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Nintendo

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Nintendo logo
Nintendo logo

Nintendo Corporation, Limited (Japanese: 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 cards, for use in a Japanese playing card game of the same name. Over the years, it became a video game company and one of the most powerful in the industry. Aside from video games, Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners Major League Baseball team. Nintendo Corporation, Limited, 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 Europe, the European division, is based in Großostheim, Germany.

Overview

Nintendo is the longest running company in the history of the video game console market and historically the best known console manufacturer. They began in the Japanese market in 1983, the U.S. market in 1985, and the European market in 1986. Over time Nintendo has manufactured four TV consoles -- the Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom/Super NES, the N64, the present GameCube—and many different handheld consoles, including five versions of their popular Game Boy, and the Nintendo DS.

History

1889 – 1968

Nintendo Koppai was the name of a small Japanese business founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda in Kyoto, Japan. The cards, which were all handmade, soon began to get extremely popular and Yamauchi had to hire assistants to massproduce to cards to keep up with the high demand.

During 1929, Yamauchi retired from the company and allowed his son in law, Sekiryo Yamauchi, to take over the company as president. In 1933 Sekiryo Yamauchi established a joint venture with another company and thus renamed the company Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. In 1947 Sekiryo established the company Marufuku Co. Ltd to distribute the Hanafuda cards, as well as several other brands of cards that had been introduced by Nintendo.

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Hiroshi Yamauchi was the third president of Nintendo.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, the grandson of Sekiryo Yamauchi, took office as the president of Nintendo during the year of 1949. In 1951 he renamed their distribution company, Marufuku Co. Ltd., to Nintendo Karuta Co. Ltd.

In 1959, Nintendo struck a deal with Disney to have them allow Nintendo to use Disney's characters on Nintendo's playing cards. The deal was a success and sold at least 600,000 cards in a single year.

Following this, in 1963, Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. was renamed Nintendo Co. Ltd. by Hiroshi and Nintendo began to experiment in other areas of business. During the period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo founded a taxi company and a "love hotel", as well as producing toys, games and several other things (including a vacuum cleaner). Both the taxi company and love hotel ended in failure and were eventually closed.

1969 – 1980

In 1969 Nintendo established a games division within their company. In the following years, Nintendo produced several successful toys and games, the most notable being their beam guns and Ultrahand, an arm expansion toy. Most of these invention were the ideas of a new Nintendo employee, Gunpei Yokoi.

In 1973 Nintendo expanded on their light gun idea with the introduction of The Laser Clay Shooting System, which used solar cells to simulate clay pigeon shooting. The The Laser Clay Shooting System was another huge success. In 1974 the same idea was reused with the introduction of Wild Gunman, which was a laser gun game where a player would attempt to draw a light gun and shoot at an image of a gunman before the gunman "shot back". Wild Gunman was exported to the USA and Europe.

During 1975 Yamauchi began doing research into a new American trend in which you could connect a device to your television in order to play simple games, called video games. Other companies, such as Atari, had had some success in this field and and Hiroshi decided it would be a good business venture for Nintendo to delve into. In the same year, he negotiated a deal with Magnavox to allow Nintendo to produce and sell the Magnavox Odyssey, a simple video game console. Since Nintendo didn't have the necessary equipment to manufacture these machines, they created a pact with Mitsubishi, who would manufacture them.

With Nintendo's new relationship with Mitsubishi, in 1977 the two companies released their joint effort video game machine, the Color TV Game 6, which allowed players to play six different very simple versions of tennis, which sold millions of copies. 1977 is also the year Shigeru Miyamoto joined Nintendo, working as an art designer for arcade games.

Soon, Nintendo released several other successful home video game consoles, including an advanced version of the Color TV Game 6, called the Color TV Game 15, a racing game, and another game called Blockbuster.

In 1979 Nintendo began design work for what was to be their first handheld game console, the Game & Watch, which was another idea of Gunpei Yokoi. It was released in 1980, which is also the year that Nintendo announced the addition of a new wholly owned subsidiary, located in New York, named Nintendo of America. The Game & Watch was very successful.

1980 – 1982

Also in 1980, Nintendo began the production of arcade games. These arcade games were mostly shoot-'em-ups sometimes using Nintendo's light gun, going under names such as Hellfire or Sheriff. However, this direction changed when Shigeru Miyamoto was told to finish work on the arcade alien shoot-'em-up Radar Scope. Not liking where the game was going, he decided to scrap the project and instead began work on Donkey Kong, with the help of Yokoi, which was a silly arcade game starring the attempts of an obese carpenter trying to rescue his girlfriend from an ape. Although originally frowned upon by fellow Nintendo workers, the release of Donkey Kong was a huge success and the game sold over 65,000 units, making it the most popular arcade game of the year.

