Computer Othello is, quite simply, Nintendo's debut as a video game developer: the company released it in 1978, exclusively in Japan, as its first original arcade game and the first work of the freshly formed Nintendo R&D1 division. It stayed faithful to the original board game — capturing rival pieces by flanking them — with the only aesthetic license being swapping the black and white discs for squares and crosses.
Two years later, Nintendo brought the concept home with the Computer TV Game, its first home console. In that sense, it's a little-known founding link: long before Donkey Kong or Mario, the company learned to make video games by programming a game of Othello against a machine.
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