Nintendo started as a small Japanese business by Fusajiro Yamauchi on September 23, 1889,[1] as Nintendo Koppai. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business produced and marketed Hanafudacards. In recognition of its card-playing roots, the name "Nintendo" means "leave luck to heaven".[2] The cards, which were all handmade, soon began to gain popularity, and Yamauchi had to hire assistants to mass produce cards to keep up with demand.

Fusajiro Yamauchi did not have a son to take over the family business. Following common Japanese tradition, he adopted his son-in-law, Sekiryo Kaneda (Sekiryo Yamauchi, after the marriage). In 1929, Yamauchi retired from the company and allowed Sekiryo Yamauchi to take over the company as president. In 1933, Sekiryo Yamauchi established a joint venture with another company and renamed the company Yamauchi Nintendo & Company.

In 1947, Sekiryo established the company Marufuku Company, Ltd., to distribute the Hanafuda cards, as well as several other brands of cards that had been introduced by Nintendo. Sekiryo Yamauchi also had only daughters, so again his son-in-law (Shikanojo Inaba, renamed Shikanojo Yamauchi) was adopted into the family. Shikanojo never became president because he left his family. Subsequently, his son Hiroshi was brought up by his grandparents. Hiroshi later took over the company instead of his father.

The Late Card EraThis section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (March 2012)This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Hiroshi Yamauchi attended Waseda University in Tokyo. However, after his grandfather died in 1949 he took office as the president of Nintendo. He renamed "Yamauchi Nintendo & Company" to "Nintendo Playing Card Company, Limited", and in 1951 he renamed their distribution company from "Marufuku Company, Limited," to "Nintendo Karuta Company, Limited". In 1953, Nintendo became the first company in Japan to produce playing cards from plastic. This was a huge hit and allowed Nintendo to dominate the card market.[citation needed] A Nintendo hanafuda card, showing the company's logo at the time

In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi visited the U.S., to engage in talks with the United States Playing Card Company, the dominant playing card manufacturer in the United States. Yamauchi was shocked to find that the world's biggest company in his business was relegated to using a small office. This was a turning point for Yamauchi, who then realized the limitations of the playing card business.[citation needed]

In 1959, Nintendo struck a deal with Disney to have them allow Nintendo to use Disney's characters on Nintendo's playing cards. Previously, Western playing cards were regarded as something similar to hanafuda and mahjong: a device for gambling. By tying playing cards to Disney and selling books explaining the different games one could play with the cards, Nintendo could sell the product to Japanese households. The tie-in was a success and the company sold at least 600,000 card packs in a single year. Due to this success, in 1962, Yamauchi took Nintendo public, listing the company in Osaka Stock Exchange Second division.[citation needed]

Following the aforementioned success, in 1963 Nintendo Playing Card Company Limited was renamed to Nintendo Company, Limited by Hiroshi. Nintendo now began to experiment in other areas of business using the newly injected capital. During the period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo set up a taxi company, "love hotel" chain, food company (trying to sell instant rice, similar to instant noodles) and several other things (including a vacuum cleaner, Chiritory, which later appeared as a two-player game in WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ in 2003). All these ventures eventually failed, except toymaking, where they had some earlier experience from selling playing cards.[citation needed] In 1964, while Japan was experiencing an economic boom due to the Tokyo Olympics, the playing card business reached its saturation point. Japanese households stopped buying playing cards, and the price of Nintendo stock fell from 900 yen to 60 yen.[citation needed]

In 1965, Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi as a maintenance engineer for the assembly line. However, Yokoi soon became famous for much more than his ability to repair conveyor belts.[citation needed]

Toy companyRiddled with debt, Nintendo struggled to survive in the Japanese toy industry; it was still small at this point, and dominated by already well established companies such as Bandai and Tomy. Because of the generally short product life cycle of toys, the company always had to come up with new products. This was the beginning of a major new era for Nintendo.

In 1970, Hiroshi Yamauchi was observing a hanafuda factory. He noticed an extending arm, which was made by one of their maintenance engineers, Gunpei Yokoi, for his own amusement. Yamauchi ordered Yokoi to develop it as a proper product for the Christmas rush. Released as "The Ultra Hand", it would become one of Nintendo's earliest toy blockbusters, selling over a million units. Seeing that Yokoi had promise, Hiroshi Yamauchi pulled him off assembly line work. Yokoi was soon moved from maintenance duty to product development.

