Nintendo – Family Friendly Video Games

Families that play together stay together or at least, that’s what they say!

Traditional entertainment choices have undergone a significant metamorphosis over the last few decades to what we now can term Family Friendly. What is Family Friendly? Today more and more families are opting for entertainment choices within the comfort of their homes.

Nintendo is a video game company that has fluidly adapted as well as highly influenced the changing North American video gaming scene. Did you know that Nintendo has been around for over 150 years? They were in the handheld business long before they ever went into the home video game business. In 1983, FamiCom (short for Family Computer developed by Masayuki Uemura) was introduced in Japan with great success. This resulted in the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) launch in 1985 here in the United States. This launch would change the video game world forever. Great games were suddenly once again available and fun to play – at home!

In 1989 we were introduced to Game Boy and in 1997, we met Nintendo 64. Over the last 20 years, over 2 billion games have been sold.

Family Friendly Ideals

Let’s fast forward to 2010. Nintendo has managed to retain entertainment choices that focus not only on “family friendly”, but also on “family friendly ideals”. Parents continue to favour Nintendo for its family friendly ideals because of the choices the company has continued to follow in its product creation process. While there are games with violence, they are few. The public perception remains that Nintendo is family friendly. Indeed, compared to the competition, that is rightly so. It means the games are devoid of violence, bad language and questionable characters.

What does this mean?

• you can have these games on when your five or ninety-five year old relatives walk in the room and not feel uncomfortable.
• you don’t have to think twice about opting for these products in your home to entertain your family and friends.

It can be said that Nintendo provides a wide range of family friendly video games that satisfy everyone from old to young.

Handheld Devices

The Nintendo DS was launched in November 2004. Today, we have a choice of the compact DS light and most recently, DSi or we can opt for the DSi XL for those wishing to have a larger viewing screen. It is truly an all-in-one compact piece of electronic equipment for all ages. Options include gaming, music, camera and editing features, mental exercise games, chat capability and even wi-fi and internet are included. Watch for the 3DS coming in 2011 and adding 3D to your options! With one of these in hand, no one will be asking you for individual iPods, cameras or portable computers!

Home Video Game Systems

The Wii launched in October of 2006. Wii gets you off the couch and moving around. In fact, it has even being used in retirement homes with great success. Congrats to all our old dear friends – finally, you have something you can enjoy too!

• Wii is fun.
• It is interactive.
• It is social.
• It bridges the generation gap.
• It is way more interesting that just sitting on the couch and staring at the TV!

Whether your interest lies in fitness, sports, music, singing or just plain old video games (like the historic Super Mario Brothers), Nintendo Wii will have you happily competing with your nine year old or seventy-nine year old, or even pitting the girls against the boys. There truly is something to suit everyone’s tastes and activity levels.

What do other people think?

Perhaps you’re wondering, what are other people thinking about this?

As of the date of this writing, Nintendo has sold more than 565 million hardware units and 3.4 billion software units and still retains a commanding lead over its competition.