Nintendo’s 130 years — Leaving Luck to the Heavens (or a considerable recap of the history of our favorite company)

Originally published in September/2019 in cafecomgeeks.com, auto translated by Google Cloud.

Nintendo — one of the most valuable entertainment companies in the whole world, completed this weekend its hundred and thirty years.

Despite being commonly known for video games, Nintendo started its work with something a little different: Hanafuda, a traditional Japanese game.

Hanafuda is a collectible card game and consists of 48 cards. These have images of flowers, and the deck is divided into 12 hills, each representing the months of the year with flowers, animals and objects. There are different ways to play Hanafuda, among them the “Koi-Koi” (or Japanese Mau-Mau, functioning more or less as Uno or Can-Can).

Nintendo was founded on September 23, 1889, as Nintendo Koppai, in Kyoto, Japan, by Fusahiro Yamauchi. The business produced and sold Hanafuda. The name “Nintendo” is commonly assumed to have the meaning of “leave luck to the skies”, although there are no historical files confirming this meaning. The letters were initially made by hand, but their popularity made Yamauchi hire assistants to mass produce them.

Yamauchi had no descendants to take over the family business. Following Japanese tradition, he adopted his son-in-law, Sekiryo Yamauchi, to retire in 1929 and leave the company in his hands. In ’33 Sekiryo established a trade association with another company and renamed the company Yamauchi Nintendo & Co.

In 1947, Sekiryo established the distributor Marufuku Co. to distribute Hanafuda, in addition to other types of cards introduced by Nintendo. He also had only daughters, so his son-in-law Shikanojo Inaba (who came to be renamed Yamauchi) was adopted by the family. However, Shikanojo did not become president because he left the family. Her son, Hiroshi, who was raised by his grandparents, became the company’s next president.

In 1949, Hiroshi Yamauchi was studying at Waseda University in Tokyo, but had to drop out of school due to the death of his grandfather to take over Nintendo. In ’51 he renamed “Marufuku Co. back to“ Nintendo Playing Card Co. ”. In 53, Nintendo became the first company in Japan to produce plastic cards.

In 1956, Yamauchi visited the United States to speak with letter companies there. He was shocked that the largest letter producer in the world had a small office. This was a turning point for him, who realized the limitations of working only with letters.

In ’59, Nintendo made a deal with Disney to use its characters in its cards. Using this and selling books teaching different games, Nintendo could sell products for Japanese homes. This was a success that led to more than half a million sales in one year. With this success Yamauchi took the company to public listings, in 1963 naming it only “Nintendo”.

Until ’68, the company did several experiments in other business areas. Nintendo opened a taxi company, a chain of motels, an instant food chain and several other products and services.

All of these side businesses eventually failed, except for toys, where they applied experience in card making. The 64 Olympics in Tokyo sparked an economic boom for Nintendo, where the cards reached a saturation point. This caused the stock to drop from 900 yen to just 60 yen.

In 65, Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi as a maintenance engineer, but he became famous for much more than his machine repair skills.

Nintendo had a hard time in the toy industry. It was already dominated by companies like Bandai and Tomy. Due to the short life cycle of toys, Nintendo had to enter a new era. In 66, Yamauchi asked Gunpei to create a successful product for Christmas. Known as “Ultra Hand”, it was a sales success, reaching over one million units. This led Gunpei to the product development line.

In 1970 Nintendo made the first “light gun” to sunlight. It was the first available for home use, produced in partnership with Sharp. In 72, Nintendo made the Ele-Conga, one of the first programmable drums.

A light gun is a device widely used in computers and arcades, commonly similar to a pistol. In aviation and delivery services it is used as a directional flag. These work by constructing an optical light sensor at the tip of the weapon, which receives a signal from the light emitted by the target screen.

From 72 the first video game, the Magnavox Odyssey, had a light gun. This was Nintendo’s first involvement with video games. This caused Nintendo to make multiple light gun systems for arcades. In 74, Nintendo acquired the distribution rights for the Magnavox Odyssey in Japan.