Due to his electrical engineering background, it soon become apparent that Gunpei was quite adept at developing electronic toys. These devices had a much higher novelty value than traditional toys, allowing Nintendo to charge a higher price margin for each product. Yokoi went on to develop many other toys, including the Ten Billion Barrel puzzle, a baseball throwing machine called the Ultra Machine, and a Love Tester. Another invention of his, in collaboration with Masayuki Uemura from Sharp, was the Nintendo Beam Gun Game, the precursor to the NES Zapper.

In 1977, Nintendo saw the hiring of Shigeru Miyamoto, the man who (along with Yokoi) would become a living legend in the world of gaming and the secret to Nintendo's longevity; his creative vision was instrumental in determining the path Nintendo's future (and indeed, the industry's as a whole) would follow to beat all other companies.

Electronic gamesNintendo's first video game system, the Color TV Game 6

Nintendo at this time saw how successful video games were and began to dabble in them. Their first step in that field was to secure the rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey in Japan, which they did in 1975. At the time, home video game consoles were extremely rare-even the seminal Atari Pong console had yet to be produced. After experiencing reasonable success at this, Nintendo began developing its own video games, both for the home and for arcades. In the 1970s, Mitsubishi Electric proposed joint development of "Color TV Game Machine". In 1977, they released "Color TV Game 6" and "Color TV Game 15" (6 and 15 indicates the number of games).

Their first video arcade game was 1975's EVR Race;[3] a large handful of others followed in the next several years, Radar Scope and Donkey Kong being among the most famous of these. The early 1980s saw Nintendo's video game division (led by Yokoi) creating some of its most famous arcade titles. The massively popular Donkey Kong was created in 1981, with Miyamoto as its mastermind, and released in the arcades and on the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and ColecoVision video game systems (although Nintendo themselves generally had no involvement with these early console ports). This release method would be used on several later Nintendo arcade games of this same period, including the original Mario Bros. (not to be confused with the later Super Mario Bros.) In addition to this arcade and dedicated console game activity, Nintendo was testing the consumer handheld video game waters with the Game & Watch.

1983-1989In 1982 Nintendo developed a prototype system dubbed "The Advanced Video System" (or AVS for short) and had controllers much like the NES and had accessories such as a tape drive, a joy stick and a lightgun, and along with all of that the system was made of a computer, much like the Atari 500, and the commodore Vic-20 and commodore 64, but was never released, but is for show a the Nintendo shop. In July 1983, Nintendo released their Famicom(Family Computer) system in Japan, which was their first attempt at a cartridge-based video game console. The system was sold over 500,000 units within two months at a price around $100 USD. However, after a few months of the consoles selling well, Nintendo received complaints that some Famicom consoles would freeze when the player attempted to play certain games. The fault was found in a malfunctioning chip and Nintendo decided to recall all Famicom units currently on store shelves, which cost them almost half a million USD. The Nintendo Famicom, released in 1983, sold well in Japan.

During this period of time, Nintendo rekindled their desire to release the Famicom in the USA. Since the company had very little experience with the United States market, they had previously attempted to contract with Atari for the system's distribution in 1983. However, a fiasco involving Coleco and Donkey Kongsoured the relationship between the two during the negotiations, and Atari refused to back Nintendo's console. The video game crash of 1983 soon took out not only Atari, but the vast majority of the American market itself. Nintendo was on their own.

Nintendo was determined not to make the same mistakes in the US that Atari had. Because of massive influxes of games that were regarded as some of the worst ever created, gaming had almost completely died out in America. Nintendo decided that to avoid facing the same problems, they would only allow games that received their "Seal of Quality" to be sold for the Famicom, using a chip called 10NES to "lockout" or prevent unlicensed games from working.

In 1985, Nintendo announced that they were releasing the Famicom worldwide with a different design under the name the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). They used a trojan-horse tactic to counter the bad view that the media was giving on video games, and released the NES with R.O.B. units that connected to the console and were synchronised to the games. To ensure the localization of the highest-quality games by third-party developers, Nintendo of America limited the number of game titles third-party developers could release in a single year to five. Konami, the first third-party company that was allowed to make cartridges for the Famicom, would later circumvent this rule by creating a spinoff company, Ultra Games, to release additional games in a single year. Other manufacturers soon employed the same tactic. Also in 1985, Super Mario Bros. was released for the Famicom in Japan and became a large success. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), released in 1985, is one of the most popular consoles of all time.

