RH: The Secret History of Nintendo

Good Afternoon students, this is Dr. Cooper.
Secrets. They are everywhere, hiding important things from us. Some secrets are to protect us; others are to protect reputations. Some are kept secret merely because they are just plain weird and irrelevant. This is one of them.
Time for a history lesson...
Nintendo. The mighty video game behemoth. Creator of Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pokemon, Kirby, and all those other Japanese video game franchises. The family-friendly alternative to the blood and gore games of Xbox. The games everyone started out with, until they grew old enough to play Call of Duty. But exactly what is Nintendo? Most people think they know the story. A small video game company, one of many, releases the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1985 with a game called Super Mario Bros., and the rest is history. Well, not quite. Most video and technology companies have been around since the 1970's and 80's. By the time Super Mario came out, Nintendo had been in business nearly 100 years. What had Nintendo been doing all that time? Turns out, almost everything.

In 1889 Japan a man named Fusajiro Yamuchi founded a small company named Nintendo to sell handmade playing cards. At the time a game called Hanafuda had recently become popular in the country, so the company did fairly well. They allegedly also provided cards for the Japanese mafia (yes, there was a Japanese mafia). Nintendo was noteworthy for being the first company in Japan to make cards out of plastic. Nintendo basically continued on like this for 50 years, until the management finally realized the limitations of a card company (you can only make so much money off cards). So they tried expanding into new markets, new enterprises. To boldly go where no Japanese card company has gone before.
However much like the Red Shirts of Star Trek, Nintendo failed with most their exploratory business ventures. 
They experimented with running a taxi company and a hotel chain, neither of which worked. They also tried selling various random things such as instant rice and their own vacuum cleaners. Eventually the one idea that didn't turn out to be too terrible was toys. Nintendo produced mechanical arms and knock-off versions of Lego's, but they soon gravitated towards electronic toys, which were rapidly becoming popular in Japan. Throughout the 70's they released little known electronic games and arcade games which performed poorly. That all changed when one arcade game became a breakout hit in 1981.

Donkey Kong became Nintendo's most popular product up to that time, due to its unique game play. The little hopping hero in the game was originally named Jumpman in Japan. But then one day at the company's U.S division, the angry landlord came in demanding his rent, which was very overdue. His name was Mario Segale.
After the success of Donkey Kong came the little-known arcade game Mario Bros, the first game to have Luigi, and starred the two fighting sewer monsters. Then soon after that Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System and became a worldwide icon. Everyone else knows the story after that...

So there you have it, a secret uncovered! Now you know what playing cards, gangsters, and instant rice have to do with a video game company. A new Retro Show article comes out next week. Until then...
 "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."




Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo
 http://kotaku.com/5925652/the-weird--wonderful-history-of-nintendo

Photos: http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/nintendo_power_gives_us_the_best_moments_from_the_legend_of_zelda_nes 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NintendoCards.jpg 
 http://gifsoup.com/view/1794566/donkey-kong.html
http://www.fakecard.com/pokedex/pokemon/164.shtml