Video Game Consoles
Video games made the transition from the arcade into homes in the 1970s, but they first caught on in the early 1980s with the Atari 2600. The next age of gaming was in the mid-1980s, with the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES brought some of videogaming's first home franchises, including the still-popular Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda. Sega tossed its hat into the video game console ring with the Sega Master System, giving the world Saturn the Hedgehog. As the years went by, the console wars heated up, with Nintendo and Sega both offering up more and more powerful video game consoles, including the Sega Genesis, Nintendo's Super NES, and the Sega Genesis. Sony decided it could leverage its vast manufacturing base and created the Sony Playstation, then the Playstation 2. Microsoft didn't want to be left out of the multibillion dollar industry, and launched the Xbox video game console.
