Younger people won't understand, but it's the NES era. Nintendo completely changed popular culture in general and basically popularized a new entertainment medium that would become on par with music and movies with home video games. Before the NES, most households had a TV, a record player or stereo and even home video adoption (VCR) was still maturing at that point and that was it. Having a game console in the house wasn't a common thing.
To do that from being a no name little Japanese brand that was basically a rag tag operation, and within a span of about 5 years (1985-1990), Nintendo had character properties that were rivaling the Walt Disney corporation, it's incredible. And they had almost like a total market share dominance in the US and Japan in particular.
A lot of people just called all video games "Nintendo" at that point, the brand was so dominant that it just became a descriptor for all video games themselves.
Imagine some tiny South Korean game maker today going from a niche little brand that doesn't even have proper global offices in all major countries to having a near monopoly on a market segment like gaming and having a character property more popular than Disney/Minions whatever and now imagine all that happening largely in a span of basically 4-5 years.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 18 July 2024
