Nintendo

Nintendo Co., Ltd (Japanese: 任天堂; Rōmaji: Nintendō) is a Japanese company which develops and manufactures its own line of video games and consoles. They are the creators of many popular series, the most popular being the Mario franchise. The company was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Karuta (任天堂骨牌) by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business during the 1960s and acquiring a legal status as a public company under the current company name, Nintendo distributed its first video game console, the Color TV-Game, in 1977.

Nintendo is the longest running company in the history of the video game console market and is one of the most influential and best known console manufacturers. However, they do have business rivalry with, , and formerly their biggest rival, Sega (which is now a third-party company). Nintendo, as a video game company, began in the Japanese market in 1983, the American market in 1985, and the European market in 1986. Over time, Nintendo has manufactured seven TV consoles and nine handheld consoles. They have also developed and published over 300 games, and have sold over 2 billion games worldwide.

All recent official Nintendo merchandise are marked with the Official Nintendo Seal. Originally, the seal was applied only to video games. Some best-selling games were re-released as a Player's Choice or Nintendo Selects title (depending on the console), under reduced prices.

History
Nintendo was originally founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade Hanafuda cards for use in a Japanese playing card game of the same name. Eventually, in 1929, the company was passed on to Yamauchi's son-in-law, Sekiryo Kaneda. He took up the Yamauchi name when he married Fusajiro's daughter, Tei Yamauchi. Kaneda would run Nintendo until 1949 - he passed Nintendo down to his grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, before he retired. Under Hiroshi's leadership, Nintendo would dabble in a number of different businesses before sticking primarily to games. Nintendo entered the arcade industry in the 1970s, and began to license some of their games to other companies for distribution outside of Japan. Nintendo eventually set up its own headquarters in the United States headed by Minoru Arakawa, and the first game that would be distributed by the American division would be Radar Scope. Radar Scope did not sell well in the United States, and a number of unsold cabinets remained in warehouses.

Arakawa asked Hiroshi if a new game could be developed and inserted into the unsold Radar Scope cabinets. Hiroshi went through Nintendo's entire talent pool to see who could head the designing of a potential Radar Scope replacement, and the result was Shigeru Miyamoto designing Donkey Kong. When Donkey Kong was released, it became a best-seller. Around this time, Nintendo assigned Gunpei Yokoi to make a handheld console for enjoyment while traveling. Thus, Yokoi made the Game & Watch, which became popular in both Japan and the United States. Nintendo then made the Nintendo Entertainment System; its success resulted in Nintendo becoming a dominant player in the video game industry and the revival of the industry in North America, which had been negatively affected by the. The most successful game for the NES, Super Mario Bros., further cemented their dominance in the industry. Aside from video games, Nintendo was also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners, a Major League Baseball team from 1992 to 2016. In 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down from office, giving the position to Satoru Iwata, who later became CEO of Nintendo's American branch and held both posts until his death in July 2015. After which, Tatsumi Kimishima was appointed Iwata's successor in September 2015, until he stepped down on June 28, 2018 and was succeeded by Shuntaro Furukawa.

People
These are the people who currently work or have worked at Nintendo.


 * Fusajiro Yamauchi - Founder and first president
 * Sekiryo Yamauchi - Second president
 * Hiroshi Yamauchi - Third president, first for when Nintendo started creating video games
 * Shigeru Miyamoto - creator of the Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, F-Zero and Star Fox franchises.
 * Satoru Iwata
 * Yoshiaki Koizumi
 * Tatsumi Kimishima
 * Koji Kondo - Music composer
 * Gunpei Yokoi - Designer of the Game Boy and Virtual Boy
 * Reggie Fils-Aimé - former CEO of Nintendo of America
 * Doug Bowser - CEO of Nintendo of America

Home consoles

 * Color TV-Game series (1977-1982)
 * Family Computer (1983 - 2003) / Nintendo Entertainment System (1985-1995)
 * Super Famicom (1990 - 2003) / Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1991-1999)
 * Nintendo 64 (1996-2003)
 * Nintendo GameCube (2001-2009)
 * Wii (2006-2013)
 * Wii U (2012-2017)
 * Nintendo Switch (2017-present)

Attachments and remodels

 * Family Computer Disk System (1986-1994)
 * Satellaview (1995-2000)
 * Nintendo 64DD (1999-2001)
 * iQue Player (2003-2006)
 * Wii Family Edition (2011-2013)
 * Wii mini (2012-2017)

Handheld consoles

 * Game & Watch (1980-1991)
 * Game Boy (1989-2003)
 * Virtual Boy (1995-1996)
 * Game Boy Color (1998-2003)
 * Game Boy Advance (2001-2009)
 * Nintendo DS (2004-2013)
 * Nintendo 3DS (2011-2019)

Remodels

 * Game Boy Play it Loud! (1996)
 * Game Boy Pocket (1996-1998)
 * Game Boy Light (1997-2003)
 * Game Boy Advance SP (2003-2009)
 * Game Boy Micro (2005-2009)
 * Nintendo DS Lite (2006-2011)
 * Nintendo DSi (2008-2013)
 * Nintendo DSi XL (2009-2013)
 * Nintendo 3DS XL (2012-2015)
 * Nintendo 2DS (2013-2020)
 * New Nintendo 3DS (2014-2017)
 * New Nintendo 3DS XL (2014-2019)
 * New Nintendo 2DS XL (2017-2020)
 * Nintendo Switch Lite (2019-present)

Releases of these consoles in China usually replace "Nintendo" in the name with "iQue". Examples are the iQue DS and the iQue 3DS XL.

Mario franchise

 * The WarioWare character 9-Volt calls himself "Nintendo's biggest fanboy," and his microgames are based on or around various Nintendo games and systems such as Dr. Mario and Donkey Kong.
 * Diddy Kong's red cap has the Nintendo logo on it.
 * Nintendo sponsors can be seen in the background of various Mario Kart courses and battle arenas.
 * In the Mario Party series, the Nintendo logo, along with the Hudson Soft logo, appears on banners in various minigames.
 * In Donkey Kong 64, according to the ring announcer, both Nintendo and Rareware are sponsors the boxing match between the Kongs and King K. Rool.
 * In Mario Power Tennis, the Nintendo logo appears on the Peach Dome court.
 * In Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour and Mario Power Tennis, Wario holds up the Nintendo sign when the game boots up while stating the company's name, laughing.
 * In Mario Hoops 3-on-3, the Nintendo logo, along with the Square Enix logo, appears on the arch next to the basket at Peach Field and on the banner and a large screen on the Mario Stadium court.
 * In the Mario Baseball series, the Nintendo logo appears on some signs in Mario Stadium.
 * In Mario Sports Mix, the Nintendo logo appears next to the sports equipment on the banners in Mario Stadium.
 * In Mario Tennis Open, the Nintendo logo is appears on the scoreboards in various courts.

Trivia

 * Nintendo licensed Laral Group LLC to make a joystick controller for personal computers called the NJS-3D1. It was released in July of 1997 and it was one of only two Nintendo-licensed products by Laral, the other being the Nintendo wireless infrared stereo headphone system.