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Firstly, please apologise this piece being late today. I have had a very long week with little sleep, so will ill-prepped and behind on everything this week. Plus, I just wanted to make sure this one was good. Because, hell, it’s Nintendo after all. Probably (please vote so we can settle this) the greatest games console of all time.

Truth be told, I was a Sega kid growing up. I did love Mario, and spent endless hours on Mario Kart over the years, but my first official Nintendo console wasn’t until the revolutionary Nintendo 64. This was a real treat to write this one. Very fun to research and hopefully it’s a story you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing!

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Mario, Luigi & The Long History Of Nintendo

Mario, Pokémon, Zelda and Donkey Kong. If you are alive today, you either played these games, or your children did. And if I had a guess, I’d say it was the former. I bet you romped through The Mushroom Kingdom with the brothers Mario by day, and chased Pikachu and swapped rare Pokémon by nights. I know I did. But how did we get here? How did a Yakuza adjacent, trading card company become they who would embed themselves inside of every families living rooms for the last half century.

The moment you decide to take a quick under the proverbial hood of the Japanese gaming giant, you will be confronted over and over one one thing; creativity. The story of Nintendo is akin to the story of Pixar, if Pixar continued to reinvent itself every few years across platforms.

It’s a real pleasure to present to you this here story today. As I began to wrote this piece, a thought came to me; ‘This company, across the last fifty years, may have added the most joy to children across the world.’ Think about that. At their core Nintendo is really just a big, old, fat, smelly corporate monolith. With boards, investors, backstabbings, PR nightmares, links to the underworld; that just added pure joy to the world for decades on end.

Kinda gives you the warm and fuzzies when you think about it. So today we are taking a journey back in time. All the way back to 1889, in a humble side alley, near the banks of the Kamo River, in Japan's former imperial capital, Kyoto. From this starting point the story of Nintendo begins.

Playing cards, tobacco partnerships, ‘love’ hotels & the Yakuza

If I were to tell you Nintendo had an ‘interesting’ past, I’d probably be underselling things. Their original business—launched 23 September 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi—came from playing cards, which were long since looked down upon though the Edo Period of Japan due to their connection to gambling, and therefore by extension, Japanese organised crime, the Yakuza.

The cards Nintendo were developing were known as ‘Hanafuda Cards.’ They were beautifully decorated and hand-made, 'flower cards,' divided into twelve suits, one for each month of the year. The cards themselves were hand-painted on mulberry wood pulp, and sold well all across Japan. Before too long though, hanafuda cards started to become affiliated with the criminal underworld, and manufacturers stopped making the cards in order to protect their image.

Unlike its rivals though, Nintendo saw this as an opportunity, and before long they were the most prominent hanafuda card manufacturer in all of Japan, with the Yakuza as its biggest customers. Rumour has it that members of the Yakuza even have tattoos that are inspired by the illustrations on the Nintendo cards. This was not the only partnership early Nintendo would share with the underworld.

In what is a strange pre-cursor to Pokemon, the next sordid stage of Nintendo’s growth was their 1900s partnership with Yoshihiro ‘Tobacco King’ Murai. Each pack of Murai’s cigarettes would hold one single card from the hanafuda deck, leaving early Nintendo fans collecting tobacco wrappers in-effect trying to ‘catch them all,’ Pokemon style.

_{*Warning: Speculation and rumour incoming.}

Where things get even dicier again in our story is where Nintendo (may have) went next with their product development: love hotels. And by ‘love’ I am sure you know that I mean love in the proverbial sense. The type of love that is fleeting, in and out in under an hour. Yes, that type of love. The story goes that Nintendo's venture into love hotels was part of their business diversification in the 1960s through their real estate development branch. This happened during a period when Nintendo was searching for new business opportunities beyond their traditional playing card market.

Love hotels were (and still are) a legitimate and regulated part of Japanese urban infrastructure. They emerged as a practical solution in post-war Japan, where multiple generations often lived together in small homes, leaving couples with little privacy. These establishments offer short-term stays and maintain a high degree of discretion for their customers.

The rise of the (arcade) machines

It’s the 1970s, disco is taking off, Star Wars, Jaws and Saturday Night Fever have been dominating the box office, and one fast-emerging technology is about to catapulted Nintendo to a global stage. That technology is video games. To contextualise this un poco, at $455 billion dollars annually, the video game industry is larger than television, music and film, combined.

