Nintendo consoles from 1980 to now: Full history

Key Takeaways

• Nintendo prioritizes gaming experience over technical specs, with innovations like the Wii and Switch.
• Despite starting as a card company, Nintendo has released more consoles than its competitors.
• Iconic consoles like Game & Watch, NES, N64, and releases like DS, Wii, and Switch have shaped Nintendo’s legacy.

• Nintendo focuses on gaming experience over technical specs, bringing innovations like the Wii and Switch.
• Nintendo, despite starting as a card company, has released more consoles than its competitors.
• Iconic consoles like Game & Watch, NES, N64, and releases like DS, Wii, and Switch have shaped Nintendo’s legacy.

For many die-hard fans, when it comes to game consoles, there’s only one name that matters: Nintendo. The modern Nintendo consoles may not have the raw power of rivals such as the PlayStation or Xbox, but Nintendo has always been more focused on the gaming experience than the specs of its consoles.

Products like the Wii brought gaming to a whole new audience, with a brand-new way to play. The Nintendo Switch continues that spirit of innovation, by blurring the lines between console and handheld gaming.

Nintendo may have started life as a playing card company, but it has had enormous success making consoles over the years. In fact, Nintendo has released more consoles than any other of the “big three” games console companies. And despite what you might think, the NES wasn’t Nintendo’s first consumer games machine that launched in the West – that accolade belongs to the handheld series Game & Watch.

In the following years, Nintendo carved a name for itself as the quirky console manufacturer. Compared to the likes of Sony, Sega and Microsoft, it always took gaming in an odd but satisfying direction. This turned it into a company you can’t help but love. Full disclosure: I wouldn’t be parted from my PS5, but Nintendo will always be my first true love.

We’re taking a look back at Nintendo’s illustrious history, which has provided us with some of the most iconic games consoles and some of the greatest games franchises of all time, many of which have provided me with countless hours of enjoyment.

Nintendo Game & Watch (1980-1991)

An LCD masterpiece that proves gameplay will always beat graphics

Nintendo released a whole series of Game & Watch devices throughout the 80s. And like similar handhelds of the time, they became incredibly popular.

The first Game & Watch console was produced after Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi saw a businessman traveling on the Shinkansen, playing with his calculator, and thought the company could make a portable games machine to help kill time on the commute.

Game & Watch could a single game, and had either a clock, an alarm or, in some cases, both. There were no cartridges or other games to download. Indeed, there was no internet to download them from. You bought a single game and stuck to it. The “graphics” were fixed LCD images that turned on or off, giving a less-than-convincing impression of motion, but the graphics didn’t matter. The games were incredibly addictive, and the series sold over 43 million units, putting Nintendo firmly on the map.

Between 1973-1883, Nintendo released a few Color TV-Game home consoles, containing a few games and a controller built into the console itself. The first of these launched prior to the first Game & Watch consoles, but they never reached the West and remained solely in Japan.

There were around 60 different Game & Watch models in total. Some were based on arcade machines and were also responsible for bringing big licenses and game characters, such as Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda and Mario Bros, into the home. The Donkey Kong II Game & Watch was the first handheld I ever owned, and I loved every second I played it.

Nintendo Entertainment System (1983-1995)

An iconic console that set the path for millions

Nintendo’s next console doesn’t need much introduction. The NES played 8-bit games and was designed for the home. It was by far the best-selling console of its time, selling in excess of 60 million units, and helped North America recover from the videogame crash of 1983 that saw too many consoles flood the market and personal computers become more powerful.

The NES also saw the appearance of the first Metroid game, with Nintendo fans still eagerly awaiting Samus’ next adventure almost 40 years later.

The NES was originally marketed as the Family Computer, or Famicom in Japan, but was released as NES in North America at CES 1985. Launch titles included Super Mario Bros, Ice Climber, Pinball and Duck Hunt. There were some iconic games released during its lifetime, including Super Mario Bros. 3 which set the template for many of the core features of the franchise, such as the world map to move between levels. The NES also saw the appearance of the first Metroid game, with Nintendo fans still eagerly awaiting Samus’ next adventure almost 40 years later.

