Nintendo: Difference between revisions

Nintendo was originally founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade {{wp|Hanafuda}} cards for use in Japanese card games. Eventually, in 1929, the company was passed on to Yamauchi's son-in-law, Sekiryo Kaneda. He took up the Yamauchi name when he married Fusajiro's daughter, Tei Yamauchi. Kaneda would run Nintendo until 1949 - he passed Nintendo down to his grandson, [[Hiroshi Yamauchi]], before he retired. Under Hiroshi's leadership, Nintendo would dabble in a number of different businesses before sticking primarily to games. Nintendo entered the arcade industry in the 1970s, and began to license some of their games to other companies for distribution outside of Japan. Nintendo eventually set up its own headquarters in the United States headed by Minoru Arakawa, and the first game that would be distributed by the American division would be ''Radar Scope''. ''Radar Scope'' did not sell well in the United States, and a number of unsold cabinets remained in warehouses.

Arakawa asked Hiroshi if a new game could be developed and inserted into the unsold ''Radar Scope'' cabinets.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20191109000531/https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/09/14/ign-presents-the-history-of-super-mario-bros "IGN Presents: The History of Super Mario Bros."]</ref> Hiroshi went through Nintendo's entire talent pool to see who could head the designing of a potential ''Radar Scope'' replacement, and the result was [[Shigeru Miyamoto]] designing ''[[Donkey Kong (game)|Donkey Kong]]''. When ''Donkey Kong'' was released, it became a best-seller. Around this time, Nintendo assigned Gunpei Yokoi to make a handheld console for enjoyment while traveling. Thus, Yokoi made the [[Game & Watch]], which became popular in both Japan and the United States. Nintendo then made the [[Nintendo Entertainment System]]; its success resulted in Nintendo becoming a dominant player in the video game industry and the revival of the industry in North America, which had been negatively affected by a crash in 1983. The most successful game for the NES, ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'', further cemented their dominance in the industry. Aside from video games, Nintendo was also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners, a Major League Baseball team from 1992 to 2016. In 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down from office, giving the position to [[Satoru Iwata]], who later became CEO of Nintendo's American branch and held both posts until his death in July 2015. After which, [[Tatsumi Kimishima]] was appointed Iwata's successor in September 2015, until he stepped down on June 28, 2018 and was succeeded by [[Shuntaro Furukawa]].