Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

[Mark-x]

Prior to 1985 in the US, Nintendo was a strong name in the arcade with Donkey Kong and it was cleaning up in the toy aisle with its Game & Watch handhelds. But the home console industry was buried under the figurative dust after the industry collapsed on itself, and "videogame" was considered a bad word. Nintendo set to change all that with the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The company was already seeing insane success with the Famicom in Japan with its release in 1983, and after two years, it was time to bring that success to a new territory. After a failed attempt to partner with Atari to bring the system to the US, the company decided to do the job itself. The Famicom hardware was given a sleeker, more Western-friendly appearance, and the NES was born. The initial release in 1985 was only a test in specific US markets, but it was shipped across the country after the Holiday season in 1986.

Nintendo instituted a strict licensing program to ensure that the industry crash – with its glut of games of questionable quality -- would not happen with the NES. No unlicensed games would be tolerated on the NES platform. All games would have to be approved by Nintendo and third parties could only create a certain number of games a year for the NES, while the same games could not be made for competing consoles for two years.

The strategy worked. Nintendo's quality first-party efforts as well as the incredibly powerful third-party support resurged and revived the home videogame industry. If Nintendo didn't step up to the plate, the industry as a whole may have turned out entirely different.