Nintendo

History, Company Profile, and Significance

Agenda

• Company History

• Hanafuda

• Transition to Video Games

• Contributions to Gaming

• Significance

• Conclusion (2 Questions)

Nintendo: Company History

• Founded as Nintendo Koppei in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi

• President was a Yamauchi family member until 2002 when

Hiroshi Yamauchi retired and Satoru Iwata became president

• Originally a manufacturer of hanafuda cards (1889-present)

• Experimented with other business ideas (1951-1963)

• Found success with toys & electronics (1964-present)

Hanafuda

• Japanese card game invented in the late 1700’s

• Originally used to gamble often illegally

• Deck of 48 cards, 12 suits – 4 cards each

• One suit for each month of the year

• Within each suit there are 2 regular cards and 2 special cards

• Each card has a point value and certain combinations of cards yield extra points

Hanafuda Cards

Hanafuda: Quick How To Play

• Each player is dealt 8 cards and 8 are placed face up

• Find a card in your hand that has the sameseason as one that is face up and has high point value

• Put it on top of a card and then place both cardsin your point pile

• If you don’t have a matching card place a cardface up on the table

• Draw a card and attempt to match card, if no matchplace face up

• Different cards have different point values, the onewith the most points at the end wins the game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw31Qz0FyCE#t=65

Success With Hanafuda

• Became most popular manufacturer of Hanafuda cards in Japan

• Original cards were hand crafted

• Switched to mass production to meet demand

• First company to manufacture and sell plastic playing cards in Japan

• Licensing agreement with Disney brings Hanafuda to younger generation

Expanding to Toys

• Nintendo begins manufacturing toys

• First toy is called Rabbit Coaster

• Second toy is Ultra Hand, over 1 million

units were sold

Transition to Electronics

• Began making Kousenjuu series of light gun toys in 1970

• Included games such as Duck Hunt and Jumping Bottle

• Began manufacturing simple light gun arcade

units in 1974

Transition to Video Games

• Nintendo hires several Sharp employees in 1975

• Releases first home video game system called Color TV Game 6 in 1977

• Consists of six variations of table tennis or pong

• Releases additional Colour TV Games including a racing version

First Steps Into “Modern” Gaming

• In 1978 Nintendo releases their first more modern standalone electronic

arcade units

• Games include: Space Fever (1979), HeliFire (1980), and Radar Scope (1980)

• Popularity of Radar Scope begins to fade and Nintendo assigns junior

designer Shigeru Miyamoto task of creating a game to replace it

• Shigeru Miyamoto comes up with the first game that is internationally

famous for Nintendo….

Success with Donkey Kong

• Thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo releases Donkey Kong

and instantly finds international success

• Introduced Nintendo’s longest running characters Mario

(originally Jump Man) and Donkey Kong

• Sold thousands of arcade cabinets

around the world

Release of Famicom/NES

• Releases Famicom in Japan in 1983 and NES

around the world in 1985

• NES is a huge success

• Launch titles included Super Mario Bros., another

game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto which sold

millions of copies and held the record for best

selling video game for over 25 years

Nintendo: Consoles

• Over the next 30 years Nintendo releases many hugely successful consoles such as:

• GameBoy (Original, Pocket, Colour, Advance) (1989-1990’s)

• SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) (1990)

• N64 (1996)

• Gamecube (2001)

• Nintendo DS (2004)

• Wii (2006)

• Wii U (2012)

Nintendo: Games/IPs

• Donkey Kong

• Metroid

• Duck Hunt

• Super Mario

• Legend of Zelda

• Pokemon

• Pikmin

• StarFox

• Kirby

• Animal Crossing

Significance

• One of Japans most valuable companies with $85 billion in market value, was

the third most valuable company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2007

• Contributes to Japans economy

• Made Japan a country known for excellent video game production

Conclusion

• Started with Hanafuda cards and make them to this day

• Transitioned to toys and then electronics & video games

• Made iconic characters that are recognized internationally

• Made Japan known for quality video games

• Question 1: Nintendo only produced Hanafuda cards for half of their existence. [True or False]

• Question 2 : Hanafuda cards were invented in the late 1700s [True or False]