For most of its first century, Nintendo made playing cards. Fusajiro Yamauchi started the business in Kyoto in 1889, selling hanafuda, the Japanese flower cards, and as late as the 1960s cards were still what the company was known for. Its first home video game machines did not appear until 1977. Six years after that, its Family Computer went on sale in Japan, and it became the machine that brought home video games back to America after the 1983 crash. By 1995 Edge could open a profile by pointing out that in 1991 Nintendo had “supplanted Toyota as Japan’s most successful company”, which it called “incredible for a firm formed in 1889 to produce hanafuda playing cards”.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1889, Kyoto, by Fusajiro Yamauchi, making hanafuda cards.
- Names: Marufuku Co., Ltd. (1947); Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd. (1951); Nintendo Co., Ltd. (1963).
- President 1949–2002: Hiroshi Yamauchi, Fusajiro’s great-grandson. Satoru Iwata followed him in 2002.
- Milestones: first home video game machines, TV Game 6 and TV Game 15 (1977); Game & Watch (1980); Donkey Kong in the arcades (1981); the Family Computer (1983); Game Boy (1989); Super Famicom (1990).
- Sales (Nintendo’s figures): Famicom and NES 61.91 million; Game Boy 118.69 million; Super Famicom and SNES 49.10 million; Nintendo 64 32.93 million.
A century of cards
The cards were made by hand at first. Nintendo later added Western playing cards (from 1902), and in 1953 it became the first company in Japan to mass-produce plastic ones. In 1959 it began printing Disney characters on cards for children. Edge wrote in 1997 that putting Mickey Mouse on the backs of the cards “virtually doubled the company profits over night”. Nintendo listed its shares on the Osaka and Kyoto stock exchanges in 1962 and took its present name in 1963.
Hiroshi Yamauchi had become president in 1949, in his early twenties. Magazine profiles of the company describe his first attempts to find something beyond cards: Edge in 1995 listed “individually portioned instant rice, a ‘love hotel’ and a taxi firm”, and N64 Magazine in 1997 said all three failed, though David Sheff’s Game Over says the taxi firm did well and was closed after trouble with its union (see Hiroshi Yamauchi). Nintendo’s own published history does not mention them. What did work, according to the same accounts, was Nintendo’s distribution: the network that already put its cards into shops all over Japan could carry toys and games too.
Gunpei Yokoi and the toys
The first successful new line came from a maintenance engineer. Gunpei Yokoi, an electronics graduate from Kyoto, was taken on to look after the card factory’s machinery. Edge described him in 1995 as “an electronics tinkerer who was forever knocking up gadgets out of spare parts”, and said Yamauchi moved him into a new division to make games and toys. Asked what he should make, Yokoi was told, according to David Sheff’s book Game Over as quoted by Edge: “Something great!”
His first hit was the Ultra Hand, an extending plastic arm that grabbed things. Edge reported that it sold 1.2 million on launch; the magazines dated it to 1970, although later histories put it in 1966. Other toys followed, including a baseball pitching machine, the Ultra Machine, and a “Love Tester” for young couples. Nintendo Power told its readers in 1989 that Nintendo’s Beam Gun series of 1970 had been “the first electronic toy in Japan”.
Game & Watch
The Game & Watch handhelds came from Yokoi’s team and used the liquid-crystal displays found in pocket calculators. Each played one game on a fixed LCD screen and also kept the time, hence the name. The first, Ball, went on sale in April 1980. Retro Gamer’s history of the series says the early models “did not sell in great numbers” and that sales took off with Fire in July 1980.
The series introduced a control that Nintendo kept. The multi-screen Donkey Kong Game & Watch of 1982 had a cross-shaped directional pad in place of a joystick, the same pad that later appeared on the NES controller and the Game Boy. N64 Magazine called it the company’s “first major contribution” to game design, and noted that other console makers followed.
Yokoi later described his approach as “lateral thinking of withered technology”: taking cheap, well-understood parts and finding new uses for them. Nintendo still quotes the phrase when it explains its own history.
Into the arcades
Nintendo’s first arcade games of the late 1970s, including Radar Scope, Sheriff and Sky Skipper, did reasonably well without making much of a mark. Then Yamauchi asked a young designer from the planning department, Shigeru Miyamoto, for a new game. Miyamoto had joined the company in 1977. Donkey Kong (1981) was built around a story and characters instead of shooting, and it introduced the carpenter who became Mario. N64 Magazine reported that more than 60,000 Donkey Kong arcade machines sold in the United States.
