Nintendo World (2014) #Lookback
In 2014, the only official Nintendo store in the world was located in New York, called Nintendo World and stretched over two floors
Lookback series
As most of us still have heavy restrictions when it comes to travel. I'll do a lookback series on most Sundays, to different destinations. These can be all from countries to storesAs many of the photos in this series are around 10 years old, they might not be as high resolution and level of quality we try to stay at today
Checkout #lookback for other articles in this series
Store area
In the store area, there was everything from toys to clothes, to games
You could find plush toys from many popular Nintendo franchises
Backpacks, figurines, t-shirts and other appeal was also available
Of course there needs to be appeal unique for the store and you could among other find these blue Nintendo World New York shirts
Gaming stations
There was many places you could try a games and different gaming consoles
You could sit down around the table and play some Nintendo 3DS
Or try many different Wii U titles, at one of the Wii U Stations
Nintendo Museum
Beside the store part, there's lot of Nintendo history at display here
In a huge glass case, they had highlights from their gaming history
Starting from the left. Nintendos gaming history starting with playing cards back in 1889, called Hanafuda. About 100 years later, in 1980 Nintendo released their first gaming handheld called Game and Watch (G&W)
Five years later, in 1985 the Famicom was released in Japan
Two years later it was released in America as Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). To try to differentiate themselves from the competition in US, where the gaming market just recently had crashed. R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) was bundled with all NES in the first year
Four years later, in 1989 the Game Boy was released. Nintendo's venture into handheld gaming with cartriges, so you could swap games
In 1990 Nintendo released their second home console Super Famicom in Japan and next year in US as Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) (more commonly called Super Nintendo)
Virtual Boy was rushed to marked in 1995 and is the black sheep of the Nintendo gaming consoled. Because of the rushed released, to free up resources for Nintendo's next home console. The Virtual Boy didn't meat the quality expected of a Nintendo product and was discontinued only 1 year later
The resources freed from the Virtual Boy development, went to Nintendo 64 (N64) development and it was released in 1996. Here Nintendo defined how 3D Platform games should be, with Super Mario 64
In 1998 Nintendo upgraded their Game Boy, by giving it a color screen and naming it Game Boy Color (GBC). Nintendo still considered it as an Game Boy revision and not a new console. Even if most consumers saw it as a brand new handheld, since the color screen was a huge upgrade to the previous versions
Game Boy Advance (GBA) was the successor to the Game Boy and came out in 2001
Nintendo also released a new home console in 2001, Nintendo GameCube and was Nintendo's first home console to use optical disk, instead of cartridges
In 2004 Nintendo started their new line of handheld series, which dropped the famous Game Boy branding. It was a dual screened handheld branded Nintendo DS
2006 was the year even your grandparents was playing video games. With the release of the Wii, everyone wanted to play and later it have become Nintendo's best selling home console of all time
In 2011 the DS got 3D added to it and is now named Nintendo 3DS. In addition to the 3D screen, it also got some hardware improvements and was a decent upgrade
Nintendo's first big flop in the home console market, the Wii U have some of Nintendo's worst sales numbers and didn't do too well. Many people thought it was just a minor improvement to the Wii and didn't see any point of upgrading. The Wii U is an underrated console, with a truly wonderful gaming experience
