Nintendo

Nintendo (Japanese:任天堂,ニンテンドー"Nintendo") is an international company established in Kyoto , Japan on September 23 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi .

Nintendo began as a manufacturer of handmade hanafuda cards, for use in an eponymous Japanese card game. In the second half of the twentieth century, the company began to experiment with other products, including toys. Through toys Nintendo ended up with video games: in the seventies of the 20th century, the company began developing and producing coin-opmachines ie playing devices. In 1980, Nintendo released its first portable console, the Nintendo Game & Watch . This device was also the first portable video game with an LCD screen and a microprocessor.

Content
[verbergen]
 * 1 History
 * 1.1 Playing (1889-1969)
 * 1.2 First electronic games (1969-1977)
 * 1.3 Game & Watch to NES (1977-1988)
 * 1.4 From Game Boy to Nintendo and beyond (1989 - present)
 * 2 Nintendo systems
 * 3 Departments
 * 3.1 First party
 * 3.2 Second-party
 * 4 Key people at Nintendo
 * 4.1 Directors
 * 4.2 Designers and other
 * 5 Trivia
 * 6 Series Nintendo
 * 7 See also
 * 8 External links

Playing cards (1889-1969) [ edit ]
Nintendo playing cards

The story begins with Nintendo Fusajiro Yamauchi, an artist from the Meiji period. He karuta, playing cards, while focused mainly on the traditional Japanese Hanafuda cards.'Hanafuda' cards are smaller and thicker than their Western counterparts and are filled with colorful graphics. Originally, these symbolic images were painted on shells. Ahanafuda deck has 48 cards. With those cards were played numerous games of varying difficulty. In Meiji 22 (1889) Yamauchi Nintendo Koppai founds the company to produce and sell his handmade cards. The kanji characters that he chose for his company (任天堂) can be roughly translated as "leave luck to heaven". The hanafuda cards Nintendo soon became the most popular in the region around Kyoto . Other regions had often other symbols on the cards. Really big profits Nintendo only made when the cards were used more and more for gambling. Especially with the Yakuza, the game was very popular. Professional players started each new game also with a new deck and Yamauchi had soon take assistants to produce the cards en masse. The company's name is also changed to Marufuku Company.

In 1907, Yamauchi expanded to become his business further by the first Japanese company that also produced Western playing cards. Playing Nintendo have now sold all over the country. Yamauchi had no son to keep the business in family hands had his daughter marry someone who would take over the business later. This was Sekiryo Kaneda . Sekiryu took the name of his wife about to take over the company in 1929 Fusajiro Yamauchi and president of the company to be.

Also Sekiryo Yamauchi and his wife Tei only had daughters. Their eldest daughter marries Shikanojo Inaba who takes in turn the Yamauchi family. In 1927 they had a son, Hiroshi. Contrary to expectations, however Shikanojo take over the family business not, he runs away and leaves his wife and child behind. Hiroshi is raised by his strict grandparents. There were plans to send Hiroshi to college but with the war that broke those plans were pushed aside. In those years led his grandmother Tei Nintendo as if nothing had happened. She has always refused to send in the army Hiroshi. When war broke Hiroshi was still too young and by the time he was old enough, the tide had turned and it was evident that Japan could not win the war. After the war, in 1945, Hiroshi is still right to study at Waseda University. When his grandfather died in 1949, Hiroshi had to stop his studies to become president of the company.

Workers feared the lack of experience of their new young president and Hiroshi fired virtually all managers who employed his grandfather. He wished there was no one who could put his authority into question. In 1951 he changed the company name to Nintendo Karuta. Two years later they were the first company in Japan to produce playing cards with a plastic protective layer. In 1959 joined Hiroshi Yamauchi, great-grandson of Fusajiro and current President of Nintendo, an agreement with Disney to make cards with Disney -figuren it. From the beginning it was clear that Nintendo focused on entertaining children (what is different). Nintendo sold millions of packs of cards, and made sure that Nintendo was going to make other products, especially toys.

First electronic games (1969-1977) [ edit ]
Nintendo Ultra Machine

Because there were few opportunities to further grow in the cards industry, the name changed to Nintendo Nintendo Karuta Compagny, Ltd. Nintendo tried include bringing a kind of instant rice on the market and even opened a love hotel. [2] However, these were not very successful and it was therefore decided to limit itself to the industry that Nintendo knew best: the entertainment industry.