The Famicom and the NES
The Family Computer, or Famicom, was designed by a team led by Masayuki Uemura, a former Sharp engineer. It went on sale in Japan on 15 July 1983 at ¥14,800. According to N64 Magazine, it sold 500,000 units in its first two months and then sold “as fast as it could be made”. The Nintendo Entertainment System entry covers the hardware.
America was harder. Its home video game market had collapsed in the 1983 crash, and shops no longer wanted consoles. Nintendo of America redesigned the Famicom as a grey box and sold it as a toy, packed with a light gun and a robot, R.O.B. After a test market in the New York area in autumn 1985 and another in Los Angeles in February 1986, the NES went on sale across the United States during 1986. Super Mario Bros., in N64 Magazine’s words, “was the game that sold the NES in the west”.
Nintendo also decided which games could run on the machine. A lockout chip in every NES had to find a matching chip in the cartridge, and Nintendo made the cartridges. Its advertising told buyers to look for the Nintendo Seal of Quality, “your guarantee”. Edge later put the arrangement less politely: Nintendo “sewed up the market with brutal efficiency, then sucked thirdparty developers dry with draconian licensing terms”.
What dominance looked like, in numbers
ACE reported from the Consumer Electronics Show in its March 1990 issue and led with the summary: “Nintendo rules, OK? That was the message that was brutally rammed home at this show.” Then it gave Nintendo’s own figures:
- around 26 million NES machines sold in the US “in just over three years”;
- the console in 22% of US households, with Nintendo aiming for 29% by the end of 1990;
- $30 million on advertising in the first half of 1990 alone.
The same report singled out the British developer Rare, “the company that was Ultimate Play the Game”, which had by then programmed around 40 Nintendo titles, all for other publishers. And it gave the new handheld’s first figures:
In the last quarter of 1989, the Gameboy produced more revenue than the whole of the videogame industry in 1985. One million hardware units sold, three million carts sold. 5 million Gameboys are expected to be sold in 1990.
The comparison with 1985 is a measure of how far the American market had fallen, as well as of how fast Nintendo had rebuilt it.
Tengen and the courts
Enforcing the closed platform meant lawsuits. ACE reported in January 1990:
Nintendo has just won its long court battle with Tengen over the classic [Tetris]. Nintendo now has exclusive rights to this addictive game – after some confusion over what company had what rights. Although this Nintendo vs Tengen court battle is over, there is still another $100 million lawsuit between the two companies – this time over alleged patent infringement.
Tengen was the console label of Atari Games, the arcade half of the Atari that Warner had broken up in 1984. It had found a way round the NES lockout chip, and Atari Games had accused Nintendo of running a monopoly. By October 1990 ACE was describing Tengen as “the only software developer really supporting the Lynx”, Atari’s colour handheld.
Nintendo’s lawyers reached British companies as well. In December 1988 ACE reported that US Gold had withdrawn The Great Giana Sisters “following pressure from Nintendo who felt it looked a bit too much like Super Mario Brothers”. And in 1992 Amiga Format reported that Nintendo had “sued Codemasters and lost” over the Game Genie, the cheat cartridge Codemasters sold for consoles.
Nintendo in Britain
Nintendo reached British shops late. Mattel launched the NES in the UK in 1987, four years after the Famicom, at £129.99 with Super Mario Bros., and the price was soon cut to £99.99. Roger Kean, reviewing it for CRASH, thought it worth buying if “virtually flawless arcade conversions” were what you wanted.
The Game Boy’s British debut was planned for the Earls Court Toy Fair in January 1990, a toy fair and not a computer show, alongside the Atari Lynx. ACE noted that the Game Boy was “doing a storm in Japan and USA with demand easily outstripping supply”. By October 1990 ACE’s console guide listed the Game Boy at £69.99 with Tetris, and the NES at £79.99 with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartridge for a “limited period”, against the Lynx at £179.99.
Nintendo also published its own magazine in Europe. Club Nintendo appeared from 1989 in English, German and Dutch editions. Its “Scores of Fun” page set British players against French, Dutch and Belgian ones on Gradius, Ghosts ’n Goblins, Castlevania and Kid Icarus, with a photograph of the screen required as proof.
