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Nintendo Corporation, Limited (任天堂; Ninten is translated roughly as "leave luck to heaven" or "in heaven's hands," do is a common suffix for names of shops or laboratories; TSE NTDOY) was originally founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda (Japanese playing cards). Over the years, it changed to a video game company and became one of the most powerful companies in the video game industry. Nintendo of Japan, the main branch of the company, is based in Kyoto, Kyoto prefecture, Japan. Nintendo of America, its North American division, is based in Redmond, Washington and Nintendo of Europe, the European division, is based in Großostheim, Germany.
Nintendo is the longest running company in the history of the video game console market. They have been in the U.S. market since 1985 and have manufactured four TV consoles -- the Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom/Super NES, N64, the current GameCube -- and five versions of their popular handheld console, the Game Boy.
In 1950, Hiroshi Yamauchi, great-great-grandson of Fusajiro and future president of Nintendo, made a deal with Disney to produce playing cards featuring Disney characters, when Nintendo came to make western-style playing cards as well as hanafuda at that period. Even from its early history it was clear that Nintendo was focused on making entertainment for children. These cards sold millions of packs, and made Nintendo enough money to move into other ventures, particularly toys.
By the late 1970s, Nintendo had begun to lose market share to electronic game manufacturers such as Bandai, and they responded with the Game & Watch series (small single-screen LCD games) which were created by the late visionary Gunpei Yokoi, as well as a series of arcade games. In 1980, Nintendo of America (NOA) was established by Yamauchi's son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa.
Nintendo introduced the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the United States in 1985 after a successful launch of the Famicom in Japan. Under Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln, the NES is often considered to be the "savior" of the video game industry. Nintendo debuted Super Mario Bros., and later hits such as Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda, helping to boost a market which seriously diminished in the early 1980s (often called "Video game crash of 1983" or "The Great Video Game Crash of the '80s").
By the end of the 1980s the courts found Nintendo guilty of anti-trust activities because it had abused its relationship with 3rd party developers and created a monopoly in the gaming industry by forcing developers not to make games for any other platforms.
Nintendo released the Super Famicom in November 1990 in Japan to compete against the Sega Megadrive and the PC Engine. In September 1991, Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in North America, to compete with the Sega Genesis. This became an intense competition for the 16-bit era. In 1992, the SNES was released in Europe as the rival to the Sega Megadrive. In Japan, the Super Famicom easily took control of the gaming market.
Despite a slow start, the SNES in North America eventually overtook the Sega Genesis, thanks to franchise titles such as Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter 2, and the Final Fantasy series. Although, overall, the Genesis outsold the SNES. Nintendo of America's stringent blood and violence policies was later eased up on in the mid-'90s. Nintendo initially contracted with Sony to develop an addon CD-ROM drive to the SNES, but after Sony announced a standalone version of the drive, Nintendo terminated the contract and went with Philips. Either way, nothing happened about the addon drive in regard to the SNES, but Sony took the time and research and began to spin it off into a standalone product, the PlayStation. Nintendo announced their alliance with Philips at the same conference that Sony announced their CD-ROM drive.
In 1995, Nintendo found themselves in a similar competitive situation. Competitor Sega introduced their 32-bit Saturn, while newcomer Sony introduced the 32-bit PlayStation. Sony's fierce marketing campaigns ensued, and it started to cut into Nintendo and Sega's market share. In September 1996, Nintendo introduced the Nintendo 64 (N64). Nintendo chose to remain with the cartridge medium, a surprising move especially considering their competition's choice of emerging CD-ROM storage mediums. One advantage of such a method, however, is that the piracy of Nintendo games was far less than that of rival gaming platforms. The first 3D Mario game was introduced as Super Mario 64, which has been the archetype for almost all 3D console games to this day. The N64 managed to secure a solid #2 spot under the #1 Sony PlayStation.
