Nintendo began in 1889 when Fusajirō Yamauchi handmade hanafuda cards in Kyoto, Japan. Under successor Sekiryō Yamauchi, it scaled production, added Western and plastic decks, and licensed Disney characters, all the while pruning failed side ventures. In 1949, Hiroshi Yamauchi drove bold expansion: 1960s toys, 1970s arcade and Color TV-Game, and Game & Watch handhelds. Donkey Kong (1981) and the Famicom/NES (1983/1985) globalized the brand. Later systems—Game Boy, SNES, DS, Wii, Switch—and series like Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, and Animal Crossing extended Nintendo into theme parks and film.

The 1960s delivered the hinge. Engineers and tinkerers inside Nintendo built toys that moved—linkages, springs, and clever bits of plastic—while the card lines kept cash flowing. The Ultra Hand turned into a hit. The team absorbed a harder lesson from the side hustles that stumbled: focus the portfolio, but keep antennas up. That discipline set the stage for a new kind of play.

In the 1970s, Nintendo slid from toys into electronics. Arcade cabinets hummed to life; living rooms glowed with the Color TV-Game consoles. Game & Watch handhelds added a new rhythm to commuting and schoolyards—little screens with simple rules and crisp inputs. The company’s third rule emerged—hardware works best when software charms quickly.

The first Mario character was created by Shigeru Miyamoto in 1981 originally as Jumpman in the arcade game Donkey Kong, before being officially named Mario in 1982.

In 1981, Donkey Kong landed in arcades, introduced Mario, and cracked open global markets. Two years later, the North American video game crash leveled confidence across the industry. Nintendo answered in 1983 with the Family Computer in Japan—the Famicom—and, in 1985, with the Nintendo Entertainment System in the US. Super Mario Bros. taught skeptical retailers and parents that a cartridge could carry a world worth visiting again.

From there, the line stretched forward like a bright thread. The Game Boy arrived in 1989, a brick that fit a pocket and survived backpacks, powered by games that cared more about design than pixels. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System followed in 1991, deepening color, sound, and control. Franchises stacked up and matured: Mario kept leaping; The Legend of Zelda set its cadence of exploration and puzzle; Pokémon blended collecting and friendship into a phenomenon. The company kept reshaping hardware around the way people actually play—first dual screens on Nintendo DS (2004), then motion and social living room sessions on Wii, and, finally, a hybrid that travels and docks, the Nintendo Switch.

The pattern that began with hanafuda endured: build approachable hardware, pair it with software that respects a player’s time, and treat constraints as a design tool. Even as the catalog widened—Animal Crossing for quiet life, Donkey Kong for arcade rhythm, Zelda for myth and mystery—the business carried forward habits from the card era: careful cost control, tight integration, and a distribution mindset that treats retail, digital storefronts, and now theme parks as linked stages. The brand stepped beyond screens—Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios parks turned level design into architecture, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie introduced the Mushroom Kingdom to new audiences who might never have held a controller.

Look back and the story keeps a consistent cast: a founder who trusted small, well-made pleasures; a steward who kept the books clean and the factory upright; and a successor who pushed the company to reinvent its medium every decade. The details changed—paper to plastic to silicon to parks—but the survival kit stayed familiar. Sell delight people can afford. Move before the market demands it. Hold the line on quality even when parts grow scarce. Kyoto gave Nintendo a quiet perch; leadership gave it the nerve to pivot; players gave it the reason to endure. From a single room of hand-pressed cards to handhelds, consoles, and shared worlds, Nintendo kept dealing the next hand before the table went cold.

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