You could pick up a console with a copy of Super Mario Bros for $99 or a Deluxe Set, which included two games and several accessories, for $199.99. The console is still beloved by many, as proven by the popularity of the retro NES Classic Mini when it was launched in 2016.

Game Boy (1989-2003)

A console that you could take with your wherever you went

Another of gaming’s greatest consoles ever is the Nintendo Game Boy. Thought of and designed by the same team behind the Game & Watch, the Game Boy combined features of the first handheld with swappable cartridges like the NES to create one of the best-selling consoles ever. Sales of the Game Boy and Game Boy Color (released in 1998) are estimated at around 120 million units.

Nintendo confounded the critics by showing that graphics don’t need to be state-of-the-art if the gameplay is excellent.

It cost around $90 when it launched in America and came bundled with a copy of Tetris. This simple but insanely addictive game helped the Game Boy to fly off the shelves, and was perfectly suited to the small screen and monochrome graphics. As has so often been the case, Nintendo confounded the critics by showing that graphics don’t need to be state-of-the-art if the gameplay is excellent. Nintendo also made a range of accessories for the Game Boy, including a printer and magnifying screen with built-in light.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1990-1998)

Begun the console wars have

Nintendo’s second major home console was also a runaway success, even though it had tough competition from the Sega Mega Drive. Sega’s 16-bit machine was released first, but it was ultimately Nintendo’s array of games that helped it become the best-selling console of the 16-bit era, with nearly 50 million units shipped worldwide.

The SNES even continued to sell well during the early years of 32-bit consoles such as the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. This was thanks in no small part to the technical wizardry used in the Rare classic, Donkey Kong Country, which used pre-rendered 3D sprites to push the graphical capabilities of the SNES to the limits. It would not be the last time that Rare had a big influence on the success of a Nintendo console.

Nintendo produced different versions of the console for different markets, with the Japanese version called the Super Famicom. It also encoded the cartridges in such a way that you weren’t able to play games from one country on a console from another.

Virtual Boy (1995-1996)

Nintendo’s VR headset was two decades too early

A weird and ultimately disastrous console release followed the SNES, but it’s looked back on fondly as the forerunner of virtual reality in the home.

The Virtual Boy stood on a table or cabinet and players had to lean into the visor to play wireframe 3D games. Unfortunately, rather than provide a space-age experience, most gamers came away feeling queasy. It also didn’t help that you could play games in any color you wanted, as long as it was red and black monochrome. Unsurprisingly, it was a huge flop, and the concept was shelved, with Nintendo focusing on its next console release, which would prove much, much more successful.

The lifespan of the Virtual Boy can be measured in months, not years, and it never made it out of Japan or the US. It’s the only Nintendo console that failed to sell a million units, and there were only 22 games available for the Virtual Boy when it ceased distribution.

Nintendo 64 (1996-2003)

The console that gave us some of the best games of all time

The N64 got its name from the 64-bit CPU it used and was Nintendo’s last home console to require cartridges. It was successful when it launched, with many customers fighting to get their hands on one, and it was deemed the most powerful console of its generation.

That’s right, for a while, Nintendo had the most graphically powerful console on the market. The N64 was able to process one million polygons per second, compared to a measly 180,000 on the PlayStation. The N64 also saw many iconic franchises make the leap from 2D to 3D, with Mario 64 seeing everyone’s favorite plumber gain the ability to go in directions other than sideways, and the first 3D entry in the Zelda series.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is not only regarded by many as the best game in the series, but also frequently makes the list of the greatest games of all time.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is not only regarded by many as the best game in the series, but also frequently makes the list of the greatest games of all time, and currently holds the top spot on Metacritic. Another all-time classic from the N64 era is GoldenEye 007, a first-person shooter from Rare (them again) that has had a huge influence on the genre. Rare’s follow-up, Perfect Dark, was arguably even better. If you owned an N64, you really were spoiled for choice when it came to games.

The N64 had the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn to compete with, so it couldn’t quite emulate its predecessors’ success, going on to sell just under 33 million units.

Nintendo GameCube (2001-2007)

It’s hip to be square

Nintendo turned to the optical disc format for the GameCube but was up against tough competition from the Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox and Sega Dreamcast. Game progress could be saved to memory cards, coming in sizes from 4MB to 64MB, and the controller was redesigned from the three-handled model of the N64 to a beautiful two-handled design.

