In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi began manufacturing Hanafuda cards, a type of Japanese playing card, in Kyoto, Japan, for his company, Nintendo Koppai.
In 1950, Yamauchi's great grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, took over the business, trying new business tactics like manufacturing cards with Disney characters on them.
In the '60s, Yamauchi took Nintendo into new ventures altogether, including the taxi and the food industries.
Among the company's many new ventures, Nintendo began manufacturing games. In the '70s, it started selling electronic toys like its popular Beam Guns.
Visiting one of Nintendo's assembly lines, Hiroshi noticed one of its employees, Gunpei Yokoi, playing with an expanding toy arm he'd engineered. Hiroshi decided to mass produce the very same toy and hired Yokoi to be part of the games department.
Yokoi, who'd studied engineering, would help steer the company toward manufacturing electronic games, which it started selling in the '70s. These included the Beam Gun game, akin to gun games at arcades.
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip AdIn 1975, Nintendo bought the distribution rights for the world's first-ever video game device, beginning its iconic run in the industry.
Among Nintendo's first enterprising games was "Donkey Kong," an arcade game the company released in 1981.
Jumpman would eventually be renamed Mario.
Nintendo began experimenting with and selling home gaming systems, landing on the Nintendo Entertainment System, which it began selling worldwide in 1985.
Having sold an earlier variation of the home gaming system called Famicon in Japan, Nintendo rebranded when it began selling the system worldwide, calling it the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES.
According to Nintento's website, the system sold over 60 million units.
The real superstar of the Nintendo Entertainment System, of course, was Mario, who got his own game in 1985.
Having so succeeded with "Donkey Kong," Miyamoto reinvented the game for NES with 1985's "Super Mario Bros." According to the Mario Bros. website, the following was their first storyline:
"The Mushroom Kingdom was the peaceful home of the Toads until the day Bowser and his wicked minions invaded ... Only Princess Peach had the power to remove Bowser's curse and save her people. But Bowser kidnapped the princess and hid her in his castle.
"When the Mario Brothers, Mario and Luigi, heard this story, they decided to rescue Princess Peach and defeat the evil Bowser. Can the brothers save the beautiful princess before it's too late?"
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip Ad"Studies at the time showed that children were as or more familiar with Mario as they were with Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny," Nintendo's website claims.
Now plumbers, Mario and his brother Luigi took the world by storm. According to Nintendo's website, "Studies at the time showed that children were as or more familiar with Mario as they were with Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny."
"Legend of Zelda" came out a year after "Super Mario Bros.," in 1986.
Another smash hit with NES players was "The Legend of Zelda," which came out a year after "Super Mario Bros." Much like in "Mario Bros.," a lead character, Link, was tasked with saving a princess, Princess Zelda, from the villain (eventually named Ganon).
In Zelda, however, there were many more worlds to explore: Link ultimately found himself in forests, dungeons, and parallel worlds.
Nintendo's next big video game hit came in 1989, with its release of the handheld Game Boy.
In the '80s, Yokoi (who'd helped Nintendo enter into the electronic game market in the '70s) saw a man playing with his calculator on his commute, and was inspired to create a handheld video game for Nintendo.
The original handheld game was the the Game & Watch, a hit many other companies soon replicated with their own versions. But in 1989, Nintendo would release the Game Boy, a system both kids and adults would enjoy playing.
According to Nintendo, "Since its introduction in 1989, Game Boy has sold well over 150 million systems worldwide."
The game that made Game Boy skyrocket: "Tetris."
"Tetris" was invented in 1984 by Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov. Inspired by a puzzle game called Pentomino, in which five equal squares are assembled into a box, Pajitnov programmed the game and started sharing it with friends.
Eventually, "Tetris" — "tetra" for "four" and "tennis," Pajitnov's favorite game — found an audience throughout Europe and the US. Nintendo eventually secured the rights, and distributed it with every version of Game Boy sold in North America.
In 1991, Nintendo released Super Nintendo (SNES), which, despite steep competition from companies like SEGA, still swept the world.
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip AdIn 1992, Nintendo released its most popular game to-date, "Super Mario Kart."
The object of the game is simple: players pick which character in the Mario world they'd like to play and race each other as that character.
Mario Kart is the highest selling franchise in the Nintendo world, including in Nintendo's most recent console, the Switch. As of December 31, 2018, "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" has sold more than 15 million copies.
By 1994, Nintendo celebrated the sale of 1 billion game cartridges.
In 1996, Nintendo released its Nintendo 64 system, named for its even more advanced 64-bit technology.
Among the first games sold for the console, of course, was "Super Mario 64."
Nintendo's worldwide phenomenon game "Pokémon" was released in Japan in 1995 and in the US in 1998.
Originally created for Game Boy, in "Pokémon," meaning "pocket monsters," players played the role of Pokémon trainers acquiring the "Pokémon" monsters and readying them to battle one another.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Pokémon inspired a cartoon series, movies, books, a toy line, sequels, spin-offs, a clothing line, and a popular trading-card game." In fact, the franchise exploded worldwide, its popularity second only to "Super Mario Bros."
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip AdA more advanced version of the Game Boy was released in 1998, the Game Boy Color.
In 2006, Nintendo took the world by storm once again, this time with its Nintendo Wii system.
Though sales have fluctuated in the last decade, Nintendo remains one of the most iconic video game brands in the world.
In 2018, the company's net sales were worth nearly $10 million, according to Statista.
The same year, it released the Nintendo Switch, a video game system that can be attached to a television or played portably. More than 14 million Switch consoles were sold in less than 12 months, reported Business Insider, and seven Switch games sold more than 1 million copies each.
The Switch game "Super Mario Odyssey" has sold more than 10 million copies itself.