Nintendo’s History Nintendo was started by Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo started out making a playing card game called Hanafuda. The cards were handmade and they soon began to gain popularity. So the company started to grow. Soon Fusajiors Yamauchi’s adopted son-in-law Hiroshi Yamauchi took over the company. He was only 21 years old. Hiroshi soon renamed Yamauchi Nintendo & company to Nintendo playing card company. In 1953, they started to make their playing cards out of plastic which was a huge hit in Japan because of their durability.
And Nintendo playing card company soon dominated the playing card market. In 1956, Hiroshi paid a visit to the U. S. , to engage with U. S. playing card company. He saw how small their main office was a realized the extent of the playing card business. In 1963, they changed their name again from Nintendo playing card, limited to just Nintendo. They soon tried their hands at some different products including: a taxi company, a love hotel chain, and a vacuum company. All of the companies failed except for toy making. Then in 1964, then playing cards lost their popularity and they stopped making them.
In 1970, Hiroshi Yamauchi was observing one of his factorys and he noticed an extending arm made by one of the engineers named Gunpei Yokoi. Yamauchi asked him to show him the designs and he soon started to mass produce the arm calling it “The Ultra Hand”. The toy was a hit selling over 1 million units. Hiroshi immediately pulled Gunpei off the engineering team and put him to work in the toy development department. Gunpei created many new toys and they proved to be a huge hit, they also sold for a higher price because of higher novelty value than other toys.
In 1977, Nintendo hired Shigeru Miyamoto, the man who would soon become a living legend in the gaming world. Yokoi trained Miyamoto teaching him all that he knew. Nintendo then created its first gaming system called the “Color tv Game 6” and the “Color tv Game 15” (6 & 15 standing for the number of games it comes with). In the early 1980’s, Nintendo created some of their most popular games including the game Donkey Kong and The Mario Bros. created by Miyamoto. In 1985, Nintendo released the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) priced at about $100.
It wasn’t very popular until the release of Super Mario Brothers which sold over 500,000 units in less than two months. To ensure only the highest quality games to be released from their system Nintendo created a chip which they called “The Seal of Quality” it prevented 3rd party manufacturers from making videogames for the NES without their approval. In 1989 Nintendo released the Game Boy which was created by Gunpei Yokoi. With a good price, popular games, and durability they Game Boy became very popular selling millions of units all across the world.
In fact it is Nintendo’s best selling handheld gaming device to this day. A few months late Super Mario Land came out for the Game Boy, which sold 14 million copies worldwide. By the end of the 1980’s the U. S. government found Nintendo guilty of anti-trust activities. Because it had abused third party manufactures. In 1992, Nintendo started manufacturing a complete 3D gaming system which sat on a tripod and you looked straight in to. The problem was that all games had a red tint to them to make them 3D and the console caused severe eye damage in children.
So the system didn’t go over very well with the public. In 1996, Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 which proved to be a huge hit. Nintendo followed with the release of the Game boy pocket which was just a smaller version of the larger Game Boy system. In 1997, Gunpei Yokoi died in a car accident. On October 13, 1998 Nintendo released The Game Boy color and then the Game boy advanced in 2001. In 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down from president of Nintendo Company, and named Satoru Iwata as his successor.
In 2004, Nintendo released the Nintendo Ds which received over 3 million pre-orders alone. It has a touch screen monitor and is able to create 3D images. In 2006, Nintendo released a new version of the Nintendo DS, called Nintendo DS lite which is smaller and lighter then it predecessor. On November 19, 2006 Nintendo released the new video game system called the WII, it is selling fast and it is a big breakthrough for Nintendo picking up the slack from their last videogame console the Gamecube which wasn’t very successful.
