES ,
Mindscape/(developer)Twilight / Top Rank Tennis GB , Nintendo / Kirby´s
Pinball Land GB , HAL / Joe and Mac 2 SNES , Data East / Gods SNES , Mindscape
/ Mega Man 4 GB , Capcom / Alien 3 SNES , Acclaim / Bubble Bobble jr. (2)
GB , Taito / Mortal Kombat 3 GB , Midway / Prince of Persia SNES , Konami
/ Star Wars SNES , JVC / Tetris 2 GB , Nintendo / Tetris FLASH/BLAST GB ,
Nintendo / Zombies ate my Neighbours SNES , Konami / Solomons Key 2 NES ,
Tecmo / Mega Man 3 GB , Capcom / Mega Man 6 NES , Capcom / Duck Tales 2 NES
, Capcom / Lost Vikings SNES , Interplay/(developer)Blizzard / Street Fighter
2 Turbo SNES , Capcom / Mortal Kombat SNES , Acclaim / Mega Man 5 NES , Capcom
/ Stunt Race FX SNES , Nintendo / Lufia SNES , Taito / Cybernator SNES ,
Konami / Star fox/Star Wing SNES , Nintendo/(developer)Argonaut and Nintendo
/ Shadow Run SNES , Data East / Wizards and Warriors NES 3 , Acclaim / Flashback
SNES , Sony / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 GB , Konami / Mega Man X SNES
, Capcom / Mc Donaldland NES , ? / Yoshi´s Cookie SNES, NES, GB , Nintendo
/ Prince of Persia NES , Konami ?
| 1994 | This "The year of the Cartridge" brought to us Super Game Boy, Donkey Kong Country and yet more Super FX games! |
1994 was a big year for Nintendo in many ways. The Super Game Boy was released that made it possible for players to play Game Boy games on their SNES consoles in color! The Nintendo Gateway System that was a system with SNES:s mounted in traffic airplanes that made it possible for the passengers to play games as the traveled, reached out to 40 million travelers.
Nintendo celebrates their 1 Billionth gamepak sold!!!!
Project Reality will not use CDs!
Nintendo announces that their new Project
Reality project will use normal cartridges instead of CDs which causes
big attention in media. On CES Nintendo announces that their Project
reality would be renamed Ultra 64
in the US.
The ACM technology!
Super Metroid is released and Rare releases it´s newest game Donkey
Kong Country which was the first game featuring rendered graphics only.
This was done by the Advanced Computer Modeling (ACM) technique. The magazines
and press raises this game to the skies for it´s great graphics and
Nintendo had got a weapon against Sony´s and Sega´s upcoming 32-bits
consoles! The slogan was "You don´t need a 32 bit console to play awesome
games like this!! (or something like that)!
Super FX is still going strong
The future looked bright for the Super
FX chip too, with games like Stunt Race FX (a.k.a. Wild Trax) and Vortex
(a.k.a. Citadel) released and many more announced like for example William´s
DOOM and Argonauts Transformers (Which was sadly never released)! Many of these
FX games were using Nintendo´s new Super
FX 2 chip which was twice as fast as the original FX chip and brought
the SNES:s speed up to sizzling 21.0 Mhz!
The Virtual Boy
Rumours about Nintendo and Gunpei Yokoi´s
new VR console circulated in the media. The
machine was going to be previewed at the Shoshinkai exhibition later
on. When the Shoshinkai finally came, the press was deeply disappointed
on this "hyper hyped" product and at first they only considered it a pathetic
attempt from Nintendo to draw attention from Sony and Sega´s 32 consoles.
Then big confusion broke out, after all the Virtual
Boy was produced by Nintendo, one of the most respected video game
companies, it simply couldn´t be that bad if it came from Nintendo! Or
could it!? The VB games previewed later on at the S.C.E.S. exhibit was
quite good and the press began to think that maybe they had judged the Virtual
Boy to hard.
The last NES game ever released was released this year: Wario´s Woods released by Nintendo. Also Nintendo of America gets a new chairman: Mr. Howard Lincoln. The Exertainment system is showed at the SCES Chicago, for under $1,000 you could get an exercycle that integrates with a SNES!
