Nintendo: Difference between revisions

|latest_release=''[[Princess Peach: Showtime!]]'' ([[List of games by date#2024|2024]])

'''{{wp|Nintendo}}''' is a video game company with its origins in Japan. Nintendo is the creator of many popular franchises, including the [[Super Mario (franchise)|''Super Mario'' franchise]], and the company's mascot is [[Mario]] himself.

{{multiple image|align=left|direction=vertical|image1=Nintendo - Obsolete logo.svg|image2=Nintendo Logo.svg|width=180|footer=The company's signature red logo from 1985 to 2008, used internationally outside of Japan and Southeast Asia (top), and gray logo from 2006 to 2016 (bottom). The gray logo is still used in corporate pages.}}

Originally founded as a {{wp|hanafuda}} playing card manufacturer in Kyoto, Japan, on September 23, 1889, Nintendo began exploring game-making after third president [[Hiroshi Yamauchi]] began diversifying the company's ventures. Nintendo entered the arcade industry in 1973 and the home console industry in 1977, simultaneously hiring [[Shigeru Miyamoto]] as a product designer. In 1978, Nintendo began making arcade video games, licensing titles to other companies for distribution outside Japan. In 1980, Nintendo established a North American division headed by {{wp|Minoru Arakawa}}, and the first game that would be distributed by the American division would be ''[[nwiki:Radar Scope|Radar Scope]]''. The game did not sell well in the United States, and a number of unsold cabinets remained in warehouses.

Arakawa asked Yamauchi 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> Yamauchi went through Nintendo's entire talent pool to see who could head the designing of a potential ''Radar Scope'' replacement, and the result was Miyamoto designing ''[[Donkey Kong (game)|Donkey Kong]]''. When ''Donkey Kong'' was released in 1981, it became a bestseller and marked the introduction of Mario. In 1983, Nintendo introduced the [[Family Computer]], distributing it abroad as the [[Nintendo Entertainment System]] two years later. Its success in Japan and North America 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 Nintendo's dominance in the industry. The ''Super Mario'' franchise has since become Nintendo's flagship franchise and one of the most well-known brands to originate from video games.

*In the [[Mario Party (series)|''Mario Party'' series]], the Nintendo logo, along with the [[Hudson Soft]] logo, appears on banners in various [[minigame]]s.

*In ''[[Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour]]'' and ''Mario Power Tennis'', [[Wario]] holds up the Nintendo sign when the game boots up while stating the company's name, laughing.

|JapM=任天堂 is the formal name of the company; in {{wp|hiragana}} it is written as にんてんどう, two {{wp|Kana|kanas}} or {{wp|Mora (linguistics)#Japanese|moras}} {{wp|furigana|per kanji}}. Each of the {{wp|kanji}} that make up its formal name mean the following: