- The system that brought video game consoles back from The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 in North America (they were pretty healthy elsewhere) and ushered in the modern era of video gaming. Known in Japan/Asia as the Family Computer (commonly abbreviated as the “Famicom”), in South Korea as Hyundai Comboy (현대 컴보이) and in India as the Samurai with unlicensed clones made in Eastern Europe, India, the Middle East and in China, it was the console that brought in the oldest and longest lasting competitor in the Console Wars, Nintendo. It also served as the initial console for many of gaming’s oldest franchises, introduced the modern third-party licensing model for video games, and set the standards in control pads for consoles. It is still very much an icon of video games (less so the redesigned variant).