Games of importance released this year:/ Super Metroid SNES , Nintendo
/ Super Adventure Island 2 SNES , Hudson soft / Stunt Race FX SNES , Nintendo
/ Mega Man 5 GB , Capcom / Super Punch Out SNES , Nintendo / Fifa International
Soccer SNES , EA / Game Boy Gallery GB , Nintendo / Super Street Fighter
2 SNES , Capcom / Mortal Kombat 2 SNES , Acclaim / Final Fantasy 6 Japan
94 SNES , Square / Final Fantasy Mystic Quest GB , Square / Donkey Kong GB
, Nintendo / Uniracers/Unirally SNES , Nintendo / Breath of Fire (USA) SNES
, Square / Breath of Fire 2 SNES , Capcom / Super Bomberman 2 SNES , Hudson
/ Contra 2 GB , Taito / Super Punch Out SNES , Nintendo / Vortex SNES , Electro
Brain/(developer)argonaut / Robocop 3 SNES , Ocean ? / Donkey Kong Country
SNES , Rare / Wario Blast GB , Nintendo/Hudson / Super R-Type 3 SNES , Irem
/ Syndicate SNES , Bullfrog / Black Thorne/Blackhawk SNES ,
Interplay/(developer)Blizzard
| 1995 | The Virtual Boy is out and the Nintendo 64 showed and RARE more made more ACM games! |
Nintendo and Silicon Graphics are completely finished with the Nintendo 64 and announces that they will release it in Japan the US and Europe in april 1996. In October Nintendo officially renames the machine Nintendo 64 and shows pictures of the both the machine and it´s revolutionizing analog "3d-stick" and soon info about the new 3dimensional Mario games starts to leak out. Later that year at the Shoshinkai exhibition in Tokyo it was world premier for the N64 and 13 games including Super Mario 64, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64 and a new Zelda adventure were previewed . In Yamauchi´s annual speech he mentions the 64 Disk Drive, Nintendo´s answer to the CD-ROM that would be previewed at the Next Shoshinkai (96).
Nintendo buys in to a quarter ownership of Rare (the dudes behind e.g.. Donkey Kong Country) which makes Rare the first non-japanese videogame company that Nintendo buys ownership in. Rare´s new ACM games Donkey Kong Country 2 -Diddy´s Kong Quest and Killer Instinct are released and the ACM graphics was introduced on the Game Boy with release of Donkey Kong Land and the hugely awaited sequel to SMW released 4 years earlier, Super Mario World 2 - Yoshi´s Island using the FX-2 chip, is finally released! At the Winter Consumer Electronics Show some new FX 2 games were previewed like: Nintendo´s 3 games: Star Fox 2, FX Fighter (an conversion of the PC game) and Comanche. None of Star Fox2 or FX Fighter was ever released. Electro Brain´s previewed their new FX 2 game Dirt Trax FX. On funny thing was that a man named Mr. Shawn J. Freeman that was from Arizona was arrested for allegedly attempting to steal a pre-release copy of Star Fox 2!
On the 21:th July the Virtual Boy was finally released in Japan but it didn´t sell good at all and at Shoshinkai the same year Hiroshi Yamauchi (The Nintendo president) said in his speech that the Virtual Boy had sold poorly but that they hadn´t lost faith in the console yet! After that some better games were released but the gamers was simply not interested! So the Virtual Boy became Nintendo´s biggest mistake ever! On Saturday, September 9, Sony releases their CD-based 32-bit console the PlayStation the worst enemy of the N64!
Nintendo Vs. Samsung Electronics
Nintendo accuses Samsung for spreading Nintendo games to pirate companies.
I don't know who won the trial but I don't think that Nintendo continued
to do business with Samsung any longer...
