Despite being underpowered and even mocked internally at Nintendo, the Game Boy proved to have unprecedented international appeal for its battery life, durability and cheap launch price of $90.īetween 19, the Game Boy sold more than 118 million units, and “Super Mario Land” and “Tetris” were commonly bundled with the device itself. But the success of these two games arguably rides on the platform they released on – the Game Boy. The year after that, “Tetris” stole its place. Not coincidentally, that’s when the pause button became an industry standard.īy 1992, “Super Mario Land” surpassed “Frogger” for the title of the bestselling game of all time.

Video games are often depicted as a vehicle to fulfill humanity’s violent fantasies, but the most ubiquitous of them throughout the years tell a different story.įrom 1989-1991, the bestselling game was “Frogger.” Following on the heels of “Pac-Man” and “Space Invaders,” arcade-style gaming was still the undisputed champion – when you press start, you expect to play for 5-10 minutes and try to beat your previous score before starting all over again.īut with the release of 16-bit consoles – notably the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System – games became more sophisticated, with popular platformers “Mario” and “Sonic” asking players to commit several hours to complete games. Asking a stranger if they’ve ever heard of “Mario” is about as silly as asking if they know of the film “Star Wars” or the song “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” by Journey.Īlthough the medium began to gain momentum in 1977 with the release of the Atari 2600, reliable statistics on sales weren’t widely available until 1989 via the NPD Group. Over the past four to five decades, video gaming has gradually risen from a niche hobby to a multibillion-dollar industry.

Frogger returns online