Nintendo

Lore & Background

The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the company in 1889 to produce handmade hanafuda playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business and becoming a public company, Nintendo began producing toys in the 1960s, and later video games. Nintendo developed its first arcade games in the 1970s, and distributed its first system, the Color TV-Game in 1977. The company became internationally dominant in the 1980s after the arcade release of Donkey Kong (1981) and the Nintendo Entertainment System, which launched outside of Japan alongside Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Since then, Nintendo has produced some of the most successful consoles in the video game industry, including the Game Boy (1989), the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1991), the Game Boy Advance (2001), the Nintendo DS (2004), the Wii (2006), and the Nintendo Switch (2017). It has created or published numerous major franchises, including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Metroid, Kirby, and Star Fox. The company's mascot, Mario, is among the most famous fictional characters, and Nintendo's other characters—including Luigi, Donkey Kong, Samus Aran, Link, Kirby, Pikachu, and Fox McCloud—have attained international recognition. Several films and a theme park area based on the company's franchises have been created. Nintendo's game consoles have sold over 860 million units worldwide as of May 2025, for which more than 5.9 billion individual games have been sold. The company has numerous subsidiaries in Japan and worldwide, in addition to second-party developers including HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, and Game Freak. It is one of the wealthiest and most valuable companies in the Japanese market.

In Their Own Story

The cartridge slot clicks shut. A familiar Nintendo logo fades, replaced by the silhouette of a man in a tuxedo. The controller feels heavy with promise. In living rooms across the world, four friends gather around a single screen, squabbling over who gets Oddjob, who's banned from using the golden gun, and whether proximity mines in the bathroom are 'cheap.' The N64 hums, ready to deliver a new kind of spy fantasy—one that would define a generation of couch co-op, late-night grudge matches, and friendships shattered by a single headshot through a stack of crates.

Reader's Guide

The source article does not mention GoldenEye 007, Rare, Martin Hollis, Graeme Norgate, or Grant Kirkhope. Therefore, no information about the GoldenEye video game franchise is available from the source.

Did You Know?

• Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a playing card company.
• Nintendo's first video game system was the Color TV-Game in 1977.
• The company's mascot Mario is among the most famous fictional characters.