Nintendo history

The Nintendo company was founded by a Japanese man called Fusajiro Yamauchi in late 1889 and they originally marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The name translates as "leave luck to heaven". The company shortly turned into a successful biusness and has Mr Yamauchi didn't have a son he followed Japanese tradition and passed the business onto his son-in-law upon his retirement in 1929.

The new president of the company was called Sekiryo Yamauchi. In 1933 Sekiryo Yamauchi done a joint venture which saw the company name change to Yamauchi Nintendo & Company. He also established another company called Marufuku Company, Ltd which was used to distribute the playing cards for Nintendo. Sekiryo Yamauchi also didn't have a son of his own but did have a son-in-law as he was to Fusajiro Yamauchi. The son-in-law however left the family but he did have a son which his grandparents bought up and eventually Fusajiro grandson took over the company. He was called Hiroshi Yamauchi.

Hiroshi take over of Nintendo happened suddenly as his grandfather died in 1949. He renamed Yamauchi Nintendo & Company to Nintendo Playing Card Company, Limited., and in 1951 he renamed their distribution company, Marufuku Company, Limited, to Nintendo Karuta Company, Limited. In 1953 dominated the card market as they were the first company in Japan to produce plastic playing cards. 1959 and Nintendo was able to do a deal with Disney which saw Disney characters printed on their cards. The company had grown significantly since Hiroshi had taken presidency and in 1962 he made it public and listed it on the stock exchange.

The company name was changed yet again to Nintendo Company, Limited and they now had enough money generated from the stock exchange floatation to be able to experiment in other areas. The new ventures invested in all failed apart from one in the toy making industry from which they already had expreince selling playing cards. There card business was about to hit its peak in 1964 when households across Japan stopped buying them and the value of the company on the stock exchange fell from 900 Yen to just 60 Yen.

Gunpei Yokoi joined the company in 1965 has a maintenance man but he soon become famous for other things. Nintendo however had become deep in dept as they found it hard to stay on top of the massive toy industry. Companies like Bandia and Tomy were already well established and were hard to compete against. 1970 and Hiroshi Yamauchi was wondering one of his factories an noticed Gunpei Yokoi had made an extending arm for his own pleasure which Hiroshi ordered him to develop into a product which could be released in time for the Christmas period. Success hit the company one more as this new product sold over a million units and became Nintendos first big seller in toy industry.

Shigeru Miyamoto was hired in 1977 and was employed to develop new idea along with the promoted Gunpei Yokoi. Gunpei had already developed a few more successful ideas before Miyamoto arrival, one of which was the Nintendo Beam Gun Game which later became the predecessor to the NES Zapper used for the game Duck Hunt. Nintendo realised the potential of the video gaming market and secured distribution rights to the Magnavox Odyssey in Japan in 1975. Not even the Atari Pong had been developed by this stage. So Nintendo started to develop video games for both homes and arcades. In 1977 they become partners with Mitsubishi Electric to produce the "Color TV Game Machine". The first arcade game came out in 1978 called "Computer Othello". More followed in years to come including famous titles such as Donkey Kong and Radar Scope. Nintendo also started testing handheld devices and watches around the early 1980's.

Things were starting to roll now and they released the Famicom (family computer) in Japan which was their first cartridge console. This console failed until they released the famous Super Mario Bros when they then sold over 50'000 units in only 2 months. Unfortunately a fault on board the Famicom saw Nintendo recalling all current Famicoms in stores which cost them ½ million USD.

By 1985 the Famicom was a big success in Japan and the company was split into 3 research and development teams to try and produce high quality games instead of average ones. It was also in 1985 that the Famicom was to be released worldwide but under a different name. The Nintendo Entertainment System.

That is the main story behind the history and the time line of console releases can be found below. The Nintendo company is now famous worldwide and the is just about to release the newest edition to the family. The Nintendo Dsi handheld.

1985 - NES (Nintendo Entertainment System)
1989 - Gameboy
1991 - SNES ( Super NES)
1996 - N64
1996 - Gameboy Pocket
2001 - Gameboy Advance
2001 - Nintendo Game Cube
2003 - Gameboy Advance SP
2004 - Nintendo DS
2005 - Gameboy Micro
2006 - Nintendo DS Lite
2006 - Nintendo Wii
2008 - Nintendo Dsi

You can find a more specific history of the handheld console below.

Nintendo Handheld history

Get all the latest new and info including best deals and buys for Nintendo products.

Nintendo on Twitter