Nintendo test marketed the Nintendo Entertainment System in the New York area on October 18, 1985. They expanded the test to Los Angeles in February 1986, followed by tests in Chicago and San Francisco. They would go national by the end of 1986, along with 15 games, sold separately. In the US and Canada, it outsold its competitors by a wide margin. This was also the year that Metroid and Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Japanese version) were released. In 1987, The Legend of Zelda was released to much critical acclaim.

In 1988, Nintendo of America unveiled Nintendo Power, a monthly news and strategy magazine from Nintendo that served to advertise new games. The first issue published was the July/August edition, which spotlighted the NES game Super Mario Bros. 2. Nintendo Power is still published today with its two hundredth issue released in February 2006.

In 1989, Nintendo (which had seen a large amount of success from the Game & Watch) released the Game Boy (both created by Gunpei Yokoi), along with the accompanying game Tetris. Due to the price, the game and its durability (unlike the prior Microvision from Milton Bradley Company, which was prone to static and screen rot), the Game Boy sold extremely well. It eventually became the best selling portable game system of all time. Later, Super Mario Land was also released for the Game Boy, which sold 14 million copies worldwide. 1989 was also the year that Nintendo announced a sequel to the Famicom, to be called the Super Famicom.

They changed this rule during the Super NES era, allowing Sega to start a massive console war against Nintendo with the Sega Mega Drive and Game Gear. This occurred once more in 1996, when Sony released the PlayStation.

1990-1995The original North American SNES, circa 1991

The last major blockbuster game for the NES, Super Mario Bros. 3, was released in early 1990. The game went on to sell over 18 million units, a licensed Television adaption named The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was released by DIC Entertainment and Viacom Enterprises in that year to capitalise on the Game's popularity

The Super Famicom was released in Japan on November 21, 1990. The system's launch was widely successful, and the Super Famicom was sold out across Japan within three days. In August 1991, the Super Famicom was launched in the US under the name "Super Nintendo Entertainment System" (SNES). The SNES was released in Europe in 1992.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System followed in the steps of its predecessor, with high technical specifications for its era. The controller of the SNES had also improved over that of the NES, as it now had rounded edges and four new buttons, a standard which is evident on many modern controllers today.

Nintendo had also begun development on a CD-ROM attachment for the SNES/Super Famicom. Their first partner in this project was Sony, whom Nintendo had worked with before to provide the SNES with its SPC sound chip. Development on the "PLAYSTATION" CD-ROM add-on and SNES/SFC standalone hybrid console began. However, at the last minute Nintendo decided to pull out of the partnership and instead go with Philips, and while no CD-ROM add-on was produced, several Nintendo properties (namely Zelda) appeared on the CD-I media console. Upon learning this, Sony decided to continue developing the technology they had into the Playstation. The exact reason Nintendo left its partnership with Sony has been the subject of speculation over the years, but the most common theory is that Sony either wanted too much of the profits for the machine or the rights to the CD-ROM attachment itself.

In Japan, the Super Famicom easily took control of the gaming market. In the US, due to a late start and an aggressive marketing campaign by Sega (Headed by the Sega Company's new mascot, Sonic The Hedgehog, their answer to Nintendo's Super Mario), Nintendo saw its market share take a precipitous plunge from 90-95% with the NES to a low of approximately 35% against the Sega Genesis. Over the course of several years, the SNES in North America eventually overtook the Genesis, thanks to franchise titles such as Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter II, and the Final Fantasy series. Total worldwide sales of the SNES were higher than the Genesis.

As the SNES battled the Sega Genesis, Nintendo was running into problems on another front caused by their own aggressive marketing behavior. In 1991, Nintendo agreed to a settlement regarding price-fixing allegations brought by the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in New York and Maryland. Nintendo had been accused of threatening to cut off shipments of the NES to retailers who discounted the price of the system. The estimated cost of the settlement was just under $30 million.[4]

In 1992, Gunpei Yokoi and the rest of R&D 1 began planning on a new virtual reality console to be called the Virtual Boy. Hiroshi Yamauchi also bought majority shares of the Seattle Mariners in 1992.

