pokoko on 13 July 2015
That's really tough, actually.
The reason we got home consoles in the first place was because of the arcade boom. At the forefront of that were probably Atari and Midway. Namco, too.
Then we had the first massively popular home console with the Atari 2600.
After the crash, what kept gaming alive was, again, arcade games. Capcom's Street Fighter was a massive boost to the industry, as was Mortal Kombat. Sega was also very important.
I think it's between Atari and Midway. I give the nod to Atari for popularizing the home console first.
