Nintendo was founded on September 23, 1889 in Japan. Nintendo was originally called Nintendo Koppai. Its president at the time was Fusajiro Yamauchi. It was actually a playing card company that produced handmade hanafuda cards. This era lasted from 1889 to 1956. Nintendo still produces playing cards only in Japan.
In 1956 the grandson of Yamauchi, Hiroshi Yamauchi went to the United States to talk to their biggest playing card company. Hiroshi found out that the biggest playing card company on planet Earth had a small office. That was when Yamauchi found out the limitations of the playing card business. In 1963 Nintendo experimented with other areas of business. During this 5 year span Nintendo set up a taxi service, a love hotel chain, a TV network, a food company which sold instant rice which is similar to instant noodles and a couple of other things as well. Nintendo failed on all of those ideas. In 1966 Nintendo shifted gears and went into the Japanese toy business thanks to the toy called the ultra-hand which was made by Nintendo’s maintenance engineer. Nintendo produced some other popular toys such as the Love Tester, Ultra Gun, and light gun games. Nintendo was later overwhelmed by other toy companies at the time such as Tomy and Bandai.
In 1974 Nintendo moved to the video game industry and its first game was released in 1975. The game was called EVR racing. A couple of other games were also released. But they all had little success. Then the game that turned Nintendo’s heads around came out in 1980. It was called Donkey Kong. It also released Nintendo’s mascot which is Mario. In 1983 Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan. The Famicom which is the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was released in North America with Super Mario Bros which later became the bestselling game of all time. The console had worldwide success and so Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or SNES in 1991. The console had big success as well. Its biggest games were Super Mario Kart and Super Mario World. The Nintendo 64 came out in 1995 and was the last cartridge based console. Because it was so expensive to make cartridges some games prices were up to $80! This was the very first console to use 3D graphics. It’s most popular games were Super Mario 64 which sold over 11 million copies and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In 2001 Nintendo released the Nintendo GameCube which was the first console to use discs for games instead of cartridges. It’s most popular game was Super Mario Sunshine. The Wii came out in 2006. It was the first console to use a nontraditional video game controller. Instead it used a remote controller. In 2012 Nintendo released the Wii U. Its main attraction is the Wii U gamepad which is a tablet controller.
Nintendo also released some portable consoles as well. In 1989 Nintendo released the Game Boy which was the world’s first portable console. Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance in the 90’s as the successor to the Gameboy. In 2004 Nintendo released the DS which had 2 screens. Nintendo has made other models of the Ds since then. Nintendo released the 3DS in 2011 which was just like the DS but you can play games in 3D without the glasses! We do not know what Nintendo has in store for the future. But we know this; it will not be for a while. They got great hardware out there now with the 3DS and Wii U and they are both growing in popularity.
Nintendo is known as the 3rd most valuable listed company in Japan with a market value of over $85 billion in U.S currency. Nintendo of America is also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners. Go Mariners! Nintendo translated from Japanese into English as, “Leave luck to heaven”.