But in the decade that brought us funny thing and funny thing, the industry looked a lot like the following: Little Johnny asks his mother for a few quarters to head down the local arcade to play a few rounds Pong and Space Invaders.

In the late 70s the team at Nintendo began building our their first video game systems, starting a The Laser Clay Shooting System—also sometimes called the Beam Gun Series—which marked Nintendo's first venture into electronic gaming. Installed in converted bowling alleys across Japan, these setups used projectors and light-sensing technology to simulate clay pigeon shooting. Players used rifle controllers to shoot at on-screen targets, with sophisticated detection systems tracking their accuracy.

Though the 1973 oil crisis forced many installations to close, the project meant important experience in electronic gaming. This led to Nintendo developing the Beam Gun series of toys and their first home gaming product, the Color TV-Game series in 1977. These early experiments laid the foundation for Nintendo's transformation from a playing card company to a video game pioneer.

Towards the close of the decade, in 1978, they produced Computer Othello, their first microprocessor-based arcade game. But in 1981, Nintendo would find its true breakthrough with a game featuring a villainous giant gorilla, and a hero in a red cap and overalls.

Konnichiwa, Shigeru Miyamoto

By the early 80s, Nintendo was throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick. Playing cards, love hotels, clay-pigeon light guns—it was a cocktail of weird ideas fueled by sheer survival instinct. But the gamble that changed everything wasn’t a corporate boardroom play. It came from a young developer with a sketchpad, a wild imagination, and a knack for creating magic: Shigeru Miyamoto.

Miyamoto wasn’t a conventional hire. A freshly minted industrial designer, he walked into Nintendo with dreams of creating toys. What he ended up doing instead was creating a legacy, with his first major project. What was that project? You guessed it—Donkey Kong.

The whole thing was part necessity, part accident, with Nintendo needed a hit to salvage their failing arcade game Radar Scope, Miyamoto’s task was to rework the machines into something profitable. Instead of playing it safe, he concocted an idea that not only saved the company but cemented its future.

In Donkey Kong, Miyamoto turned a simple chase into a story. A barrel-tossing gorilla kidnapped a damsel in distress, and players guided the a hero carpenter—yes, that’s right carpenter—then called Jumpman, through a maze of platforms to save her. It was the first time a video game felt like more than a game; it was a world, it was a narrative, and most importantly, it was fun.

As the game took off, Jumpman got a makeover. The or character would trade his hammer for a plunger, and go on to be renamed Mario, after Nintendo of America's short-tempered landlord, Mario Segale. Who would have ever guessed that this friendly little Italiano would become Nintendo's most famous face and gaming's most recognisable pizza-loving hero.

The genius of Miyamoto was that he didn't just create games; he created entire universes. After Donkey Kong came The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., and a parade of hits that would cement Nintendo's place in entertainment history. But perhaps more importantly, he showed that video games could be more than just high scores and flashing lights—they could tell stories, create worlds, and capture imaginations.

The world meets the Famicom + NES + Game Boy

The latter half of the 1980s is where Nintendo really started to cook. It was July 15, 1983 that the world (well, actually Japan) was gifted the Famicom, a smooshed together version of the ‘family-computer.’ This platform is what the larger world, starting with the United States, would know as the NES, or the Nintendo Entertainment System, from 1985 onwards.

_{*Note: The same year the Famicon was released, Nintendo would be listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange}

Nintendo had really struck something here. In a few short years, it was obvious that Nintendo had some budding IP, and with the success of the 1977 launch of the Atari 2600, felt it was the right time for them to join the home console revolution.

It what seemed like a wild stroke of bad fortune come good, Atari nixed the deal after they noticed a bootlegged copy of Donkey Kong being played on a rival system at the 1984 CES festival. They wrongly assumed Nintendo had been negotiating behind their back and with this, they forced the hand of for Nintendo to do this themselves, which they did launching the Nintendo Entertainment System at CES Las Vegas on January 5th, the following year.

Bowser, or King Koopa, was a large fire-breathing reptilian beast, the King of the Koopas, and a worthy foe for our plunger wielder heroes. This story would catapult, Mario and Nintendo, and would go on to sell 40 million copies worldwide. Super Mario Bros. remains on of the absolute most re-playable in the world today.

Nintendo kept their momentum through the latter half of the eighties, releasing multiple huge releases you may remember such as; Metroid, Mega Man, and most impactfully, The Legend of Zelda, a franchise that is as popular today as it was in decades past.