In 1969 Nintendo opened a research and development center that was engaged in developing games. Here also Gunpei Yokoi hired who had a degree in electronics pocket.He was responsible for developing Nintendo's first electronic gadget: the Ultra Hand. Grab a little more than kind of device could then things. Yokoi would still behind many electronic inventions are Nintendo and also much of the later consoles. The Ultra Hand was followed by many electronic devices, some of which were more successful than others. For example, there were the Ultra Machine, which was a kind of baseball simulator, and the Love Tester which indicated how much "love" there would be between the two players.

One of the first major successes was the Beam Gun, a type of toy gun with light rays that you could shoot some targets. There are more than a million copies sold. The electronic games were now taking off and producing hanafuda cards was now only one of the smaller departments within Nintendo. In 1973 the technology was used behind the Beam Gun for the world's first laser-shooting gallery that opened in Kyoto . For a time the shooting galleries were a huge success and they were even exported to the West.

When Japan was also affected by the oil crisis of 1973 it had a big impact on Nintendo. The shooting galleries were indeed empty because the population did not have enough resources to give their money to such forms of entertainment. It was at this time of crisis that Nintendo also first heard of the emerging industry in the West: that of the first real video games. Through a partnership with Mitsubishi to produce the necessary technology was Nintendo in 1977 ready to release their first video game and its system on the market: Color TV Game 6, a variation on Pong [3] which Nintendo sold over a million copies.

Game & Watch to NES (1977-1988) [ edit ]
1977 is the year that Shigeru Miyamoto is working at Nintendo. He had just graduated in industrial design and the first artist to employ Nintendo took to design the look of the video games. The importance of Miyamoto for the success of Nintendo is difficult to underestimate. These are the franchises Miyamoto who did sell the consoles and also that he designed it, he was responsible for the design of the Wii . Miyamoto relied on the adventures that he in the nature around his hometown Sonobe, near Kyoto , lived in his childhood.

In 1980, Nintendo released the Game & Watch games on the market that are an immediate success. They were based on computing devices that could be produced small and cheap and had a digital clock. Some had two screens. They were handheld [4] versions of arcade games, an alternative for whom no PC or Atari could pay. This game & watch games were by Gunpei Yokoi invented. Yokoi was also the mastermind behind the Gameboy and responsible for a series of games for the arcade. That year founded Minoru Arakawa, son of Hiroshi Yamauchi , he Nintendo of America (NOA) in order to focus also on the US game market.

Donkey Kong arcade

A year later Shigeru Miyamoto asked to design an arcade game called Donkey Kong would get. For the first time was an artist and not an engineer or a programmer who had designed a game, that there was a story and humor. Donkey Kong was after all maze games (like Pacman ) and shooters in the room also a new genre: that of the platforms, games where the player must hit a world by jumping over obstacles and avoid obstacles. Donkey Kong climbs the player the Italian carpenter Jumpman (which will later be converted to the plumber Mario) up along ladders and jump it over barrels to save the girl from the great ape Donkey Kong . There were some problems because Donkey Kong too much on King Kong would seem (where also was just a game created about). But Nintendo won the lawsuit that Universal filed against them and could continue to sell Donkey Kong.

Nintendo brings 1984 the Famicon (Family Computer) in Japan, their first console. There were problems with some games that would crash the console where Yamauchi took the surprising decision to all of them to recall and replace consoles where the error not occurred. So Nintendo lost initially not millions but their move paid off later and caused a lot of trust among consumers. Yamauchi took to protect the reputation of Nintendo more important than quick profit. The Famicon in Japan also had a huge success with this Nintendo was really grown into a global gaming company which at that time had little competition. The Famicon had a revolutionary controller derived from the Game & Watch games, which was much better in the hand than the previous one and that would be the basis for many subsequent consoles.

Famicom Console Set

Nintendo says US video game market, which crashed in 1983, it will restart with the release of the US version of the Famicon that NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) will be called. In 1985 the NES as a test launch in New York which was considered the most difficult market. There is much skepticism about this new Japanese console and Minoru Arakawa stores promised to buy back all unsold products. However, this is not necessary because the NES was sold out almost everywhere. A year later NES released across America. Also, the game Super Mario Bros . was launched, a new game from Miyamoto which Jumpman in Donkey Kong returned if the plumber Mario who is going to save the princess from the clutches of the villain Bowser. Yamauchi himself decided what games would appear and what not, with much success as it turned out, even though he played no video games.

Miyamoto brought in 1987 again renewal with The Legend of Zelda . This was not a sidescroller [6], but a game that was more when viewed from above. The player could from different sides and freely explore the world. It is also the first game with an internal battery which you could save your progress. Because Nintendo feared that the game could be may be hard for some players a thick instruction booklet and was provided with a free help number. That song was very successful and people called with questions about all Nintendo games. By 1990 there were over 200 people who worked for the telephone helpline, during holidays there were even 500 .

