Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario is a falling-block puzzle game developed and published by Nintendo, building on the Mario franchise. It was released simultaneously for the GameBoy and the NES in 1990; it also got arcade releases on both the PlayChoice-10 and Nintodo VS. System. Initial reviews were mostly positive; however, some reviewers criticized it as unoriginal, considering it derivative of Tetris and Connect Four. It was a commercial success and would receive several sequels and remakes for later Nintendo systems.

Nintendo Famicom

Two years before it came to North America as the NES, Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan in July 1983. Arguably the first true 8-bit system, the Famicom was the beginning of the console wars.

The Famicom popularized many of the features that would define this era of gaming including the D-Pad controller, which Nintendo had introduced with the portable Game & Watch version of Donkey Kong.

While the North American NES was only a gaming console, the Japanese Famicom could be be expanded with various peripheral devices, including keyboards and disk drives, which turned the Famicom into a full fledged home computer. This helped keep the Famicom relevant for much longer, outliving its American counterpart by more than half a decade.