Later consoles
The 16-bit Super Famicom arrived in Japan in 1990, the Nintendo 64 in 1996, the Game Boy Advance in 2001 and the Nintendo DS in 2004. In 1997 Edge reported that Yamauchi, then 69, had said he would retire; he handed over to Satoru Iwata in 2002. Nintendo’s own life-to-date figures put the Game Boy, at 118.69 million, well ahead of any of its home consoles of the period.
Sources
- Nintendo Co., Ltd., “Company History: Nintendo Milestones”: the founding in 1889, Western cards (1902), Marufuku (1947), the name changes of 1951 and 1963, plastic cards (1953), Disney cards (1959), the 1962 listing, TV Game 6 and 15 (1977), Game & Watch (1980), Donkey Kong (1981), the Family Computer (1983), Game Boy (1989), Super Famicom (1990), Game Boy Advance (2001) and Nintendo DS (2004) (web). https://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/en/history/index.html
- Nintendo Co., Ltd., Investor Relations, “Dedicated Video Game Sales Units”, figures as of 30 June 2026 (web). https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.html
- Nintendo, “Ask the Developer Vol. 16: Nintendo Switch 2, Part 2”, footnote 14: “lateral thinking of withered technology” as Gunpei Yokoi’s development concept (web). https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-16-nintendo-switch-2-part-2/
- Nintendo Power issue 7, July/August 1989, pp. 91–92: Fusajiro Yamauchi and his great-grandson; plastic and Disney cards; the Beam Gun series of 1970.
- The One issue 13, October 1989: “formed in 1889 to produce playing cards”.
- Edge issue 16, January 1995: Nintendo supplanting Toyota in 1991; instant rice, the love hotel and the taxi firm; “draconian licensing terms”.
- Edge issue 18, March 1995, Gunpei Yokoi interview: Yokoi hired as a maintenance engineer; the Ultra Hand selling 1.2 million; the pitching machine and Love Tester.
- Edge issue 43, March 1997: Yamauchi’s appointment in 1949; the Disney cards doubling profits; “Something great!”, quoting David Sheff’s Game Over.
- Edge issue 49, September 1997: Yamauchi, 69, announcing his intention to retire. Edge issue 112, July 2002: Satoru Iwata “having now taken over from Hiroshi Yamauchi”.
- David Sheff, Game Over (1993; GamePress edition, 1999), p. 20: the taxi firm “thrived” before union trouble ended it.
- N64 Magazine issue 2, May 1997, Nintendo history feature from p. 90: hand-made cards; the Super Famicom (1990) and Nintendo 64 (1996); the three failed ventures; Yokoi’s toys and the Ultra Machine; Uemura as a former Sharp engineer; the early arcade games; Miyamoto joining in 1977 and Donkey Kong; 60,000 US Donkey Kong machines; 500,000 Famicoms in two months; the D-pad; Super Mario Bros. selling the NES.
- Retro Gamer issue 10, 2004, Game & Watch feature: Ball (April 1980), Fire (July 1980), the multi-screen Donkey Kong and its cross-shaped pad.
- ACE issue 15, December 1988: US Gold’s withdrawal of The Great Giana Sisters.
- ACE issue 28, January 1990: the Game Boy’s UK debut and the Tengen lawsuits.
- Compute!‘s Gazette, April 1990: Tengen’s way round the lockout chip and Atari Games’ monopoly lawsuit.
- ACE issue 30, March 1990: the Consumer Electronics Show report, NES and Game Boy figures, and Rare.
- ACE issue 37, October 1990: console prices, and Tengen and the Lynx.
- Amiga Format Special issue 4, 1992: Codemasters, the Game Genie and Nintendo’s lawsuit.
- Club Nintendo (UK edition) issue 5, 1989, p. 17: “Scores of Fun”.
- CRASH issue 42, July 1987, pp. 102–103: review of the NES; the news pages of the same issue report the price cuts.
- The Famicom’s launch date and price, and the NES test markets: see the sources for Nintendo Entertainment System.
- Ultra Hand’s release in 1966, as given by later histories: Wikipedia, “Ultra Hand” (web, secondary). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Hand