History of Nintendo

The history of Nintendo, an international video game company based in Japan, starts in 1889 when Fusajiro Yamauchi founded "Yamauchi Nintendo", a producer of hanafuda playing cards. Since its founding, the company has been based in Kyoto. Sekiryo Kaneda was Nintendo's president from 1929 to 1949. His successor, Hiroshi Yamauchi, had the company producing toys like the Ultra Hand among other ventures. In the 1970s and '80s, Nintendo made arcade games, the Color TV-Game series of home game consoles, and the Game & Watch series of handheld electronic games.

Shigeru Miyamoto designed the arcade game Donkey Kong (1981): Nintendo's first international hit video game, and the origin of the company's mascot, Mario. After the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo filled a market gap in the West by releasing their Japanese Famicom home console (1983) as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the U.S. in 1985. Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka's innovative NES titles, Super Mario Bros. (1985) and The Legend of Zelda (1986), were highly influential to video games.

The Game Boy handheld console (1989) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System home console (1990) were successful, while Nintendo had an intense business rivalry with console maker Sega. The Virtual Boy (1995), a portable console with stereoscopic 3D graphics, was a critical and financial failure. With the Nintendo 64 (1996) and its innovative launch title Super Mario 64, the company began making games with fully-3D computer graphics. The Pokémon media franchise, partially owned by Nintendo, has been a worldwide hit since the 1990s.

The Game Boy Advance (2001) was another success. The GameCube home console (2001), while popular with core Nintendo fans, had weak sales compared to Sony and Microsoft's competing consoles. In 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi was succeeded by Satoru Iwata, who oversaw the release of the Nintendo DS handheld (2004) with a touchscreen, and the Wii home console (2006) with a motion controller; both were extraordinarily successful. Nintendo, now targeting a wide audience including casual gamers and previously non-gamers, essentially stopped competing with Sony and Microsoft, who targeted devoted gamers. Wii Sports (2006) remains Nintendo's best-selling game.

The Nintendo 3DS handheld (2011) successfully retried stereoscopic 3D. The Wii U home console (2012) sold poorly, putting Nintendo's future as a manufacturer in doubt, and influencing Iwata to bring the company into mobile gaming. Iwata also led development of the successful Nintendo Switch (2017), a home/handheld hybrid console, before his death in 2015. He was succeeded by Tatsumi Kimishima until 2018, followed by current president Shuntaro Furukawa. The Nintendo Switch 2 released in 2025.