What do you think of this fact?
When you hear Nintendo, you probably think of Mario, Pokémon and the Switch. But the company is way older than any game console. Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889, as a maker of playing cards.
Flower cards from Kyoto
The founder was a craftsman named Fusajiro Yamauchi. His company was called Nintendo Koppai, and it made Japanese playing cards, especially hanafuda, or “flower cards.”
What the name Nintendo actually means isn’t clear, by the way. It’s often translated as “leave luck to heaven,” but there’s no historical proof of that. Even Yamauchi’s descendants don’t know what the name was originally meant to say.
From card table to console
Nintendo stuck with cards for a long time. In the early 1900s, it added Western-style decks. In 1959, the company struck a deal with Disney and started selling cards with Disney characters.
After that, Nintendo tried out a bunch of things that had nothing to do with games. According to Britannica, it dabbled in instant rice and a taxi company. The path that actually led somewhere was a different one: toys, like the Ultra Hand.
From there, it moved step by step toward electronics. Next came light-gun shooting ranges, the Game & Watch handhelds and, in 1981, the arcade game Donkey Kong. That’s where the character later known as Mario made his first appearance.
In 1953, Nintendo became the first company in Japan to successfully mass-produce plastic playing cards.
The company is still headquartered in Kyoto. It started with paper cards and now sells consoles worldwide. Fusajiro Yamauchi couldn’t have dealt himself a better hand.