ASAHI SHINBUN PUBLISHING
The computer game, which was invented in the USA, was developed as Japan's unique famicon (family computer) and rapidly became widespread. Initially, people frowned upon children's enthusiasm and set time limits and other restrictions, but soon it was no longer unusual to find adults enjoying the games late at night. One group who noticed the miraculous spread of the famicon were large finance companies. These companies offered services that enabled a famicon to be connected to a telephone line to display graphs of share price changes and predictions on a TV screen, and that enabled the famicon to be used to buy and sell shares. These services were an early indicator of the many possibilities inherent in the telephone line.