Even if you’ve never owned a Game Boy, N64, or Wii and have never played Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, or Animal Crossing, if there’s one thing you know about Nintendo, it’s that Nintendo manufactures video games. And while that is undoubtedly true, the history of Nintendo is a more complex tale.
In September 1889, Nintendo was founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi with the intention of selling handmade playing cards, specifically the traditional Japanese cards known as hanafuda, used for games like Koi-Koi and Hachi-Hachi. The cards were handpainted in Kyoto and beautifully decorated with birds, flowers, and other nature scenes. A traditional hanafuda deck features four designs for each month of the year for a total of 48 cards. The venture was a success, and Nintendo soon became Japan’s largest card manufacturer—even though hanafuda cards had become associated with gambling and the Yakuza organized crime syndicates.
In 1949, Fusajiro Yamauchi’s 22-year-old great-grandson Hiroshi took control of the company. He would lead Nintendo for half a century, overseeing its transition from card manufacturer to video game titan. Despite continuing to manufacture hanafuda and western-style playing cards (including sets featuring Disney characters), by the 1960s, Hiroshi Yamauchi was looking to the future by expanding Nintendo into other industries. These included a hotel with rooms you could rent by the hour, a taxi service that eventually folded during a labor dispute, and individually-portioned packets of instant rice.
In the 1970s, Nintendo began to branch out into the fast-growing sphere of electronic toys, with products such as the "Ultra Machine" and the "Love Tester." This was soon followed by forays into the fledgling video game industry, starting with arcade games. Created by Shigeru Miyamoto, the original Donkey Kong debuted in 1981, introducing the world to the earliest incarnations of some of the most iconic video game characters. The premise was that a carpenter (later called Jumpman) needed to rescue his girlfriend, Pauline, from a gorilla named Donkey Kong.
From playing cards to video games:
- By 1985, Nintendo had introduced its own game console for home use, the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES would sell nearly 62 million units, and an updated version of Donkey Kong reintroduced Jumpman, now renamed Mario, who sets out to rescue Princess Peach and save the Mushroom Kingdom.
- Game franchises like The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon and gaming consoles like the Game Boy, Nintendo 64, DS, Wii, and Switch have cemented Nintendo’s status as one of the most popular and innovative forces in the modern video game industry.
- However, despite its dizzying success, Nintendo has not neglected its origins—making playing cards. Nintendo is still a major producer of hanafuda and, unsurprisingly, you can purchase sets featuring classic video game characters from the Mario franchise. You can also play a hanafuda variant called Koi-Koi on the Nintendo Switch.