Nintendo said in 1988 that there is a worldwide shortage of parts for Famicon and NES cartridges. [7] What ensured that almost all Nintendo games were sold out everywhere.This is one of the reasons that all 50 US states and the District of Columbia sue Nintendo. Nintendo would also stores have cheated if they gave more than 6 cents off and competition completely excluded (Nintendo made sure their console only the games that they approved could play). However, the result is not to the detriment of Nintendo even though they lose the case. They went agree to give coupons of $ 5 to anyone who had bought an NES. However, this meant that the old games, where applied to discount, were sold. People could now in the store also see the newly released console. Nintendo will have to eventually loosen their strict licensing policies which allow licensees and also develop their own cartridges.

Game Boy to Nintendo and beyond (1989 - present) [ edit ]
Game Boy (Original)

Nintendo dominates in 1989 about 80% of the gaming market worldwide and brought their new handheld console, the Game Boy . This was cheap, not much weighed and was one of the greatest successes of Nintendo. Nintendo and Atari also become embroiled in a lawsuit about Tetris, a game developed by a Russian mathematician, in that they have both made ​​almost exactly the same game. Even the name is identical. Nintendo won and Tetris was used to sell the Game Boy to promote.

1.5 million people reserve the successor of the NES, Super NES, and the Japanese launch in November 1990 provides international interest. It became known that only 300,000 were available at the time, causing chaos and traffic jams. Thousands of people call in sick at work to stand in queues. According to the "Q" ratings that gauge the popularity of public figures such as politicians and movie stars was Mario recognized by more American children than Mickey Mouse, a nota bene American figure. Nintendo gets Toyota into the most profitable company in Japan and Japan's largest export product. Nintendo of America has launched the Super NES for Christmas 1991 .

In the following years remained vague announcements come across a new console that they would spend. Project Reality as the new console would be called, in contrast to the competition would not with CD-ROMs but work with cartridges. The name was later changed to the Ultra 64 . The Ultra 64 was not the only planned system. Nintendo released in 1995, the Virtual Boy from. This console you put to your head, it took two screens, one for each eye, you could see 3D. The first edition of E3 [8] was not a word about the Ultra 64 and just talking about the Super NES, the Game Boy and the Virtual Boy . But Virtual Boy had too many problems and was not really positive reviews. In November of that year finally 64bit, cartridge-based console launched in Japan and this also got its final name, the Nintendo 64 .

Nintendo sold in 1996 its billionth cartridge worldwide. The Nintendo 64 was also launched that year in the US and Virtual Boy was put stop. There were only three games ready when the '64 was released:. Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 Shogi Super Mario became an instant hit. However, nothing could predict the success of the game that Nintendo that year spending for the Game Boy in Japan: Pokemon . Pokemon was developed around the concept that people could exchange information with each other through the link cables. Therefore, two versions were simultaneously launched, Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green . Exchange is the only way to get all Pokemon to collect and leave the battle sing the franchise now just "Gotta catch 'em all!" to be. When it appeared that the Pokémon games were really a success, there were contracts with an animation of a cartoon series. Earlier there were already animated versions of example Donkey Kong was and Mario had a long time his own live-action television show.Pokémon became the number one show in Japan, playing cards and all kinds of merchandise quickly followed and Pokémon became an industry in itself, good for trillions of dollars. Two years later Pokémon to America and there was rage, faster than in Japan because the cards, games and TV series were released right after the other. In November, the Nintendo Game Boy Colour off.

In 2001, Game Boy Advance in Japan (March) and the USA (June) and Nintendo released the Nintendo GameCube in the US The latter was soon overtaken by the Playstation 2 from Sony and the Xbox from Microsoft. In 2004 Nintendo released a new type of handheld on the market; the Nintendo DS has two screens, one of which is a touchscreen. With the in 2006 released Wii they took not only the first place in respect to the successors of the Playstation 2 and Xbox, they spoke with their revolutionary console also a very different target group. The Wii does what graphics horsepower These include the PS3 and Xbox 360, but the way of playing is first thoroughly changed in years. The wireless controller to swing around, the player makes the avatar on the screen does the same. Playing video games was also a physical activity. There was a series of fitness games on the market.