The GameCube only managed to sell just over 21 million units worldwide, compared to more than 150 million PlayStations.

Despite the switch to optical discs, Nintendo opted to use discs that were much smaller than standard compact discs and DVDs. This immediately put the GameCube at a disadvantage when compared to the PS2, which was able to be used as a DVD player as well as a gaming console, helping it to sell millions. The GameCube only managed to sell just over 21 million units worldwide, compared to more than 150 million PlayStations.

Despite the poor sales, the GameCube still featured some excellent games. Metroid Prime was the first game in the series to make the leap to a 3D, first-person perspective, and it remains one of the best games of the entire series. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker divided opinions with its distinctive cel shading cartoon style and slow sailing speeds, but is still fun to play to this day. Super Mario Sunshine also made cleaning up goop far more fun than it should be.

Game Boy Advance (2001-2008)

The Game Boy goes landscape

Nintendo decided to upgrade the Game Boy concept with a more powerful model, with better graphics and a wider range of colors available to developers. The portrait design of the original was also replaced with a landscape orientation that’s much more like the Nintendo Switch.

The Game Boy Advance went through several further designs in its seven-year shelf life, with a return to the clamshell style of the original Game & Watch devices for the Game Boy Advance SP. That particular oddity could even be seen as the forerunner to the Nintendo DS that would follow soon after.

Game Boy Advance games included Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past with Four Swords, which let you play the classic game wherever you wanted, and included the four-player Four Swords which was the first Zelda game to include a multiplayer element. Metroid: Zero Mission and Wario Ware Twisted were also well worth a play.

Pokémon Mini (2001)

Nintendo’s smallest cartridge system

This was a handheld focused on one specific franchise and was unfortunately a bit of a flop. Nintendo released the Pokémon Mini handheld console in late 2001, and it was the cheapest console the company had ever produced, retailing for just $45.

It came packaged with the Pokémon Party Mini game, and you could choose between a variety of colors for the handheld. Despite its tiny size, you were able to play different games by switching out miniscule cartridges, although all of the games were Pokemon themed. The Pokemon Mini didn’t sell very well at all, with the far superior Game Boy Advance having launched only a few months prior.

Nintendo DS (2004-2014)

The perfect evolution of the Game & Watch

Even though it was pressing forward with new designs for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo decided to completely refresh its handheld strategy with the release of the DS.

Importantly, it introduced an innovative new dual-screen setup that evolved from the original Game & Watch. The bottom display featured a touchscreen and could be used to control games, while the top was an LCD screen to see what you were doing.

Its main rival was the Sony PSP, but thanks to backwards compatibility with Game Boy Advance games and a couple of later models with improved performance and features, the DS line became the best-selling handheld games console series in history. It was helped by a catalog of excellent games, including Mario Kart DS and the hugely addictive Professor Layton puzzle games.

Nintendo Wii (2006-2013)

A new way to play that took gaming mainstream

The Wii was Nintendo’s entry in the seventh generation of home consoles, going up against fearsome competition in the form of the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360. But for some time, it led the other two in sales figures. In fact, it sold more than 100 million units, making it Nintendo’s best-selling until the Switch.

The Wii ushered in a new era of motion gaming using the Wii Remote, which the console tracked in three-dimensional space.

The Wii ushered in a new era of motion gaming using the Wii Remote, which the console tracked in three-dimensional space. It meant you could control games just by waving your Wiimote around, and this made games far more accessible. Even your parents were able to play Wii Sports games such as tennis or bowling, and it made gaming a much more social affair. Later on, the Wii Balance Board was released, which could turn your Wii into a fitness device.

Wii Sports was the game that made the Wii such as phenomenal success, but there were some other great games released for the console. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword allowed you to swing Link’s sword with the Wiimote rather than a press of the button, which is as close to actually being Link as we’ve ever come. The Super Mario Galaxy games are also some of the very best entries in the franchise.

Nintendo 3DS (2011-2020)

The Nintendo DS goes 3D

To follow up on its DS handheld concept, Nintendo turned to a visual technology popular at the time: 3D. It made the top screen of its clamshell device a 3D screen, although, unlike similar picture tech on TVs, it didn’t require glasses.

