Nintendo

Nintendo is a Japanese entertainment company founded in Kyoto in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. Its first business was the manufacture of hanafuda, Japanese playing cards decorated with flowers. The company later expanded into other card products, including a licensing agreement with Disney in 1959 that helped popularize playing cards featuring Disney characters in Japan. Nintendo did not become primarily identified with video games until the 1970s, when it entered the electronic entertainment business with arcade machines and home-game products. Gunpei Yokoi, an important Nintendo designer, created the Ultra Hand toy in 1966 and later developed the Game & Watch series. Introduced in 1980, Game & Watch units combined a simple electronic game with a digital clock and helped establish Nintendo's portable-gaming business. Yokoi also created the Game Boy, released in 1989. Its monochrome screen and interchangeable cartridges made it a long-lived platform, and the bundled puzzle game Tetris became a major commercial success. Nintendo's arcade game Donkey Kong arrived in 1981. Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, it introduced the character then called Jumpman, who became Mario. Mario subsequently starred in Super Mario Bros., released for the Family Computer in Japan in 1985 and for the Nintendo Entertainment System in other markets. The game established many conventions of side-scrolling platform games and became central to Nintendo's international identity. Miyamoto also created The Legend of Zelda, whose first game appeared in 1986, and helped create the Star Fox and Pikmin series. The company has produced multiple home-console generations, including the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch. The Wii, released in 2006, used motion-sensitive Wii Remote controllers and attracted audiences beyond traditional game players through titles such as Wii Sports. Nintendo DS, launched in 2004, used two screens, one of them touch-sensitive; its successor, Nintendo 3DS, added glasses-free stereoscopic 3D. Nintendo released the Nintendo Switch worldwide in March 2017. Its design allows it to work as both a television-connected console and a handheld system, with detachable Joy-Con controllers. The system's launch title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, received extensive critical recognition. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, released in 2020, became one of the platform's most successful games. Beyond internally developed series, Nintendo manages franchises including Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, Kirby, Metroid, Fire Emblem, Splatoon, and Xenoblade Chronicles. Pokemon is jointly managed through The Pokemon Company with partners including Game Freak and Creatures. Nintendo also owns a majority stake in the Seattle-based baseball team the Seattle Mariners' former ownership group was sold in 2016.