The Best Nintendo Game Every Year 1983 - 2024

42. 1983 - Donkey Kong

1983 might be the single most important year in all of gaming history when you get right down to it. The rise in Japanese developers had an open path to dominance in the wake of the American video game crash (or “Atari shock”), and Nintendo couldn’t have picked a better year to introduce their first-ever home console. 

The Famicom Entertainment System arrived in the Japanese market in July 1983, bringing some of the company’s biggest arcade hits with it. Chief among them, of course, was Donkey Kong. 

Just on the surface, the game introduced us to both DK and Mario, two of Nintendo’s most enduring mascots, even if they have vastly transformed along the way. Whilst the game can’t necessarily be called the single point of origin for the platforming genre, many people take for granted that it's main mechanic of having the player jump gaps and obstacles changed everything.

That, in itself, is an awesome legacy but it also gave us people so obsessed with world record scores that they got into legal battles over whether or not they cheated to obtain them, which is a pretty unique claim to fame too.