Nintendo systems [ edit ]

 * Color TV Game series ( 1 977 - 1,979 )
 * Game & Watch [GW] ( 1981 )
 * Nintendo Entertainment System [NES] ( 1985 )
 * Game Boy [GB] ( 1988 )
 * Super Nintendo Entertainment System [SNES] ( 1991 )
 * Virtual Boy [NVB] ( 1995 )
 * Nintendo 64 [N64] ( 1996 )
 * Game Boy Pocket [GB-P] ( 1996 )
 * Game Boy Light [GB-L] ( 1998 )
 * Super Nintendo Entertainment System 2 [SNES 2] ( 1998 )
 * Game Boy Color [GBC] ( 1998 )
 * Game Boy Advance [GBA] ( 2001 )
 * Pokémon Mini (2001)
 * Nintendo GameCube [NGC] ( 2002 )
 * Game Boy Advance SP [GBA SP] ( 2003 )
 * iQue [NIQ] ( 2003 )
 * Nintendo DS [NDS] ( 2003 )
 * Game Boy Micro [GBA M] ( 2005 )
 * Nintendo DS [NDS L] ( 2006 )
 * Wii ( 2006 )
 * Nintendo DSi ( 2008 )
 * Nintendo DSi XL ( 2010 )
 * Nintendo 3DS ( 2011 )
 * Nintendo 3DS XL ( 2012 )
 * Wii ( 2012 )
 * Nintendo 2DS ( 2013 )
 * New Nintendo 3DS ( 2014 )
 * New Nintendo 3DS XL ( 2014 )

First-party [ edit ]

 * R & D 1 : The oldest development department of Nintendo. It was founded when Nintendo focused on the videogame industry. This department was still led by Gunpei Yokoi .
 * EAD : This department is the largest Nintendo and is led by Shigeru Miyamoto . Best known for games like Mario , The Legend of Zelda , Pikmin and Donkey Kong
 * Intelligent Systems
 * EAD Tokyo
 * NST : Is a division of Nintendo in the US and mainly makes games for the North American market.
 * Retro Studios : Mainly known for the Metroid Prime series.
 * 1-UP Studio
 * Monolith Soft : known Baiten Katos and Disaster: Day of Crisis
 * Nd Cube : known from U Wii Party , Mario Party: Island Tour , Mario Party 9 and Mario party 10

Second-party [ edit ]

 * HAL Laboratory : Responsible for the Kirby franchise, the series of Super Smash Bros., the series Egger Land (also known as the Adventures of Lolo series is known), and the development of the e-reader.
 * Camelot : Mostly known by the Golden Sun series and various Mario sports franchises.
 * Genius Sonority : Founded to Pokémon to make games for consoles.
 * Creatures Inc. Is a toy department of Nintendo primarily known for their Pokemon toys.
 * Alpha Dream : Mostly known by the Mario & Luigi RPG's.
 * Game Freak : Known from the Pokémon games
 * NOISE


 * Previously also Rare

Directors [ edit ]

 * Hiroshi Yamauchi - Former Director of Nintendo.
 * Satoru Iwata - Director of Nintendo (2002 - present).

[Designers and other edit ]

 * Gunpei Yokoi - Best known as the creator of the Game Boy and the series Metroid .
 * Koji Kondo - Composer of music tracks in many games from Nintendo, virtually every entrance of the home console of Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda covers.
 * Shigeru Miyamoto - The main designer of Nintendo and video producer. Largely known for creating many of the most popular games from Nintendo, including Mario, Donkey Kong , Pikmin, and The Legend of Zelda . In 1998, Miyamoto was the first person in the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame was introduced.

[Trivia Edit ]

 * Nintendo still has the Game & Watch game Judge. It is still for sale at Club Nintendo, in the original box and console.

[Series Nintendo edit ]
Nintendo has many different series he produces. The elders are Donkey Kong and Mario . These two are in time also two of the most popular series made ​​by Nintendo. Mario is now even the mascot of Nintendo. A few years later came The Legend of Zelda on screen at Nintendo. This series was a success at Nintendo. Even so successful that they are now on average develop two parts per Nintendo console. In the same year came Kid Icarus to be in the spotlight with a game. The series was not as well known as The Legend of Zelda or Mario, but got a Gameboy -Continued. After two decades, the game still got a sequel to the Nintendo 3DS called Kid Icarus: Uprising . Also in the year of The Legend of Zelda and Kid Icarus was also the first Metroid from -game. Metroid was meant for a slightly higher target than Nintendo's other games. A while later, Nintendo also came with other series, such as Kirby (sidescroller), F-Zero (racer) Fire Emblem (turn-based strategy) Earthbound (RPG), Pokémon (RPG), Star Fox (on-rail shooter) and Pilotwings (flight simulator). Later, Nintendo also came with several casual games like Animal Crossing, where you simulate village life, Nintendogs , where your dog and cat training and Wii Fit , a fitness game in which you kilocalories can train off. Pikmin and Xenoblade are two of Nintendo's latest not -Casual game series.