Nintendo Entertainment System Emulators

is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business during the 1960s and acquiring a legal status as a public company, Nintendo distributed its first console, the Color TV-Game, in 1977. It gained international recognition with the release of ''Donkey Kong'' in 1981 and the Nintendo Entertainment System and ''Super Mario Bros.'' in 1985.

Since then, Nintendo has produced some of the most successful consoles in the video game industry, such as the Game Boy, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Nintendo DS, the Wii, and the Switch. It has created numerous major franchises, including ''Mario'', ''Donkey Kong'', ''The Legend of Zelda'', ''Pokémon'', ''Kirby'', '' Metroid'', ''Fire Emblem'', ''Animal Crossing'', ''Splatoon'', ''Star Fox'', ''Xenoblade Chronicles'', and ''Super Smash Bros.'' Nintendo's mascot, Mario, is internationally recognized. The company has sold more than 5.4 billion video games and over 800 million hardware units globally as of 2022.

Nintendo has multiple subsidiaries in Japan and abroad, in addition to business partners such as the Pokémon Company and HAL Laboratory. Nintendo and its staff have received awards including Emmy Awards for Technology & Engineering, Game Awards, Game Developers Choice Awards, and British Academy Games Awards. It is one of the wealthiest and most valuable companies in the Japanese market.

History

1889–1972: Early history

1889–1929: Origin as a card company

Nintendo was founded as on 23 September 1889 by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan, to produce and distribute , a type of traditional Japanese playing card. The name "Nintendo" is commonly assumed to mean "leave luck to heaven", but the assumption lacks historical validation; it can alternatively be translated as "the temple of free ". Hanafuda cards had become popular after Japan banned most forms of gambling in 1882, though tolerated hanafuda. Sales of hanafuda cards were popular with the yakuza-ran gaming parlors in Kyoto. Other card manufacturers had opted to leave the market not wanting to be associated with criminal ties, but Yamauchi persisted without such fears to become the primary producer of hanafuda within a few years. With the increase of the cards' popularity, Yamauchi hired assistants to mass-produce to satisfy the demand. Even with a favorable start, the company faced financial struggle due to operating in a niche market, the slow and expensive manufacturing process, high product price, alongside long durability of the cards, which impacted sales due to the low replacement rate. As a solution, Nintendo produced a cheaper and lower-quality line of playing cards, , while also conducting product offerings in other cities such as Osaka, where card game profits were high. In addition, local merchants were interested in the prospect of a continuous renewal of decks, thus avoiding the suspicions that reusing cards would generate.

According to data from Nintendo, the company's first western-style card deck was put on the market in 1902, although other documents postpone the date to 1907, shortly after the Russo-Japanese War. The war created considerable difficulties for companies in the leisure sector, which were subject to new levies such as the ("playing cards tax"). Nintendo subsisted and, in 1907, entered into an agreement with Nihon Senbai—later known as the Japan Tobacco—to market its cards to various cigarette stores throughout the country. A promotional calendar distributed by Nintendo from the Taishō era dated to 1915 was found, indicating that the company was named Yamauchi Nintendo, and used the Marufuku Nintendo Co. brand for its playing cards.

Japanese culture stipulated that for Nintendo Koppai to continue as a family business after Yamauchi's retirement, Yamauchi had to adopt his son-in-law so that he could take over the business. As a result, Sekiryo Kaneda adopted the Yamauchi surname in 1907 and became the second president of Nintendo Koppai in 1929. By that time, Nintendo Koppai was the largest card game company in Japan.

1929–1968: Expansion and diversification

In 1933, Sekiryo Kaneda established the company as a general partnership titled Yamauchi Nintendo & Co., Ltd., investing in the construction of a new corporate headquarters located next to the original building, near the Toba-kaidō train station. Because Sekiryo's marriage to Yamauchi's daughter produced no male heirs, he planned to adopt his son-in-law Shikanojo Inaba, an artist in the company's employ and the father of his grandson Hiroshi, born in 1927. However, Inaba abandoned his family and the company, so Hiroshi was made Sekiryo's eventual successor.

World War II negatively impacted the company as Japanese authorities prohibited the diffusion of foreign card games, and as the priorities of Japanese society shifted, its interest in recreational activities waned. During this time, Nintendo was partly supported by a financial injection from Hiroshi's wife Michiko Inaba, who came from a wealthy family. In 1947, Sekiryo founded the distribution company Marufuku Co. Ltd.