During the same year, Nintendo, probably inspired by the success of Atari and several other companies, set to work on a new, more advanced multicartridge video game console. They knew that in order for the system to be successful, since other companies had already released multicartridge systems, that their console would have to be better than the rest, and still carry a feasible price.

In 1982 Nintendo released their sequel to Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. as an arcade game. Although not selling as many units as the original Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. still sold well, selling around 35,000 units. This was also the year the they established Nintendo of America Inc. In Redmond, Washington and merged the New York subsidiary into it.

1983 – 1989

The Nintendo Famicom, released in 1983, received a warm welcome from the Japanese economy.

In 1983 Nintendo released their Famicom (Family Computer) in Japan, which was their first attempt at a multicartridge video game console. The system was very successful, selling over 500,000 units within two months. The console was also considerably cheaper than its competitors at about $100 USD. However, after a few months of the consoles selling well, Nintendo received complaints that some Famicom consoles would freeze when the player attempted to play certain games. The fault was found in a malfunctioning chip and Nintendo decided to recall all Famicon units currently on store shelves, which cost them almost half a million dollars USD.

It was also in 1983 that Nintendo planned to release the Famicom in the USA. In the USA, however, the video game market had almost completely died out due to the large amount of low quality games. Nintendo decided that to avoid this, they would only allow games that received their "Seal of Quality" to be sold for the Famicom, using a 10NES lockout system to prevent unlicensed games.

By 1984 the Famicom had proven to be a huge continued success in Japan. However, Nintendo also encountered a problem with the sudden popularity of the Famicom -- they did not have the resources to manufacture games at the same pace they were selling them. To combat this, Yamauchi decided to divide his employees into three groups; the groups being Research & Development 1 (R&D 1), Research & Development 2 (R&D 2} and Research & Development 3 (R&D 3). R&D 1 was headed by Gunpei Yokoi, R&D 2 was headed by Masayuki Uemura, and R&D 3 was headed by Takeda Genyo. Using these groups, Yamauchi hoped Nintendo would produce a low amount of high quality games rather then a high amount of okay quality games.

In 1985 Nintendo announced they were going to release the Famicom worldwide – except under a different name, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Super Mario Bros. was also released for the Famicom in Japan and is a large success.

They soon began shipping the Nintendo Entertainment System to the USA in 1986, along with 15 games, sold separately, and, in the USA, it outsold its competitors on a ten to one scale. This was also the year that Metroid (USA/Japan) and Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japan) was released.

In 1988, Nintendo unveiled Nintendo Power, a monthly news and strategy magazine from Nintendo that served to advertise new games. The first issue published was July/August edition, which spotlighted the NES game Super Mario Bros. 2. They are still being published today with over 180 issues.

In 1989 Nintendo released the Game Boy in Japan, along with the accompanying game Tetris. Later, Super Mario 1 was also released for the Game Boy, which sold 14 million copies worldwide. 1989 was also the year that Nintendo announced a sequel to their popular video game console, the Famicom, to be called the Super Famicom.

By the end of the 1980s the courts found Nintendo guilty of anti-trust activities because it had abused its relationship with third party developers and created a monopoly in the gaming industry by not allowing developers to make games for any other platforms.

1990 – 1995

The Super Famicom was released in Japan on November 21st, 1990. The system's launch was largely successful, and the Super Famicom was sold out across Japan within three days. In 1991, the Super Famicom was launched under the name "the Super Nintendo Entertainment System" (SNES). The SNES was released in Europe in 1992.

1992 was the year in which Gunpei Yokoi and the rest of R&D 1 began planning on a new virtual reality console to be called the Virtual Boy. Hiroshi Yamauchi also bought shares of the Seattle Mariners in 1992.

In 1993 Nintendo announced plans to develop a new 64-bit console codenamed Project Reality, that would have be capable rendering fully 3D environments and characters. In 1994, Nintendo also claimed that Project Reality would be renamed Ultra 64 in the US. In 1995 Nintendo changed the final name of the system to the Nintendo 64, and announced that it would be released in 1996. They later showed previews of the system and several games, including Super Mario 64, to the media and public.