Games of importance released this year:/ Final Fantasy 6 SNES , Square
/ Chrono Trigger SNES , Square / Donkey Kong Country 2 SNES , Rare / Donkey
Kong Land GB , Rare / Earth Worm Jim GB , Playmates / Tetris Attack SNES
, Nintendo / Goemon SNES , Konami / Worms GB,SNES , East Point Software/originaly
by_Team 17 / Super Return of the Jedi SNES , JVC / Dirt Racer FX SNES , Electro
Brain / Puzzle Bobble SNES , Taito / Street Fighter 2 GB , Capcom / Rock
n Roll Racing SNES , Interplay ? / NHL95 GB , Electronic Arts / Doom SNES
, Williams / Yoshi´s Cookie GB , Nintendo/Bullet Proof / Mega Man 7
SNES , Capcom / Super Mario World 2 - Yoshi´s Island SNES , Nintendo
/ Killer Instinct GB , Nintendo/Rare / Kirby´s Dreamland 2 GB , HAL/Nintendo
/ Mario´s Picross GB , Nintendo / International Superstar Soccer SNES
, Konami / Earth Worm Jim SNES , Playmates / Castlevania X SNES , Konami
/ Lost Vikings 2 SNES , Interplay/(developer)Blizzard
| 1996 | The Nintendo 64 and the Game Boy Pocket hits Japan and Square shocks the worlds Nintendo-RPG-gamers! |
More N64 and Squares leaves Nintendo for the Playstation.
The 1:st of February Nintendo announces that their 64 bit project would be
named Nintendo 64 in the whole world
and that the US release date will be the 30:th september and that the N64
not will be out in Europe before sometime later that autumn. The 10:th the
same month Square shocks the worlds RPG players when they quits their long
cooperation with Nintendo after many years of developing great RPGs for the
NES and SNES. They cancels their new Final Fantasy game that
they had planned to develop for the N64 and decides to develop it for the
Playstation instead. They said that it´s due to the fact that the
Playstation with it´s CD system is more suitable for large RPG
games than Nintendo´s cartridges (which is true...). On the 8:th mars
Nintendo announces that the japanese release date will now be the 23:rd
June although that the US and Europe release dates won't be affected.
At last, the 23:th June the Nintendo 64
is released in Japan! (Nintendo sold 500.000 units the first day
in Japan! that´s almost 6 unit/second!). The 1:st October the N64
is released in the USA and sold in one week in as many copies as the
Playstation sold in 13 weeks! Super Mario 64 is released and
was quickly announced as the best game ever by many video game magazines!
For the SNES, two big game were released: Super Mario RPG and Donkey Kong Country 3! On Friday, June 27, the Game Boy version of the Tamagotchi game is released in Japan and in October in the USA.
The Game Boy Pocket
The Game Boy Pocket, a
improved version of the Game Boy that was smaller, lighter and
with a better screen were released this year and the companies started making
GB games again.
Gunpei Yokoi leaves Nintendo
The 15:th August only week after the release of the
Game Boy Pocket, Gunpei handed
in his resignation after around 30 years at Nintendo.
Games of importance released this year:/ Mega Man X 3 SNES , Capcom
/ Sim City 2000 SNES , Nintendo / Donkey Kong Country 3 - Dixie's double
trouble SNES , Rare / Super Mario RPG SNES , Square/Nintendo / Tamagotchi
GB , Nintendo
| 1997 | Pocket Monsters Mania! Gunpei Yokoi is killed in a tragical car accident.... |
On the 1:st March the Nintendo 64 is finally released in Europe (I bought my copy that same day!). The Pocket Monsters was released for the Game Boy and sold twice as much as Final Fantasy VII (the newest Final Fantasy game for the Playstation)! Pocket Monsters helped the Game Boy to outsell the Nintendo 64 in Japan. The 4:th October the video game industry lost one of it´s greatest people when Gunpei Yokoi died in a tragical car accident, 57 years old.
Nintendo Vs. Games City
Nintendo sues Games City for selling various back-up devices (such as the
Game Doctor (a SNES back-up machine) and the Doctor V64 (a N64 back-up machine))
and CD's containing pirated Nintendo games. Nintendo wins the trial and recieves
$100.000 and Games City is forced to stop selling all of these kinds
of softwares.
Games of importance released this year:/ Pocket Monsters GB , Nintendo / Harvest Moon SNES , Natsume