The courtyard of the Nintendo Museum, located inside a renovated old factory near Kyoto.© Richard A. Brooks—AFP/Getty Images Date:1899 - present Headquarters:Kyōto Areas Of Involvement:electronic gameplaying cardsNintendo WiiNintendo consolemanufacturingNintendo Co., Ltd., began in the late 19th century as a small Japanese workshop making playing cards. Over more than a century, it has evolved into one of the world’s most influential video game companies, responsible for some of the industry’s most recognizable characters and franchises. Over the years, Nintendo has introduced new ways of playing while keeping its games easy to enjoy.

　　From playing cards to a national sensationFounded in 1889 by entrepreneur Yamauchi Fusajiro, Nintendo—then known as Nintendo Koppai—produced handmade playing cards, specifically for hanafuda, a popular game at the time. Since its founding, the company has been headquartered in Kyoto.

　　In the early 1900s, Nintendo expanded its offerings from handmade hanafuda cards, crafted by Yamauchi and his apprentices from mulberry bark, to Western-style playing cards, becoming the first Japanese company in the country to produce them. Yamauchi sold his playing cards throughout Japan in cigarette shops through a deal with the tobacco monopoly Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation. The business was successful, becoming the largest playing-card manufacturer in Japan by 1929, when Yamauchi retired and left the business to his son-in-law, Kaneda Sekiryo, who took the Yamauchi surname upon marriage and became Yamauchi Sekiryo.

　　Nintendo hanafuda playing cards are arranged for a photograph in Tokyo, Japan, on April 19, 2018.© Takaaki Iwabu—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesIn 1933, the younger Yamauchi established an unlimited partnership, Yamauchi Nintendo and Co., and moved the business out of its original storefront. Throughout his tenure at the helm of Nintendo, Yamauchi vastly expanded the company’s production of playing cards, introducing new varieties of Western-style decks produced by an assembly line of workers and marketed nationwide by Nintendo’s sales force. In 1947, two years before his death, Yamauchi created Marufuku Co., Ltd., a separate distribution arm created to handle the sale and marketing of Nintendo’s playing cards.

　　Reinvention under Hiroshi YamauchiIn 1949, Yamauchi Fusajiro’s great-grandson, Yamauchi Hiroshi, then 22, took over as president after his grandfather’s death. His arrival was met with unease by many employees, who doubted that someone so young could manage the company. They were also worried about rumors of sweeping staff changes. Their concerns proved justified: Yamauchi dismissed every senior manager who had worked for his grandfather, seeking to consolidate authority and modernize the business. In 1951, he renamed the company Nintendo Karuta (“Nintendo Playing Cards”) and established a new Kyoto headquarters, where he centralized production and updated the card-making process.

　　Seeking to further Nintendo’s ability to compete with Western-made playing cards, Yamauchi led the company to become the first Japanese manufacturer of plastic-coated cards. In 1959, Nintendo signed a licensing deal with Walt Disney (DIS), allowing the company to produce cards featuring Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters. Marketed to families with children through TV ads, the Disney-themed decks proved a sensation. Sales rose sharply, reaching a record 600,000 decks that year.

　　By the early 1960s, Nintendo’s card business was thriving, yet Yamauchi was dissatisfied with its limited prospects. Hoping to accelerate the company’s growth, he dropped Karuta from the name and renamed it Nintendo Co., Ltd. He then took the company public on the Osaka and Kyoto stock exchanges, where it was listed in their second sections, the tiers reserved for smaller stocks. Yamauchi also became chair of the company.

　　The new capital derived from the initial public offering financed a series of ventures outside Nintendo’s traditional business. The first, a line of individually packaged instant rice, was a dismal failure. A “love hotel” with hourly room rentals followed, along with a taxi company called Daiya, which briefly prospered. After several years, Yamauchi shut down both the hotel and the taxi business as he reconsidered the company’s direction.