1995 is also the year that Nintendo purchased part of Rareware, a choice that would prove to be a wise investment.

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Nintendo released the Virtual Boy to much hype and fanfare in 1995, it was, however, a flop.

In the mid-90s Nintendo of America eased up on its stringent policies on blood and violence. After Sega created the Mega CD (Sega CD in North America) add on for its 16-bit machine, Nintendo initially contracted with Sony to develop an addon CD-ROM drive for the SNES, but after Sony announced a standalone version of the drive, Nintendo terminated the contract and went with Philips. Nintendo announced their alliance with Philips at the same conference that Sony announced their CD-ROM drive. 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 new product, the PlayStation.

In 1995 Nintendo released the Virtual Boy in Japan. The console sold poorly, but Nintendo still said they had hope for it and continued to release several other games and attempted a release in the U.S.

1996 – Present

On June 23rd, 1996, the Nintendo 64 (N64) was released in Japan and was instantly a huge hit, selling over 500,000 units on the first day of its release. On October 1st, 1996, Nintendo released their Nintendo 64 in the USA, which was also a success.

Nintendo also released the Game Boy Pocket in 1996, which was a smaller version of the original Game Boy. On August 15th, about a week after the release of the Game Boy Pocket, Gunpei Yokoi resigned from his position in Nintendo, at the age of 56.

On August 1st, 1997, the Nintendo 64 was finally released in Europe. Pocket Monsters was also released in Japan in 1997, which was a success. Gunpei Yokoi, former employee of Nintendo, died in a car accident at the age of 57.

Nintendo released their GameCube home video game console on September 14th, 2001, in Japan. It was released in North America on November 18th of 2001.

Consoles

NES

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Nintendo introduced the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the United States in the July of 1985 after a successful launch of the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan on July 15, 1983.

The NES success was probably due to its relatively low price (14,000 yen), Regardless of sales, the NES wasn't as technologically advanced as some other consoles on the market, and had somewhat blocky controllers.

Under Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln, the NES is often considered to be the "savior" of the video game industry in North America. Nintendo debuted Super Mario Bros., and later hits such as Metroid and The Legend of Zelda for the NES, 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").

Super NES

Main articles:

File:Snes sys.jpg

Nintendo released the Super Famicom in Japan on November 21, 1990. In September 1991, Nintendo released the Super Famicom, under a new name, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), in North America. The North American release of the SNES featured a greatly different outer appearance than that of the Super Famicom, including redesigned controllers and various other cosmetic changes. In 1992, the SNES was released in Europe.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System followed in the steps of its predecessor, sporting a relatively low price and somewhat high technical specifications for its era. The controller of the SNES had also improved over that of the NES, as it now had rounded edges and several new buttons.

In Japan, the Super Famicom easily took control of the gaming market. Despite a slow start, the SNES in North America eventually overtook its competition, 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. In the U.S., the Genesis barely outsold the SNES, however total worldwide sales of the SNES were higher than the Genesis.

Nintendo 64

File:Nintendo64.jpg

Main article: Nintendo 64

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 their third console, 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. 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 come out on top over the Saturn and secure a solid #2 spot under the #1 Sony PlayStation.

Nintendo GameCube

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Main article: Nintendo GameCube

By 2001 the next-generation consoles were being released. Sega had introduced the Dreamcast in 1999, Sony answered with the PlayStation 2 in late 2000, and Microsoft joined the fray with the Xbox in late 2001. In November of 2001, Nintendo released their fourth console, the GameCube, continuing with their popular franchise titles, such as, Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Metroid, Super Smash Bros., and also introduced a new series called Pikmin. Currently, the GameCube is in second place in total worldwide sales ahead of the Xbox and behind the PlayStation 2.

Handheld consoles

Game Boy

Main articles:

File:Sp pwhite.jpg

Introduced in 1989, and continuing strong today, were Nintendo's portable Game Boy systems. With several evolutions, including Pocket, Light, 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 console food chain since its inception and made Nintendo the domineer of the handheld console market.

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 2004, Nintendo launched the Classic NES Series on the Game Boy Advance.

Nintendo DS

Main article: Nintendo DS

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Nintendo released their Nintendo DS (Dual Screen, or Developers' System) handheld game console in November of 2004. The Nintendo DS features innovative dual screens, the bottom of which is touch-sensitive, which introduces an entirely new concept into gaming. It also features a built in microphone and the ability to wirelessly connect 16 players' Nintendo DS' together simultaneously via Wi-Fi (which allows large multiplayer matches). The DS is not a successor of the Game Boy Advance, but rather a completely new system, although it does carry the capability to play Game Boy Advance cartridges.