In 1950, due to Sekiryo's deteriorating health, Hiroshi assumed the presidency of Nintendo. His first actions involved several important changes in the operation of the company: in 1951, he changed the company name to Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd., and the Marufuku Company adopted the name Nintendo Karuta Co., Ltd. In 1952, he centralized the production of cards in the Kyoto factories, which led to the expansion of the offices. The company's new line of plastic cards enjoyed considerable success in Japan. Some of the company's employees, accustomed to a more cautious and conservative leadership, viewed the new measures with concern, and the rising tension led to a call for a strike. However, the measure had no major impact, as Hiroshi resorted to the dismissal of several dissatisfied workers.

In 1959, Nintendo contracted with Walt Disney to incorporate his company's animated characters into the cards. Nintendo also developed a distribution system that allowed it to offer its products in toy stores. By 1961, the company had sold more than 1.5 million card packs and held a high market share, for which it relied on televised advertising campaigns. The need for diversification led the company to list stock on the second section of the Osaka and Kyoto stock exchanges, in addition to becoming a public company and changing its name to Nintendo Co., Ltd. in 1963. In 1964, Nintendo earned .

Although the company was experiencing a period of economic prosperity, the Disney cards and derived products made it dependent on the children's market. The situation was exacerbated by the falling sales of its adult-oriented cards caused by Japanese society gravitating toward other hobbies such as pachinko, bowling, and nightly outings. When Disney card sales began to decline, Nintendo realized that it had no real alternative to alleviate the situation. After the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Nintendo's stock price plummeted to its lowest recorded level of .

1969–1972: Classic and electronic toys

Yamauchi's experience with the previous initiatives led him to increase Nintendo's investment in a research and development department directed by Hiroshi Imanishi, an employee with a long history in other areas of the company. In 1969, Gunpei Yokoi joined the department and was responsible for coordinating various projects. Yokoi's experience in manufacturing electronic devices led Yamauchi to put him in charge of the company's games department, and his products would be mass-produced. During this period, Nintendo built a new production plant in Uji City, just outside of Kyoto, and distributed classic tabletop games such as chess, shogi, go, and mahjong, and other foreign games under the Nippon Game brand. The company's restructuring preserved a couple of areas dedicated to card manufacturing.

The early 1970s represented a watershed moment in Nintendo's history as it released Japan's first electronic toy—the Nintendo Beam Gun, an optoelectronic pistol designed by Masayuki Uemura. In total, more than a million units were sold. Nintendo partnered with Magnavox to provide a light gun controller based on the Beam Gun design for the company's new home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, in 1971. Other popular toys released at the time include the Ultra Hand, the Ultra Machine, the Ultra Scope, and the Love Tester, all designed by Yokoi. More than 1.2 million units of Ultra Hand were sold in Japan. During the early 1970s, Nintendo began trading on the main section of the Osaka stock exchange and opened a new headquarters.

1973–present: History in electronics

1973–1978: Early video games and Color TV-Game

The growing demand for Nintendo's products led Yamauchi to further expand the offices, for which he acquired the surrounding land and assigned the production of cards to the original Nintendo building. Meanwhile, Yokoi, Uemura, and new employees such as Genyo Takeda, continued to develop innovative products for the company. The Laser Clay Shooting System was released in 1973 and managed to surpass bowling in popularity. Though Nintendo's toys continued to gain popularity, the 1973 oil crisis caused both a spike in the cost of plastics and a change in consumer priorities that put essential products over pastimes, and Nintendo lost several billion yen.

In 1974, Nintendo released ''Wild Gunman'', a skeet shooting arcade simulation consisting of a 16 mm image projector with a sensor that detects a beam from the player's light gun. Both the Laser Clay Shooting System and ''Wild Gunman'' were successfully exported to Europe and North America. However, Nintendo's production speeds were still slow compared to rival companies such as Bandai and Tomy, and their prices were high, which led to the discontinuation of some of their light gun products. The subsidiary Nintendo Leisure System Co., Ltd., which developed these products, was closed as a result of the economic impact dealt by the oil crisis.

Yamauchi, motivated by the successes of Atari and Magnavox with their video game consoles, acquired the Japanese distribution rights for the Magnavox Odyssey in 1974, and reached an agreement with Mitsubishi Electric to develop similar products between 1975 and 1978, including the first microprocessor for video games systems, the Color TV-Game</