The Nintendo Story: From Playing Cards to Home Consoles

There are many century-old companies today, and one of the most loved in the entire world is Nintendo. The company, which is based in Kyoto, has a long history in the gaming world, having started its journey selling playing cards. THE Big N, as she is affectionately called by her fans, has had a few good times in her turbulent journey. From the revitalization of the games industry, to a dark period of many charges and few sales. Let's follow a little bit of Nintendo's history in the world of consoles.

From Hanafuda decks to motels, Nintendo's history before games

Many, many years before investing in the electronics market, Nintendo there was a card business. With the ban on gambling in Japan, the company started selling cards of a game called Hanafuda. They sold different collectible series, with the most varied themes possible. But Yamauchi family, founder of the company, knew that she needed to vary her business to maintain and continue to exist.

Because of this, over several years, they invested in a chain of motels, which didn't work out. They bet on a brand of instant noodles, which also went down, and finally, on the distribution of a vacuum cleaner, which failed like the others. But after all this journey, they found their pot of gold: toys.

In 1965 the Nintendo decided to build a new headquarters in Kyoto city. During this period, an engineer who had just graduated from college had been hired, Gunpei Yokoi. He worked on the Hanafuda production line and in his spare time he liked to invent things. A few years later, in 1969, Hiroshi Yamauchi visited the place, saw one of the things Yokoi invented and fell in love.

The president then ordered the toy to be improved and released before Christmas. The product in question was ultra hand (ultra hand, in literal translation) and it was an absurd sales success, with more than 1 million copies sold. Many other products were created and launched, but one of them gained everyone's attention.

Yokoi, together with its employees, launched a game called Laser Clay Shooting System (Laser Target Shooting System, literal translation). The system was the first undertaking in the history of Nintendo in the world of games, thanks largely to titles such as Duck Hunt and others. The success was such that for a period it replaced bowling as the main entertainment of the Japanese.

Later, Nintendo would make a series of partnerships with several companies, such as Magnavox, to launch their devices in Japanese lands. In addition, there was also a collaboration with the Mitsubishi to launch a series of products from the line Color TV Game, with some titles produced by the company, almost always copies of Atari classics. In addition, Nintendo also produced a series of games for arcades, mostly clones of famous games, such as Pong, Galaxian and others.

The first of many, the birth of the Famicom

Hiroshi Yamauchi has always been a hardline president. He liked things his way, and many times he got it right more than he got it wrong. Seeing the entire world of electronic games, he decided that the time had come for Nintendo to produce its own console, and went to Masayuki Uemura with the mission of finding out the best way to enter that world once and for all.

It was then decided that the Famicom (acronym for Family Computer, or Family Computer, in literal translation), would bring a 8-bit capable of displaying up to 24 colors on the screen, with a total of 52 available. The screen resolution was 254×240 pixels and accepted cartridges with up to 60 pins. Its appearance was purposely made to look like a toy and thus draw even more attention from children. The console was then released.

In the beginning, games were available Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. e Popeye. In addition, there were two built-in controls, which allowed multiplayer in games that have this mode. But it wasn't all flowers.

The device came out in 1983, but with a series of problems that prevented the Famicon from working properly. The players suffered a lot with bugs, white screens and others. Nintendo then made an exchange system for all consoles and they realized that the problem was in the motherboard, which had been modified. So they re-released it the following year.

Over time, other companies approached Nintendo with the intention of producing games for the Famicom. Big N agreed, but it would control the quality of the games that would be released and would also be the manufacturer of the cartridges, which was accepted.

If we look at the list of top games produced for the Famicon, Nintendo dominates. Mario Bros. is one of the most important games in the history of Nintendo and gaming in general. The Legend of Zelda it was the first open world game on home consoles. In addition, there are other outstanding games, such as Metroid, Tetris e Punch Out. There are also those produced by other companies, such as final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Ninja Turtles, Ghosts' n Goblins and many others.

The invasion of American lands, the NES in the USA

Before even thinking about selling its consoles in the United States of America, Nintendo had already opened its subsidiary there, in 1980. Yamauchi saw great potential in the North American market and wanted to earn some coins with the arcades and Game & Watch of the company. So he approached his daughter, Yoko Yamauchi, who was married to Minoru Arakawa, and invited them to move to Uncle Sam's land and open a company branch there.

The couple did not like the idea very much, as they knew of the reputation of toughness of the president of Nintendo, but decided to accept the task. They then moved to the US and started selling products made in Japan. First, there were the Game & Watch devices, with games like ball, Flagman, Judge, between others. With this initial path paved, it was time to launch the arcades. Arakawa and Yamauchi were betting everything on Radar Scope, which was nothing more than a clone of Space Invaders e Galaxian, which were extremely successful at that time. But they got the asses in the water.

Of all the initial stock, only a part was sold, which left the company's warehouse crammed with cabins. Arakawa called his father-in-law and informed him of what had happened. Yamauchi wasn't too happy with that and went to Gunpei Yokoi, the company's game manager and inventor of Game & Watch, requesting that a new game be made. Yokoi then delegated the role to one of his newest hires, Shigeru Miyamoto.