During the 70s, Nintendo made the Color TV Game Machine together with Mitsubishi Electric. His first arcades were EVR Race, Radar Scope and Donkey Kong, which became his most famous.

At the beginning of the following decade, Nintendo had its video game division led by Gunpei, some of its most famous titles. Shigeru Miyamoto was the head behind Donkey Kong, which besides arcades was launched for the Atari 2600, Intellivision and ColecoVision. In the future she came to make the first Mario Bros. and its first tests in the notebook market with Game & Watch.

Game & Watch was a line of notebooks produced by Nintendo between 1980 and 91. Created by Gunpei Yokoi, each G&W had a title on an LCD screen accompanied by a clock and alarm. They sold more than 43 million units worldwide.

In 1983 after several prototypes of desktop consoles, Nintendo launched the Famicom (from Family Computer) in Japan, its first attempt to make a cartridge-based console. This system sold over 500,000 units in two months for around $ $100.

After a few months, the Famicom experienced a freezing defect in certain games. This prompted the company to return all consoles available in Japanese stores and homes, which resulted in a loss of half a million dollars.

During this period the company reformulated the product and launched it in the USA as Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES.

Between 83 and 85 there was the well-known Video Games Break of 83, a recession caused by the market overflowing in competition for home games and computers. This has brought down great companies such as Atari. Over time, the dominance of the market left America for Japan. Its only major competitor in the USA was the Japanese SEGA.

In order to maintain quality control and not repeat the same Atari mistakes, Nintendo launched the NES accompanied by ROB to synchronize with the games and that only high-quality third-party games were released in the west, for a limited amount of 5 per year. Konami was the first to be allowed. In 1985, Super Mario Bros. was released. Over time, Metroid, Zelda and others came with great public and critical reception.

In 1988 nintendo announced Nintendo Power, a news and strategy magazine for advertising its new games. Its publication ended in December 2012, but there is still a podcast made in its name.

In 1989 Nintendo launched the Game Boy accompanied by Tetris. Due to its price, the game and its durability sold exceptionally well, reaching staggering numbers (118 million units). In the same year the Super Famicom, or Super NES, was announced, which was launched in Japan in the late 1990s. The console arrived in America and Europe, respectively, in 1991 and 1992.

Soon after, the company started a partnership with Sony to produce a CD-ROM console. This partnership failed, which led Nintendo to turn to Philips and its failed CD-i and Sony to make its own PlayStation.

SNES dominated the market with Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter 2 and Final Fantasy. Total sales reached almost 50 million against the Sega Genesis 40 / Mega Drive.

In 1992 Gunpei started planning a virtual reality console called Virtual Boy. In 93 Nintendo announced the development of a 64-bit console conceptually called Project Reality / Ultra 64. This promised environments and characters entirely in 3D.

Its technology was initially presented in arcades with games like Killer Instinct and Cruisin ‘USA. Killer Instinct was also released for SNES. In 95 the project was renamed to Nintendo 64, having its launch announced for the following year, with games from Rare and Super Mario 64.

In the same year Virtual Boy was launched, but it sold poorly in both Japan and the USA. Competition was also intensifying, as Sega introduced the 32-bit Saturn system and Sony introduced its 32-bit Playstation. Sony’s presence began to impact sales for Nintendo and SEGA.

In 1996, the N64 was launched with more than 500,000 units on the first day in Japan and another 350,000 in the USA. Sales were strongly affected by the few titles released for the console, mainly from third parties, as they were more interested in the competition’s CD-ROM format which was extremely cheaper.

Parallel to the 64, the Game Boy Pocket was launched, Gunpei’s farewell project, a smaller Game Boy. Then Gunpei left the company to create WonderSwan. However, Gunpei’s loss was compensated by the creation of the second largest video game franchise (after Mario only), which is Pokémon, created by Satoshi Taijiri.

In 1997, Game Boy and Metroid creator Gunpei Yokoi died in a car accident at the age of 56. A year later, the Game Boy Color was launched.

Only three years later Nintendo launched the Game Boy Advance, a very strong notebook for the time. In the same year the GameCube was launched. In 2002 Tatsumi Kimishi joined as president of Nintendo of America. In the same year, Yamauchi left for the entry of Satoru Iwata as president of Nintendo.

