Briefly about the history of Nintendo[Part 1]

YO gamers, today I wanted to talk about a controversial company like Nintendo, aka Big N. The history of this company is enormous and goes back more than 130 years, which is a very impressive period, and the path through which it went is even more surprising. From a small workshop where playing cards were made to a huge corporation with multi-billion dollar revenues. Initially, I wanted to make a blog with a more negative context, but after getting acquainted with the history of the companies and how it developed, focusing on some details, I realized that everything is not black or white and decided to figure it out. Our story begins with a man named Fusajiro Yamauchi, who founded the Nintendo Koppai company in 1889. And Nintendo was then involved in the distribution of Hanafuda playing cards.

For historical context – Then in Japan the authorities tried to curb the spread of illegal gambling, including classic cards, but Fusajiro convinced the government that his cards were normal and what he called their “trick” was that there were no numbers at all, but instead there were Japanese-style drawings. Surprisingly, this was enough and he began producing these Hanafuda cards in this workshop.

The same workshop, also the first headquarters of Nintendo (1889-1950s) In Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto. The right side was restored, but the left side, unfortunately, was demolished in 2004.

And there was something https://casinof7.co.uk/ to produce, because these cards were snapped up like hot cakes. Time passed and in 1930, at the age of 70, Fusajiro could no longer conduct business and it was necessary to transfer the management of the company to other hands, but there was one problem, and it was called Japanese traditions. Fusajiro did not have a son, and it was impossible to transfer the company to his daughter, which is why he transferred the company to his son-in-law Sekiryo Kanedu and because of the same traditions he had to change his name to Sekiryo Yamatoui. He founded the Marufuku company in 1947 to distribute Hanafuda cards and several other brands of cards that were introduced by the then Nintendo, but by 1949 Sekiryo fell ill and he also did not have a son, so he also had to transfer the reign to his son-in-law, but he then already had a not very good relationship with the family and left it, as a result, his son by name had to become the head of Nintendo Hiroshi. He took this post at the age of 22 and so Hiroshi worked at Nintendo for 53 years (until 2002) and it was under him that Nintendo transformed from a small playing card company into what we know today.

The first big moves came in 1963 when he changed the company’s name from Nintendo Playing Card Company Limited to Nintendo Company, Limited. And in the 70s, companies had a full-fledged factory for the production of toys, which was the merit of its engineer Gunpei Yokoi, he made a toy that became a hit. I advise you to keep the name Gunpei san in your head, because later it was he who would become one of the producers of such cult games as Metroid, Super Mario Land Super Mario World 2 and more. But in the 70s he made more than one toy that became a mega hit, at least in his homeland.But not everything was so rosy, there was already an oil crisis, which significantly affected the price of toy production for the worse, which is why Nintendo began to look around and saw the market for video games that had just turned into something meaningful. They picked up the pieces and created a division that was responsible for everything related to video games, and in 1977 they released Nintendo Color TV Game, which was a game console with an adaptation of the game Breakout, however, it was not produced for long, only 3 years and then only in its native Japan, which does not negate its success because it sold in the amount of 1.6 million copies, which by the scale of one country in those years was very decent. There were several versions of this console, but in the end the production of all these consoles was discontinued in favor of the production of the Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as Family Computer, from now on I will simply call it NES.

Color TV-Game 6 – first 2 versions

Color TV-Game 6 – first 2 versions

NES is exactly the point after which the business of Nintendo, and the entire gaming industry, skyrocketed, it was she who showed the whole world what video games are and about 62 million copies of this console were officially sold, this is not counting the various pirated versions, like “dandy”, which was distributed throughout the Soviet Union. The release of the NES itself began back in 1983 in Japan, and only two years later the console reached Europe and the USA. It is worth noting that the NES is considered the first third-generation console and one of the reasons why the gaming industry did not finally die due to the crisis of 1983. What was the reason for success you ask?? Games I will answer you. It was here that such series of games Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania Punch Out and more debuted. The console generally produced a very pleasing picture to the eye, and many games developed by Big N personally grew into series that still exist today and are sold in millions of copies, and the original games of the distant 80s are still popular among a certain circle of gamer enthusiasts, which can be traced by a huge number of different emulators or mini consoles with the opportunity to play those old cult games. Since we’re talking about these games, it would be a shame not to talk about the man who was behind many of them,

And for this we go back a little, to the times of Nintendo Color TV, during its production one young man named Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto of his early years loved to draw and color pictures, he was very inquisitive, as indicated by various stories about how he explored various caves, lakes and other picturesque places, which were later reflected in his works. And in the elementary grades of school, he dreamed of joining a puppet theater troupe, in short, the man definitely had no problems in his fantasies. Well, in 1977, he managed to meet his father’s friend, who worked at Nintendo Japan and was able to get him a job. He made his debut as an artist in 1977 and was even responsible for the appearance of one of the versions of Color TV, everything went smoothly, but in the early 80s, Nintendo ordered a bunch of arcade machines with the game Radar Scope… and failed. The losses were huge, but they did not despair and decided to follow the company’s philosophy, which had not failed before, namely to take risks and experiment. And so they decided to develop the game Donkey Kong and the existence of the companies depended on the success of this game. And as we know now, it became a huge hit, and its characters for which Miyamoto himself was personally responsible, or rather Donkey Kong and Maria himself, became iconic. Although initially Mario in this game was called “Jump Man”, and the princess in trouble with the name of the lady turned into Paulina, and for that matter, I’ll end everything related to Donkey Kong with the fact that Shigeru wrote the soundtrack for it, and then became the producer of almost all existing official games about the mustachioed plumber and I must say that he does his job with an A plus, because games about Maria are still hits on Nintendo consoles.

At this point I would like to take a break, since I have told everything I wanted about the founding of Nintendo and its path to the point that we know about now, and in the next part we will talk about what the company did in the interval from Nintendo 64 to WII and at the same time I would like to hear feedback and criticism that I can use while I work on the next part.