Miyamoto learned the type of hardware that was available and started working. At first, he had the idea of ​​making a game based on the Popeye cartoon, and asked for a license. But not everything went as expected, and they had to change the idea, thus creating Donkey Kong, Jumpman - later renamed to Mario -, and Princess Pauline.

The game was released in 1981, was a resounding success and literally ate tens of thousands of chips in both Japan and the United States. This laid the groundwork for the upcoming Famicom release. But the games industry crashed in 1983, which made Arakawa puzzle over how to launch the console in the West.

At that time, parents absolutely did not want to invest their dollars in video games. Therefore, Nintendo had to find a way to circumvent this difficulty. That's when they had the brilliant idea to launch the ROB, acronym for Robotic Operating Buddy (Friend of Robotic Operation, in literal translation), which conveniently came with the NES, Nintendo Entertainment System, which could control the ROB, in addition to running a series of educational programs and games.

From New York, the company started to show its product and it was gaining ground. Kids were crazy about the options the NES brought and it became a smashing success. So, in a way, he was responsible for saving the games industry and marking Nintendo's history.

Evolution, the Super Nintendo

After revitalizing the gaming industry, Nintendo ended up creating rivals. Yamauchi was comfortable, their console was selling well, they controlled everything that went out, and the profits kept coming in. But one of its rivals, the Sega, managed to do the unthinkable: he got a mascot that was able to compete with Mario and launched a console more powerful than the NES, the Mega Drive.

This caused some inconvenience at Big N. They had no intention of making other consoles, as sales continued to flourish, but the emergence of a direct rival got the company moving. Thus began the development of another video game, the Super Famicom, or Super nes, in the United States.

The Super NES hit the market two years after the Sega device, in 1990, and already with its foot in the door. At the Japanese release, only two games were available: Super Mario World e F-Zero. The Mario title is considered to this day as one of the best platform games ever made, so much so that it has an active community that creates games based on the game's mechanics. Meanwhile, the second game showed all the power the SNES, as it's affectionately called these days, could handle.

The dispute between Nintendo and Sega was wild, one attacked the other in every possible way, whether with funny advertisements, or guaranteeing the exclusivity of games, such as Street Fighter 2, which came out of arcades straight to the SNES. This also motivated a real dispute over peripherals.

While Sega pursued every possible field, with light guns, adapters for Master System, CD players, among many others, Nintendo was in the same vein. Thus, the modem that connected the SNES to the internet was born, a mouse that accompanied the game Mario paint, an adapter to play Game Boy games and many other accessories. Despite everything, Nintendo triumphed over Sega, but a strategic mistake gave birth to its main rival.

The birth of the rival, the Nintendo Play Station

The dispute with Sega was intense. Nintendo, when it learned of the existence of the Sega CD, promptly announced that there would be a device to dock on the Super NES and have games with greater capacity. As she did not master the technology, she looked for a company that had never had a console, Sony.

At that time, the company's executives were more conservative and had no interest in participating in that world. But one engineer, Ken Kutaragi, always liked the idea of ​​producing games, despite being rebuffed by his superiors. Nintendo heard about this and invited Sony to produce the piece, called Nintendo PlayStation, which would be added to the Super NES. In the agreement, Sony would have control of the production of the CDs, while Nintendo would receive a share of the profits. This was frowned upon by Big N executives. As development continued, Sega, in turn, failed miserably with the Sega CD.

This caused the pieces on the board to move. Yamauchi approached the Philips and released some of its main franchises for the company to make games for a future console, the cd-i. The device was not well accepted, largely due to its high cost, US$ 1.000 dollars, and just over 400 units were sold.

Meanwhile, Sony, unaware of Nintendo's moves, continued working on the peripheral. And he was finally presented to the public at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 1991, which generated public interest. However, the day after the presentation, Philips showed its CD-i, which caught everyone in shorts, including Sony.

After this incident, the two companies severed ties. Kutaragi was very confident in his product and went to the company's directors to ask for a chance to launch the console, which was accepted, as they were still very angry about the stab in the back they had taken. Thus the PlayStation was born and the rest is Nintendo and Sony history.

The last bastion of cartridges, the Nintendo 64

That was the beginning of Nintendo's downfall. In a period where competitors, Sega and Sony, already had consoles with CD players, Big N decided to invest once again in cartridges. O Nintendo 64, despite the low sales, about 30 million devices, changed the way we play today.

It was the first console to have an analog stick as one of the controllers. Its advantage over the other model is its greater precision and ease of control. In addition, he pioneered the use of vibration technology, which gave players greater immersion. With it, it was possible to feel the events of the games with degrees of intensity. Both analog and vibration system were adopted by all competitors.