Nintendo has officially stated that the DS in the name can stand for two different things; Developers' System to their developers, or Dual Screen to their consumers. The most popular usage is Dual Screen.

Happenings

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 a breach of contract and various other charges relating to the Pokémon trading card game.

In early August 2004, Bill Gates said in an interview for German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche 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.

In late September 2004, Hiroshi Yamauchi announced at a press conference in Kyoto that Nintendo will possibly make a new division; an animation studio that will most likely produce anime. Yamauchi stated that "video games are very similar to films".

In late November 2004, Nintendo finalized their plans regarding their entrance into the anime business. Their first work will be an animated film which will be done in house. Content of the film however has not yet been determined. Also it was announced that back in August Hiroshi Yamauchi sold his shares of the Seattle Mariners baseball team to Nintendo, raising Nintendo's stake enough to make the company majority owner of the team.

Hardware

  • Game & Watch
  • Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom for short) Japanese console.
    • Famicom Disk System (Japan only) - A large number of stores in Japan had "Disk Writers" with games stored in them that could be downloaded to a non-standard floppy disk for ¥500. Very popular in Japan, killed due to advancing technology that rendered the disks obsolete, and later, rampant piracy of said disks.
  • Nintendo Entertainment System (NES for short) North American and European console version of the Famicom. It was responsible for reviving the North American video game industry.
  • Game Boy - Portable black and white handheld system. The best-selling videogame system of all time.
  • Super Famicom 16-bit Japanese console.
  • Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES or Super NES for short) North American and European console version of the Super Famicom.
  • Super Game Boy - Adapter for playing Game Boy games on the Super NES.
  • Virtual Boy - The Virtual Boy used a red monochrome 3D virtual reality like system. Fewer than two dozen games were released for it in the United States.
  • Game Boy Color- A version of the Game Boy with a simple colored screen.
  • Nintendo 64 - Originally the Ultra 64, this system saw Nintendo fully embrace 3D game worlds. It was also the last home console that was cartridge-based.
    • 64DD - Only released in Japan, this add-on system's games are on re-writeable magnetic disks. Games released include a paint and 3D construction package, F-Zero X Expansion Kit, for creating new F-Zero X tracks and a few others. A complete commercial failure, many speculated that Nintendo released it only to save face after promoting it pre-emptively for years.
  • Game Boy Advance - The new, more advanced version of the Game Boy, with the same processing power as a Super Nintendo.
  • Nintendo GameCube - Nintendo's current mini disk system; uses a proprietary 1.2Gb DVD medium.
  • Triforce - An arcade system based on Nintendo GameCube hardware, developed in partnership with Sega and Namco.
  • Game Boy Advance SP - a fold-up version of the Game Boy Advance with a frontlit screen. The SP stands for Special.
  • Game Boy Player - An adapter for playing Game Boy games on the GameCube.
  • Nintendo DS - Dual-screen (one half of which is touch-screen) portable game console.
  • iQue - a version of the Nintendo 64, with double the clock speed and downloadable games, released only in the Chinese market.
  • Project Revolution - (code name) - Nintendo plans to release its next video game console in late 2005.

Software and franchises

Related article: Franchises established on Nintendo systems

Arcade games released by Nintendo

First-party and second-party divisons

People

Policies

Emulation

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 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.

Censorship

Nintendo of America had a policy of strict game censorship. Many phrases and religious content were removed from their licensed games. Appearance of excessive blood and gore, nudity and sexual content were also all removed. This zero tolerance policy, was praised and championed by U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, but the mature gamer felt they were being restricted to "kiddy" content. Upon the advent of the ESRB video game ratings system in 1994, the censorship practices were lessened. Today changes are mustly only made by the developer and Conker's bad fur day, BMX XXX, Resident Evil 4 and Eternal Darkness are all prime examples of Nintendo lessening their practices. These type of games still need to contain an "M" rating to be acceptable, but that is no different with Sony's and Microsoft's console.

One known side effect of this policy was when the Sega Genesis version of Mortal Kombat sold over double the amount of the Nintendo's SNES version, mainly due to the fact that Nintendo had forced Midway to remove any blood and gore from their release of the game, which had been one of the selling points of the Genesis version.

See also

Official sites

Unofficial sites

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