By Gerald Lynch
This month sees the launch of Nintendo’s mini NES Classic Edition, a pint-sized facsimile of the 1985 console which changed the gaming landscape forever.
While the NES will forever be ingrained in the psyche of many a 30-something gamer and its fame will echo through the ages thanks to Nintendo’s evergreen stable of IP, the company’s history stretches way back beyond the eighties.
In fact, the firm is now over 100 years old, and began life making Japanese playing cards, known as “hanafuda”.
Nintendo Playing Card Co. was founded on September 23rd 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, who initially produced the hanafuda cards by hand. For more than half a century these cards were Nintendo’s sole means of generating revenue; it was only when Yamauchi’s grandson Hiroshi took over in the late forties that the firm’s focus began to shift.
The younger Yamauchi was brash and headstrong, and quickly realised that hanafuda would not secure the company’s fortune. This stance was confirmed by a 1956 visit to North America which revealed to him just how small the global market was; on the trip he discovered that the United States Playing Card Company – then the leading manufacturer in the world – could …read more
Source:: techradar.com – Gaming
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