However, the 64 didn't just live with good things. As he used cartridges, the size of the games had to be smaller than a CD. This greatly limited what producers could produce. One of them was Square Soft (currently Square Enix), which switched from Big N to Sony, largely because of Final Fantasy 7. They claimed that the short space prevented the company's vision from being fully achieved. The home of PlayStation, when it realized this, embraced not only Square but all other companies, which left the 64 behind compared to its competitor.

Still, Nintendo is home to anthology games like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Paper Mario, GoldenEye 007 and many others.

The Little Giant, the GameCube

And once again Nintendo refused to use other people's technology. Yamauchi resisted as much as he could in giving part of his profits to other companies, even more so if they were his rivals, like Sony. In a period where the DVD was becoming the standard, Big N decided to use the mini DVD. This small disc had a capacity of up to 1.5GB, while standard DVDs had a capacity of 4GB.

This, once again, alienated other producers, which made Nintendo produce most of the games it sold. The lack of popular games caused Cube to suffer from low sales, hitting the 33 million unit mark. Meanwhile, by comparison, Sony's PlayStation 2 has sold around 155 million consoles.

Still, great classics came out to the device, such as Metroid Prime, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine e Super Smash Bros. Melee. Another interesting factor: the Game Cube controller is considered to this day as one of the best ever made in history. Nintendo has also released a version of it for its current console, the Nintendo Switch.

The revolution in motion, the Nintendo Wii

Revolution. Or revolution, in good Portuguese. That was the codename of Nintendo's new console. Despite two horrendous failures in the home game markets, on handhelds things were going well. Still, it was a shame for the company not to have a successful device. In 2002, Yamauchi stepped down from the presidency of the company and called, for the first time in history, a person outside the family: Satoru Iwata.

Iwata was the president of HAL Laboratories and one of the best programmers ever seen in the company. His knowledge helped to finish games like Earthbound e Pokemon Gold/Silver. In gaining that position, he did what everyone should do from time to time: he took a moment and analyzed the market.

Both Sony, with the PlayStation, and ecosystemWith the Xbox, always sought the greatest possible graphic fidelity. Iwata knew the path must be different. Instead of winning that guy who spends hours playing games, hardcore gamers, it was time to invest in the casual audience. He then asked his engineers to use this guideline as a guide. Meanwhile, Shigeru Miyamoto would be responsible for creating a controller that would draw as much attention and be as simple as possible. Thus was born Wiimote, the motion controller that changed the way video games were played.

The console, which was christened Wii later, it was significantly weaker than its competitors, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it had a controller that could recognize player movement. The casual crowd loved the proposal, and the console sold more than 100 million devices.

However, despite pleasing the public, this alienated several producers, who did not know how to work with the control. This meant that many cross-platform games were left out of the Wii, which made the device less attractive to some players. Despite all these problems, the Wii is one of the greatest hits of all time. Games like Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resorts, Mario Kart Wii, mario galaxy and many others have transcended the barrier between players.

The ambitious Nintendo Wii U

With a strong desire to continue the success of the Wii, and also wanting to bring in the audience lost in the previous generation, Nintendo began work on its new console. The idea was to make the device more powerful than the previous one, in addition to continuing to please the casual. But they missed one crucial point: the name.

The intention was for the name to show that Big N was with the public, so they added the U, which in slang means you, or you in Portuguese. But the casual audience thought the Wii U it was a high-end peripheral, as the regular version cost $300 at launch. The price scared everyone off, and sales didn't go as expected. Another factor that weighed heavily was that game developers did not feel much confidence in the Wii U and did not port their titles to the device.

This caused a huge problem at Nintendo, as they hoped to maintain the success of yore. The president, Iwata, took the blame for the failure and decided to cut his salary in half to prevent the company's employees from being fired. Nintendo returned to the design table, and executives decided that the next console would bring the convenience of handhelds and the ability to play games on television as well.

Some games that stood out on the Wii U were the Super Mario 3D World, Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario barth 8, Hyrule Warriors and a few others.

The paradigm shift, the Nintendo Switch

While Sony and Microsoft continued to bet everything on the highest graphic fidelity, Nintendo always went against the grain. Iwata wanted to make the company's next release capable of pleasing both casual and hardcore gamers. So, they gathered all the knowledge they had from both handhelds and home consoles. But they had problems along the way: Iwata found out he had cancer and ended up passing away in 2015. This, in a way, motivated everyone involved, as he spearheaded the project.

The console, called Nintendo Switch, was released in 2017 and allowed players to connect the device to the TV or play in portable mode. In addition, the controls had motion sensors and an advanced vibration system. As an attraction, there was the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, one of the flagships. This combo made the Switch popular with players, and stocks were almost always out of stock.

Currently, according to Nintendo's website, the Switch has sold over 68 million devices and over 458 million games. is officially available in Brazil. Among the main titles, we have Pokemon Sword/Shield, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Mario Odyssey and many others that have further transformed this chapter of Nintendo's history.

Sources: Database Console, Nintendo Japan, Nintendo Portugal, Book: Behind the scenes at Nintendo by Jeff Ryan