These days, Nintendo is synonymous with video games, and it’s hard to imagine the medium without Mario and The Legend of Zelda. But that wasn’t always the case. Nintendo emerged into gaming after the large-scale recession known as the video game crash of 1983. It’s not an overstatement to say that Nintendo “saved” video games with the release of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1985. But before that, the console took a surprisingly different shape.
