Nintendo 56: Color TV-Game
Image: nintendo-online.de

Time flies when you're having fun, and it's crazy to think that it's been 40 years since Nintendo started making video games. It feels like there is a anniversary for something every other day at the moment, but this is a big one. According to Nintendo's own records, the Color TV Game 6 and Color TV Game 15 in July 1977 in Japan.

While it's true that Nintendo was dabbling with light gun games such as the Laser Clay Shooting System and Wild Gunman in the early 1970s, it was with the arrival of these Pong clones that Nintendo truly entered the video games arena as we know it. Of course, the firm's history stretches back much further than that - it was founded in 1889 to produce playing cards and branched out into making toys and board games before the '70s arrived.

After the launch of these early home systems Nintendo dabbled in the arcades and made hits such as Donkey Kong in 1981, and of course there were countless Game & Watch editions. Things really kicked into overdrive with the release of the Famicom in 1983 and its subsequent release as the NES in the US in 1985. The rest, as we say, is history.

It's fair to say that Nintendo owes a lot to the release of these Color TV Games in July 1977; the video game landscape at the time was dominated by Atari and Magnavox and few could have foreseen that Nintendo would go on to become such a dominant player and would still be making their own consoles and games 40 years later, long after these early rivals had bitten the dust.

Nintendo hasn't forgotten it's roots either; Color TV-Games have featured in its WarioWare series from time to time and Color TV-Game 15 even appears as an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS.

Join us in raising a toast to 40 years of Nintendo games. Here's to the next 40!

[source kotaku.com]