Nintendo, a Japanese company that began as a playing card manufacturer in 1889, released a number of important video game franchises still around today, such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid.

Additionally, Nintendo imposed various regulations on third-party games developed for its system, helping to combat rushed, low-quality software. Third-party developers released many other long-lasting franchises, such as Capcom’s Mega Man, Konami’s Castlevania, Square’s Final Fantasy, and Enix’s Dragon Quest (Square and Enix would later merge to form Square Enix in 2003. (https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/history-of-video-games )

In the 1980s, 8-bit microprocessors reigned in most video game consoles—partly due to their low cost and partly due to familiarity. 16-bit CPUs had been around since the 1970s, but they remained prohibitively expensive for low-cost consumer products until the late 1980s, when they steadily decreased in price. This new breed of processors gave companies a great chance to one-up the competition through improvement and innovation. Sega did exactly that when it designed a new console, the Mega Drive, based on its powerful 16-bit arcade hardware.  With the release of the Mega Drive, Sega inaugurated a new technological era in the game console arms race.  (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/sega-genesis-turns-20/ )

Apple introduces the Macintosh with a television commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl, which plays on the theme of totalitarianism in George Orwell´s book 1984. The ad featured the destruction of “Big Brother” – a veiled reference to IBM -- through the power of personal computing found in a Macintosh. 

The Macintosh was the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphical user interface and was based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor. Its price was $2,500. Applications that came as part of the package included MacPaint, which made use of the mouse, and MacWrite, which demonstrated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processing.  

Apple introduces the Macintosh with a television commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl, which plays on the theme of totalitarianism in George Orwell´s book 1984. The ad featured the destruction of “Big Brother” – a veiled reference to IBM -- through the power of personal computing found in a Macintosh. The Macintosh was the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphical user interface and was based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor. 

Its price was $2,500. Applications that came as part of the package included MacPaint, which made use of the mouse, and MacWrite, which demonstrated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processing. (https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers/ )

Although the technology dated back to the nineteenth century, the heyday of the fax machine was the 1980s when it was described as, “today’s fastest-growing area of office automation and business communication.” The arrival of the fax machines accelerated communicators’ abilities to get reporters information on a timely basis, liaise more efficiently with regional offices and partners, and make decisions and get approval on strategic communications plans more quickly. And to boot, its security allowed organizations to be much less dependent on individual phone calls or face-to-face meetings.

The familiar screech of the fax machine and sight of workers scurrying between in-trays and the fax machine was an integral part of every communications office and agency. The downside was that, unfortunately, there were not enough fax machines to handle the volume of faxes that communications professionals were sending and you got a busy signal more often than not. To add to the frustration, fax machines had no rollover feature, so you had to find that precise moment when someone else’s fax had just finished going through and the line was free for you to send your fax through. Many communications professionals today can attest to sometimes having to spend an entire day during their early careers trying to get an important fax to go through. (https://www.forumone.com/ideas/communications-in-the-1980s-the-era-of-the-fax-machine/ )

 In 1982 JVC and Sony officially announced the creation of the “CAMera/recorder”, or camcorder. Sony’s Betamovie Beta camcorder used the slogan “Inside This Camera Is a VCR” and came to mainstream market in May 1983. Just a year later, Kodak introduced the 8 mm format. In 1985, Sony introduced the first chip-based camcorder “Video 8”, and JVC introduced the VHS-C, a more compact alternative to the typical VHS cassette. In 1992, the first color LCD screen came to life, replacing the traditional viewfinder that necessitated squinting through a tiny hole to witness a scene. All in all, it wasn’t long before easy-to-use, colored, high resolution video became the new norm.   (https://legacybox.com/blogs/analog/history-of-the-camcorder )

Cell phones were originally created so people could take while they drove. Initially called “car phones”, early cell phones were bulky, cumbersome, and expensive compared to today’s modern devices.   The world’s first cell phone was launched in 1983. It was the Motorola DynaTAC 800x. It was priced at around $4,000 and lasted for 30 minutes of talk time before dying. It was also about the size of a foot long sub from Subway.

Despite the phone’s large size, it was still considered to be the most portable telephone ever made. For the first time in history, a human being could call someone without the constraints of wires or portable phone holders. (https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-cell-phones/ )