　　He had concluded that Nintendo’s greatest strength lay in its nationwide distribution network and its long association with leisure. Determined to steer the company back toward entertainment, he established a small games department in 1969, housed in a warehouse in suburban Kyoto. The new division marked Nintendo’s first deliberate step beyond manufacturing playing cards.

　　Birth of video games and global fameNintendo’s first real break in the toy business came from a maintenance engineer named Gunpei Yokoi, who had a background in electronics. He devised an extendable arm that the company turned into a toy called the Ultra Hand. Priced at about ¥800 (roughly $6 in 1970), it sold more than a million units and gave Nintendo its first significant foothold in the toy industry.

　　Yokoi’s success led to a series of follow-up products. They included the Love Tester, a novelty device that supposedly measured a couple’s “romantic compatibility” through a mild electrical charge passed between them, and several light-based shooting games that used solar cells made by Sharp Corporation, the electronics company later known for televisions. Nintendo took advantage of the many vacant bowling alleys that remained after the bowling craze that had swept Japan in the 1960s waned and converted them into laser gun “shooting ranges.” The first opened in Kyoto in early 1973.

　　The laser gun ranges were a hit, drawing crowds throughout Japan and even attracting interest from overseas buyers. Nintendo expanded rapidly, building new facilities and developing variations such as Wild Gunman, a light-projection game that simulated a Western shootout.

　　From crisis to consolesBut the success was short-lived. When the Arab oil embargo hit just months later, it sent Japan’s economy into recession, and orders dried up almost overnight. The company’s heavy investment in the project left it burdened with debt and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

　　Determined to recover, Yamauchi turned his attention to emerging electronic technologies. In 1974, Nintendo secured the Japanese distribution rights to the Magnavox Odyssey, a home video game console that played variations of the American hit Pong. To produce the microprocessor-based circuit boards the system required, Nintendo partnered with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MIELY) and, in 1977, introduced its own Color TV-Game series of consoles, which together sold about 2.5 million units.

　　A year later, the company released a computerized version of the board game Othello, one of its earliest ventures into standalone electronic gaming.

　　By the late 1970s, Nintendo had stabilized but was still seeking growth beyond Japan. In 1979, Minoru Arakawa, Yamauchi’s son-in-law, opened Nintendo of America in New York City to oversee the company’s growing arcade operations.

　　The following year, the venture was formally incorporated as Nintendo of America Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo Co., Ltd. The office functioned mainly as a distribution and operations center for coin-operated arcade games, laying the groundwork for Nintendo’s later expansion into the U.S. market.

　　Game & Watch era and Donkey Kong’s riseIn 1980, Nintendo released its first handheld electronic game, the Game & Watch, created by Gunpei Yokoi. The small devices each featured a single game displayed on a monochrome LCD screen and could double as an alarm clock. Compact and affordable, it was a runaway success and gave Nintendo its first global hit in consumer electronics.

　　Donkey Kong was one of the most popular arcade games of the early 1980s. Nintendo adapted it so users could play it on the Nintendo Entertainment System.ZapWizardA year later, Shigeru Miyamoto, a newly hired employee, created Donkey Kong, an arcade game that transformed Nintendo’s fortunes. In the game, a carpenter named Jumpman climbs a series of platforms to rescue his girlfriend, Pauline, from a giant ape. The character later became known as Mario, one of the most recognizable figures in video game history.

　　Because Nintendo didn’t yet have its own home console, the company licensed Donkey Kong to third-party manufacturers: Coleco for home console systems and Atari for use in computers. The game was soon released for several popular systems of the time, including ColecoVision, Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Atari’s 8-bit computers.

　　Famicom and revival of the home game marketIn 1983, Nintendo introduced the Famicom (a portmanteau of family and computer), a cartridge-based system that allowed users to play multiple games on a single machine. The console quickly became popular in Japan, with more than half a million units sold within two months, but early hardware flaws forced a recall. Once the issues were corrected, sales once again soared, and the Famicom quickly dominated Japan’s market for home gaming.