By 2001 the next generation consoles were being released. Sega had introduced the Dreamcast in 1999, Sony answered with the PlayStation 2, Microsoft joined the fray with the Xbox, and in November of 2001, Nintendo released the GameCube. Nintendo has continued with their popular high quality franchise titles, such as, Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Metroid, Super Smash Bros., and a new series called Pikmin. As of March 2004, total U.S. sales of the GameCube has surpassed 7 million units, and is currently in second place in total worldwide sales ahead of the Xbox. This was made evident when the price of the GameCube was dropped to $99.99 in September 2003. Nintendo continues to hold a strong market in all worldwide regions.
Introduced in 1989, and continuing strong today, were Nintendo's portable Game Boy systems. With several evolutions, including Pocket, Color, Advance, and Advance SP versions, the Game Boy is the single most successful, and oldest video game platform still in production. The Game Boy has been known for putting over a dozen other portable systems out of business (Including Nintendo's other attempts such as the Virtual Boy). Due to low battery consumption, durability, and a library of over a thousand games, the Game Boy has been on the top of the portable game food chain since its inception.
Slowing sales of the Game Boy were assisted by the introduction of the Pokémon game, which started a phenomenon of top selling video games, movies, merchandise, and TV shows. The Pokémon phenomena helped and continue to help rocket Game Boy sales all around the world.
In June 2004, Nintendo re-released eight separate NES games to the Game Boy Advance called the Classic NES Series. The current titles are:
In 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down as the president of Nintendo and named Satoru Iwata his successor.
In 2003, Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, sued Nintendo, its Pokémon division, and various other Nintendo affiliates over breach of contract and various of other charges relating to the Pokémon trading card game.
In early 2004 Nintendo announced a new portable game console, called Nintendo DS. The final version of it was unveiled in July 2004, and its expected worldwide release is late 2004. The DS is going to be marketed separately from the Game Boy Advance and GameCube consoles, but it has been reported that it will play Game Boy Advance cartridges.
Bill Gates, in an interview for German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche in early August 2004, said that if Hiroshi Yamauchi were to call him, "I will pick up at once" and discuss buying the company. Gates tried in the late 1990s to acquire the company but Yamauchi turned him down. Rumors started coming out that Microsoft was buying Nintendo, but these rumors were confirmed to be false.
Nintendo's chief designer, and video game producer, is Shigeru Miyamoto. Mr. Miyamoto is largely known for creating Nintendo's most popular games. Miyamoto is considered by many to be the most talented video game developer in the industry and one of the most influential in history. He is known for several franchise titles, such as Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda, F-zero, Mario Kart, Starfox, and Pikmin.
Nintendo Power is a monthly news and strategy magazine from Nintendo. The first issue published was July/August of 1988 spotlighting the NES game Super Mario Bros. 2. They are still being published today with over 180 issues.
In addition to its notable first party franchises, Nintendo consoles were where a number of popular console franchises began.
Nintendo is known for a "no tolerance" stance against emulation of its video games and consoles. It claims that mask work copyright protects its games from the exceptions that United States copyright law otherwise provides for backing up software legally. Until mid-2002, the company also claimed that emulators running on personal computers have no use other than to play pirated video games, contested by some who say these emulators have been used to develop and test independently produced software, albeit on Nintendo's platforms.
The revival of the NES and SNES through emulation has gradually settled down, and NES and SNES ROMs are actually getting easier to find. However, Nintendo's opposition remains, due largely to its tendency to re-release old games within new ones, as with Animal Crossing, Metroid Prime, and the The Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition, as well as with the re-release of many older games for the Game Boy Advance Classic NES Series. The enhanced remake idea sometimes curbs the need for emulation of NES quality games on the Nintendo GameCube.
For many years Nintendo of America also had strict censorship regulations on its games, and had a long list of objects, situations, and phrases that were not allowed to appear in licensed games on Nintendo systems. Among the banned subject matter was the appearance of excessive blood and gore, nudity and sexual content, religious content, swearing, and smoking. This zero tolerance policy, praised and championed by U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, was popular with parents, but unpopular with older gamers who felt they were being "babied". Upon the advent of the ESRB video game ratings system in 1994, the censorship practices were lessened. However, minor changes to games being localized for the U.S. and European markets are still made on occasion; these are largely left to the individual developer's discretion.
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