Nintendo or Not? Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Nintendo is a Japanese company which was first established in 1889 as a manufacturer of playing cards. In the 1960s and '70s, the company sought to diversify and moved into the video games market with the Color-TV Game being the first console released by Nintendo. There were five versions of the Color-TV Game console released between 1977 and 1980 each with a built in games available to play, these consoles were only released in Japan.

Nintendo's next console release was the Famicom named as a portmanteau of the words 'family computer' this was released in Japan in 1983. The Famicom was redesigned and rebranded as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for its 1985 release into markets outside Japan. Following this Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and the Nintendo 64.

In 1995 Nintendo launched the Virtual Boy, a console designed to display 3D stereoscopic graphics via the use of a special viewing device that was designed similarly to the head-mounted displays of modern virtual reality systems. The Virtual Boy was not very successful with high cost and poor graphics quality being two of the major criticisms of the system.

In 2001 Nintendo released the GameCube, a console aimed at competing against Sega's Dreamcast, the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox. The GameCube saw Nintendo move away from games stored on cartridges to optical discs for games.

Nintendo's next console release was in 2006 with the Wii. The Wii was different to other games consoles of the time as its primary control mechanism was via the motion sensing Wii Remote rather than a traditional button based controller. A successor to the Wii, called the Wii U, was released in 2012.

Nintendo is also known for their handheld game consoles with the Game Boy being released in 1989. This was a handheld console which used a cartridge system for games. The Game Boy was the first in a series of handheld games consoles by Nintendo and was followed by various versions including the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance.

The Pokemon Mini was a small handheld console released by Nintendo in 2001/2002 depending on the market. The console focused on games related to the Pokemon franchise and a total of ten games were released for the console, although not all of these were available in all markets.

Nintendo's next handheld offering was the double screen DS which was then replaced with the 3DS which had a screen capable of displaying 3D graphics. The 3DS XL was a version with larger screens which was released in 2012. The 2DS was released in 2013 as a cheaper version of the 3DS without the folding design or 3D capable screen.

The Nintendo Switch was released in 2017 and combined a home console and a handheld with the console able to be docked to a TV or played out and about. A handheld only version, the Switch Lite, was released in 2019.