　　The original Nintendo video game system with cartridges.© Robtek/Dreamstime.comThat same year, Nintendo listed its shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s first section, signaling its new stature as a major corporation. In 1985, the company introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom, released internationally as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Debuting at a time when the U.S. video game industry was reeling from oversaturation and declining quality, the NES helped restore consumers’ confidence in the products. The success of the NES was driven by a consistent library of tightly controlled, family-friendly games that stood apart from the flood of cheaply produced titles that had preceded it.

　　Nintendo’s business model emphasized hardware sold at low margins, with profits generated mainly through the sale of game software. To maintain quality and protect its reputation, the company approved every third-party title and manufactured all cartridges itself.

　　The strategy worked. By the end of the decade, more than 60 million Famicom and NES consoles and over 500 million cartridges had been sold worldwide. Best-selling titles included Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Tetris, and DuckTales. In the process, Nintendo had become synonymous with home video gaming.

　　Game Boy era, console wars, and competitionIn 1989, Nintendo expanded its handheld lineup with the Game Boy, a portable console that became one of the best-selling gaming systems of all time. The device used interchangeable cartridges, allowing players to switch between games, and relied on simple, durable hardware that was also inexpensive to develop. Tetris was bundled with the Game Boy at launch and helped turn it into a global phenomenon.

　　By the early 1990s, Nintendo controlled about 80% of the global video game market, although competition was intensifying. The Sega Genesis game console (known as the Mega Drive outside North America) introduced faster 16-bit graphics and a slick marketing campaign aimed at teenagers and young adults. The device’s manufacturer, Sega Corporation (SGAMY), also emphasized cultivating American game development talent, giving its consoles a distinct cultural appeal in the U.S.

　　The rivalry that followed—the so-called console wars—defined the decade. Nintendo responded with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Its technical power, combined with first-party games such as Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, reaffirmed Nintendo’s dominance, even as Sega enjoyed strong sales of its own.

　　Innovation in the 21st centuryAt the start of the 2000s, Nintendo faced mounting competition from newer rivals such as Sony (SNY) and Microsoft (MSFT), whose powerful consoles appealed to older and more technologically minded players. Rather than match its rivals’ focus on raw performance, Nintendo continued to emphasize originality and play over realism.

　　Playing a Mario game on the Nintendo DS console.© Tinxi/Shutterstock.comThe GameCube, introduced in 2001, was smaller and less powerful than Sony’s PlayStation 2 but showcased Nintendo’s commitment to distinctive design and character-driven storytelling. It produced several enduring titles, including Super Smash Bros. Melee, Metroid Prime, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

　　In 2004, the company launched the Nintendo DS, a handheld system featuring dual screens, a stylus, and wireless connectivity. The DS appealed to a broad audience, from casual players to dedicated fans, and became one of the best-selling consoles in history. Two years later, the Wii brought motion-sensitive controls into the mainstream, making gaming more physical and approachable. It sold more than 100 million units worldwide, a success that extended Nintendo’s reach beyond its traditional base.

　　The Nintendo Switch console and the game Stardew Valley.© Info849943/Dreamstime.comThe company’s next console, the Wii U (2012), met with limited success. It featured a touchscreen controller that acted as both a gamepad and a second screen, a concept later refined in the Nintendo Switch, released in 2017. The Switch could be played either as a handheld device or connected to a TV, and it revived Nintendo’s sales and reputation after several stagnant years.

　　In 2025, Nintendo introduced the Switch 2. Although outwardly similar to the original Switch, the new system added support for 4K graphics, improved controls, and expanded social media features, including integrated video chat. Reviews described it as an evolutionary upgrade rather than a dramatic redesign, noting improved performance and visuals while keeping the feel of the original. Game titles available at the console’s launch included Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, both of which benefited from the system’s improved graphics and performance.

　　Enduring legacyNintendo has continued to focus on familiar characters and accessible play, pairing technical innovation with continuity in design. Its products have remained closely associated with the idea of gaming as a shared, family-centered activity, a link that reaches back to Nintendo’s origins as a maker of playing cards.

　　Jordana Rosenfeld