In 1993, Nintendo announced plans to develop a new 64-bit console codenamed Project Reality that would be capable of rendering fully 3D environments and characters. In 1994, Nintendo also claimed that Project Reality would be renamed Ultra 64in the US. The Ultra 64 moniker was unveiled in arcades on the Nintendo branded fighting game Killer Instinct and the racing game Cruisin' USA. Killer Instinct was later released on the SNES. Soon after, Nintendo realized they had mistakenly chosen a name for their new console that the Konami corporation owned the rights to. Specifically, only Konami would have the rights to release games for the new system called Ultra Football, Ultra Tennis, etc. Therefore, in 1995 Nintendo changed the final name of the system to the Nintendo 64, and announced that it would be released in 1996. They later showed previews of the system and several games, including Super Mario 64, to the media and public. 1995 is also the year that Nintendo purchased part of Rare.

In 1994, after many years of Nintendo's products being distributed in Australia by Mattel since the NES in 1985, Nintendo Co., Ltd opened its Australian headquarters and its first Managing Directors were Graham Kerry, who moved along from Mattel Australia as Managing Director and Susumu Tanaka of Nintendo UK Ltd.

In 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy in Japan. The console sold poorly, but Nintendo still said they had hope for it and continued to release several other games and attempted a release in the US, which was another disaster.

Also in 1995, Nintendo found themselves in a competitive situation. Competitor Sega introduced their 32-bit Saturn, while newcomer Sony introduced the 32-bit PlayStation. Sony's fierce marketing campaigns ensued, and it started to cut into Nintendo and Sega's market share.

1996-2001On June 23, 1996, the Nintendo 64 (N64) was released in Japan and became a huge hit, selling over 500,000 units on the first day of its release. On September 29, 1996, Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 in North America, and it too was a success. Many feel that the advertising onslaught by Sony at this time did not truly begin to take effect until many of the consumers who held out for the N64 became frustrated at the lack of software following the first few months after the system's release. What also greatly contributed to the extremely competitive climate that Nintendo was entrenched in was the fact that many third-party companies immediately began developing and releasing many of their leading games for Nintendo's competing consoles. Many of those third party companies cited cheaper development and manufacturing costs for the CD format, versus the cartridge format. On December 1, 1999, Nintendo released an add-on to the Nintendo 64 in Japan, titled the Nintendo 64DD, although it was never released elsewhere. The exterior of Nintendo's main research center. It is a few blocks away from the company's main headquarters.

Nintendo followed with the release of the Game Boy Pocket, a smaller version of the original Game Boy. A week after the release of the Game Boy Pocket, Gunpei Yokoi resigned from his position at Nintendo. Gunpei Yokoi helped in the creation of a competitor system named the WonderSwan, using the skills he gained in the creation of the Game Boy.

In 1996, Pocket Monsters (known internationally as "Pokémon") was released in Japan to a huge following. The Pokémon franchise, created by Satoshi Tajiri, was proving so popular in America, Europe, and Japan, that for a brief time, Nintendo took back their place as the supreme power in the games industry.

In 1997, Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi died in a car accident at the age of 56.

On October 13, 1998, the Game Boy Color was released in Japan, with releases in North America and Europe a month later.

Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance in Japan on March 21, 2001. This was followed by the North American launch on June 11 and the European launch on June 22. Nintendo released the GameCube home video game console on September 14, 2001, in Japan. It was released in North America on November 18, 2001, Europe on May 3, 2002, and Australia on May 17, 2002.

2002-presentIn 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down as the president of Nintendo and named Satoru Iwata his successor. Nintendo and Chinese-American scientist Dr Wei Yen co-founded iQue to manufacture and distribute official Nintendo consoles and games for the mainland Chinese market under the iQue brand.

During the same year, Nintendo's aggressive business tactics in Europe would catch up to them. The European Commission determined that Nintendo had engaged in anticompetitive price-fixing business practices dating at least as far back as the early 90s. This resulted in a heavy fine being laid against the company- €149 million, one of the largest antitrust fines applied in the history of the commission.[5]

In May 2004, Nintendo announced plans to release a new brand of handheld, unrelated to the Game Boy, featuring two screens, one of which was touch-sensitive. The Nintendo DS, released on November 21, 2004, received over three million pre-orders. In addition to the touch screen, the DS can also create three-dimensional graphics, similar to those of the Nintendo 64, although its lack of hardware support for texture filtering results in more pixelated graphics than on the Nintendo 64.

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