The History Of Nintendo

Keep it on C3 for the next few days for massive updates for this feature as V5 starts to go live very very soon indeed.

Part One: Find out about the Nintendo of the 19th Century. From detailed card games to taxi firms and even Love Hotels, the early days for the Big N were certainly mixed, but none the less fascinating. So what are you waiting for, get reading!

Part Two: As we promised, here is the second part of our massive look at the history of Nintendo. This section looks at the years between of 1969 and the 1981 and explains how computer entertainment got off the ground at Nintendo, plus much more besides!

Timeline

1889: Nintendo Koppai is formed by Fusajiro Yamauchi and the company begins production of Hanafunda cards in Japan. 1907: Nintendo expands as Fusajiro Yamauchi sets up a deal with the Japan Tobacco & Salt Public Corporation to have Nintendo's cards sold in their shops. 1929: Sekiryo Kaneda takes over as president of Nintendo following Fusajiro Yamauchi's resignation. Tei Yamauchi, the daughter of Hiroshi marries the new Nintendo president thus keeping the name of Yamauchi in the company. 1933: Nintendo set up a bigger and better HQ next door to their existing one. 1945: Nintendo start the production of western style cards and games. 1949: Hiroshi Yamauchi is appointed president of Nintendo and promptly goes about firing dozens of staff to establish his authority in the company. 1953-9: Nintendo start producing plastic coated cards and strike a deal with Disney to produce playing cards with the famous characters on. 1962-8: Nintendo start to move away from playing cards and Hiroshi Yamauchi oversees the opening of a 'Love Hotel' and a taxi firm. They also began producing small toys.

Once again Nintendo needed to expand and not wanting to hang about the company invaded the small area around their original HQ and turned all the buildings into new offices keeping the original headquarters into the manufacturing plant for the now defunct Hanafunda cards. Moving into 1973 Nintendo were about to experience their biggest success in their electronic toy history. The plan involved Nintendo being inspired by Yokoi-san once again as he suggested that the technology used in the Nintendo Beam Gun could be used in more advanced projects. Yamauchi-san set his crude business brain into motion. With clay pigeon being very popular in Japan at the time the logical brain of Nintendo fell on the sport for a new game: The Laser Clay Shooting System was born! Buying numerous bowling allies a massive development team set about destroying said bowling allies and set them up for giant pigeon shooting ranges much to the confusion of the locals. Little did they know that they were watching the development of the latest social craze in Japan; to put it simply it wasn't worth living if you hadn't shot a simulated Nintendo pigeon!

With the Japanese economic crash in the mid 1970's Yamauchi looked to the west with the next project. The old saying 'if it aint broke, don't fix it' was on the lips of all Nintendo employees as they continued to peruse with their shooting games. The Wild Gunman was introduced to USA and later Europe to a mixed response, Nintendo were in trouble and more than ever they needed a breakthrough product...

And from the most unlikely of sources it came. Yamauchi-san had a long dinner discussion with one of his oldest friends where they talked about the impact of microprocessors and how Nintendo could use them in the next stage of electronic entertainment. After that crucial discussion Nintendo moved back from the brink of going out of business and a new direction for the company was established. Looking to America for inspiration Nintendo started to develop various produc
ts that played the games taking the USA by storm (Pong for example) but interest was not too great in Japan. The company knew they were onto something hot though and when loyal employee and close friend of Yokoi-san, Masayuki Uemura, suggest that they get in bed with a big electronics firm to develop microprocessors for entertainment software. Yamauchi-san was very keen on the idea and soon Nintendo teamed up with Mitsubishi Electrics. The two companies made a quite formidable partnership and in 1977 the 'Colour TV Game 6' was launched. It sold millions of copies and showed Nintendo that videogames were the way forward.

Then something massive happened. At the time it was just another new emploee joining one of Japan's biggest companies, nobody noticed but Nintendo had just recruited a man that would go onto make some of the greatest videogames of all time: Shigeru Miyamoto. With more and more money coming in all the time Nintendo started to produce more and more advanced machines. The 'Colour TV Game 15' was another huge hit but Nintendo still lacked a spark that would take them to the next level. Once again inspiration came from the strangest of places, this time calculators. The 'handheld adding machines' as they were called by the ignorant were getting smaller and more powerful by the say and Gunepi Yokoi had an idea. He wanted to make a portable gaming device that was affordable to average man. With components developed by Sharp the Game & Watch was released in 1980, it was unbelievably successful.

A new decade and a new Nintendo company appeared Nintendo of America Inc opened in New York. With this new western sector of the company up and running Nintendo released the Game & Watch into the western world with it brining in millions of dollars for the company. Not content with just developing games for the home and hand Nintendo looked to the booming arcade industry and a piece of the very financially interesting pie. The games produced were all very geared to the new and fresh western market with titles like Hellfire and Sky Skipper going for all out kill everything appeal rather than proper innovation and magic. Shigeru Miyamoto was asked to work on a similar title dubbed Radarscope, disgusted by the idea of developing such a title he and Gunepi Yokoi started to work on what would go onto be on of Nintendo's most famous games ever Donkey Kong. Inside Nintendo many people were not taken with this game during development. For starters it wasn't cool. To have a plumber as the main hero who saves a pink princess from a monkey was not the done thing at the time. However Miyamoto-san plugged away at it and after months of hard graft the game was ready for release. Donkey Kong went on and became the most popular arcade game of the year, selling 65,000 units in America alone. The employees who had doubted Miyamoto and his project were spitting blood and one even resigned amid a fury of controversy.

Nintendo now looked back to home entertainment for their next big project. Yamauchi-san wanted something markedly more advanced than Color TV Game systems that had ensured Nintendo
success before. Atari, Commodore, Bandai, Takara and Sharp had or were planning to release a gaming system and Nintendo would need to hit the market with something big. The hard task was set for a machine that was better than all the competitors but also cheaper, with $75 being the quoted price. This new console would go onto be Nintendo's greatest success to date and start a long line of imitating and improving machines for years to come. Enter the NES!