In the same year, Dr Wei Yen, an American Chinese scientist co-founded iQue to manufacture and distribute Nintendo consoles and games in China. At the same time, Nintendo’s business tactics in Europe led it to take a fine of 150 million euros, one of the biggest fines in history.

In 2004 Nintendo announced plans for a new kind of dual-screen notebooks, one of which is touch-sensitive. The Nintendo DS (dual-screen) launched later this year with three million pre-orders. This was also the company’s first portable console capable of producing three-dimensional graphics.

In 2005, Nintendo’s first store opened at Rockefeller Center in New York. The store has a museum and exclusive items, in addition to the traditional products found in other stores. In the same year, at E3, what we know as the Wii was shown. His control was presented at the Tokyo Game Show that same year.

In 2006 the DS lite was launched, proposing an improvement close to that presented in the Game Boy Pocket and GBA SP. Reggie Fils-Aimé was promoted to President and COO of Nintendo of America. Kimishima was promoted to Chairman and CEO. In the same year, the South Korean subsidiary was launched. At the end of the year the Nintendo Wii was launched.

The launch of the Wii was a huge record break, recovering lost sales from previous consoles due to an absolutely more widespread target audience, from casual fans to veterans. Only 4 years later Sony and Microsoft were able to launch consoles to reach the same target audiences, but never with the same impact.

In October 2007, Nintendo announced its first female leader, Rose Lappin, to Managing Director of Nintendo Australia. The following year, Nintendo updated the DS Lite on the DSi, cutting back compatibility with Game Boy games but with a camera and new functions. It was Nintendo’s first laptop that allowed downloadable content.

In 2011 the 3DS was launched in Japan. Its initial purpose was to use 3D effects without the use of glasses, with parallax barrier autostereoscopy. Also announced was its new console, the Wii U, the company’s first to run games in full HD. It featured a control that looked like a tablet and had interactions with the Wii Remote.

The Nintendo 3DS encountered a lukewarm release due to its price and lack of relevant titles. The Wii U was popularly mistaken as an expensive Wii update, which alienated both developers and the public. These two launches have destabilized the company financially, forcing it to sharply lower the price of the 3DS (which subsequently exploded in sales) and cut salaries of its high-level members to avoid layoffs.

In July 2015 Satoru Iwata died of a tumor in bile at age 55. Satoru fought valiantly for the company’s economic security and designed what came to be the Nintendo Switch. His death left the company in the hands of Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda, who together decided to put the job in the hands of Tatsumi Kimishima.

In October 2016, Nintendo unveiled the Nintendo Switch that was released on March 3, 2017. The console had a hybrid concept, given the failure that was the unnecessary division between 3DS and Wii U. The console had a year of release unmatched for the company, selling more than 14 million at the end of its fiscal year, exceeding sales for the entire life of the Wii U.

In 2018, it was pointed out that changes would occur in Nintendo’s presidential positions once again. In June Kimishima was succeeded by Shuntaro Furukawa. Furukawa has worked at Nintendo since 94 as an accountant. During this decade he went up to work in global marketing, in the executive department and external director of the Pokémon Company. He was also involved in the development of the Switch.

At Nintendo of America Doug Bowser, who joined the company in 2015 as vice president of sales and marketing, was promoted when he oversaw the promotion and launch of the Switch. In February 2019 it was announced that he would be replacing Reggie Fils-Aimé as the company’s president and chief operating officer in April.

The Nintendo Switch made Nintendo fly like never before. Still in the launch year, it announced a partnership with Tencent to publish its games in China. In March 2019, more than 36 million units sold in just two years were confirmed. In July Nintendo announced a lightweight version of the Switch, called the Switch Lite. This would be more compact and would be focused on the portable use of the console.

The Nintendo Switch Lite had its launch this Friday 20th of September worldwide.

Nintendo’s legacy is remarkable. Its secular history is striking and an example of perseverance in the growing market for electronic games. We are very happy to have grown up with this company, being able to celebrate such a considerable date. For many more years!