Most people were disappointed with the 3D display and its performance, but that didn’t stop the 3DS from selling in bucket loads. It had minor refreshes in the form of a larger XL model and enhanced versions. A 2D-only version was also available for younger children who couldn’t use the 3D screen.

Popular 3DS games include Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Pokemon Sun & Moon, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

Nintendo Wii U (2012-2016)

A backward step after the huge success of the Wii

The Wii U was the successor to the Wii and Nintendo’s answer to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It’s the first Nintendo console to support high-definition graphics, and is primarily controlled using the touchscreen-enabled Wii U GamePad.

The Wii U paved the way for future Nintendo consoles, as you were able to play games through a connected TV, or entirely handheld using the Wii U GamePad.

While initial reception to the Wii U was positive, it has ultimately been considered a gaming failure, selling just over 13 million units since its release. However, the Wii U paved the way for future Nintendo consoles, as you were able to play games through a connected TV, or entirely handheld using the Wii U GamePad without the need for a TV. Sound familiar?

Despite being a failure, the Wii U is responsible for one of the greatest games of all time. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was originally planned as a Wii U exclusive, before eventually becoming a launch game for the Nintendo Switch. Other great Wii U games include Bayonetta 2 and Super Mario Maker.

NES Classic Mini (2016-2017)

A healthy dose of nostalgia with games that still hold up

Retro gaming has become incredibly popular and in advance of the Nintendo Switch becoming available in early 2017, the Japanese gaming giant helped gamers young and old revisit some of its best early games with a mini form of the original NES console.

It featured 30 of the company’s Nintendo Entertainment System titles and an authentic style controller but with a modern HDMI connector.

Hugely successful, Nintendo sold around 2.3 million of the console before it was discontinued in 2017. Nintendo produced a limited run of these consoles in 2018 to satisfy the remaining demand.

Super NES Classic Edition (2017-2018)

An inevitability after the success of the NES Classic Mini

Following the success of the NES Classic Mini above, the Super NES Classic Edition was launched in 2017 and like the NES Classic Mini, was very successful. It sold over 5 million units and was discontinued after the end of 2018.

There were three different versions of the SNES Classic Edition because there were three different versions of the original SNES in Japan, North America and Europe. 21 Super NES titles were pre-installed, including the first release of Star Fox 2, which was canceled in 1995, although it’s also now available for the Switch.

Nintendo Switch (2017-present)

Nintendo changes the game yet again

And so we come to the Switch, which was released first in March 2017. It comprises a tablet-like device with a touchscreen, plus a docking station to play it at home on a TV. No longer did you have to choose between a console or a handheld; now you can have both. You can start your game at home on your TV and then carry it on during the train ride to work.

The Joy-Con controllers are small pads that slot onto either side of the screen. They can also be slotted onto a central home controller unit in order to give a more traditional controller feel to proceedings, or used as individual controllers in their own right, making them ideal for mulitplayer games such as Mario Party or Mario Kart.

Nintendo’s first-party titles have been hugely successful for the console. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Pokémon Sword and Shield, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons have sold over twenty million units each. Breath of the Wild’s follow up, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom hit more than twenty million units in less than a year.

Unlike the Wii U, the Switch has been remarkably successful, with more than 140 million units sold, making it Nintendo’s most successful home console of all time. It’s currently the third-highest selling console in history, behind the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS.

Nintendo Switch Lite (2019-present)

A Switch with the Joy-Cons locked down

The Switch Lite is a variation of the Switch without the detachable Joy-cons and dock that enables the Switch to be connected to a TV. Instead, the unit is designed for total portability – it has fixed controls and is currently available in four colors plus special editions, notably for Animal Crossing.

Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros (2020-present)

A retro handheld taking us back to where it all began

The Game & Watch was the first console on our list, and in 2020 Nintendo released a retro Game & Watch system to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Super Mario series, alongside the 40th anniversary of the original Game & Watch.

This old school handheld features Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, and a Mario-themed incarnation of the original Game & Watch game, Ball.

Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda (2021-present)

Celebrating 35 years of the Zelda franchise

Following the success of the Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros, Nintendo released another retro Game & Watch system, this time celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Zelda series. The handheld includes The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and a Link-themed version of the original Game & Watch game, Vermin.