And finally, with the last gigantic move of the 1980s, Nintendo finally released a product they had been working diligently on for many years, their handhelp version of their system, the Nintendo Game Boy. By this stage it was beginning to look like the video game world was Nintendo’s. And we were all just living in it.

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Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat: The Console Wars

I could have led this section with a title along the lines of Mario versus Sonic the Hedgehog, but for me the Console Wars of the early nineties were really this dispute: were you a Ryu guy, or did you prefer Sub-Zero, or maybe even his evil arch nemesis from the Shirai Ryu clan, the "GET OVER HERE!" wielding, Scorpion. *_{Back, Back + High Punch}

Anywho, by the 1990s, Nintendo wasn’t just running a gaming empire; it was fending off invaders. Sega, the brash upstart, had thrown down the gauntlet with the Genesis, a sleek machine that wasn’t afraid to call Nintendo ‘kid stuff.’ The Genesis came roaring onto the scene with an aggressive marketing campaign and the attitude-packed Sonic the Hedgehog, promising speed, edge, and just enough rebellion to hook older kids who’d outgrown the Mushroom Kingdom. It was effectively a pre vs post puberty throwdown.

And the fight was real. By 1994, Sega’s Genesis—or Mega Drive, if you were outside the U.S.—had sold over 29 million units worldwide. Not bad, but still dwarfed by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which would ultimately move more than 49 million units globally. Sega’s moves, included a direct call-out to Nintendo in their ‘Genesis does what Nintendon’t’ ads, forced the gaming giant, Nintendo, to step up its game. The SNES countered with classics like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Donkey Kong Country, and the Super Mario series, reminding everyone why Nintendo was still a force to be reckoned with.

But as the Sega-Nintendo showdown heated up, two new players entered the arena: Sony and Microsoft. Sony’s PlayStation, launched in 1994, wasn’t just another console—it was a revolution. With sleek-AF design, CD-based games, and a killer library—Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot—the PlayStation became an instant hit. It sold over 102 million units, leaving both Sega and Nintendo scrambling. Sega tried to keep pace with the Saturn, but it fizzled at just 9.2 million units sold.

Then came the wild card: Microsoft’s Xbox in 2001. The Xbox, with its online play via Xbox Live and hits like Halo: Combat Evolved, changed the gaming landscape forever. It wasn’t an instant blockbuster, selling 24 million units compared to the PlayStation 2’s staggering 155 million, but it signalled a shift. Gaming wasn’t just about nostalgia or cute mascots anymore—it was becoming a serious entertainment medium.

For Nintendo, this was a wake-up call. Their GameCube, though beloved by fans, sold just 21 million units, falling behind even Microsoft. The Console Wars weren’t just about Sega vs. Nintendo anymore. Now, it was a battle royale, and Nintendo needed to find a way to stay relevant in a field that was suddenly more crowded and competitive than ever.

And in the years that followed, that’s exactly what they did. But before the comeback, Nintendo would endure some lean times.

The lean years

The late 1990s and early 2000s marked a challenging era for Nintendo. As Sony's PlayStation dominated with mature titles and cutting-edge graphics, and Microsoft's Xbox muscled in with powerful hardware and online gaming capabilities, Nintendo found itself at a crossroads. The Nintendo 64, while beloved for classics like Super Mario 64 and GoldenEye 007, sold only 32 million units—a sharp decline from the SNES's 49 million.

The company's next major console, the 2001 GameCube, struggled even more. Despite fun mainstay releases like Super Mario Sunshine and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, it managed just 21.74 million units sold. Nintendo was being outmanoeuvred by both Sony's PlayStation 2, which sold 55 million units, and Microsoft's original Xbox, which boasted adding 24 million units across households worldwide.

During this period, Nintendo's saving grace was its handheld division. The Game Boy Advance continued the company's portable gaming dominance, selling 81 million units. The Nintendo DS would later shatter even these impressive numbers, becoming one of the best-selling gaming systems of all time with 154 million units sold.

But the home console market remained a challenge. The 2006 release of the Wii seemed to reverse Nintendo's fortunes for a split, with its revolutionary motion controls and family-friendly approach, selling over 100 million units. But, the excitement around this success was short lived. The Wii U, launched in 2012, became one of Nintendo's biggest flops, selling just 13 million units over its lifetime.

Why did this all happen?—well, one theory is Nintendo lost favour with its army of 3rd party game developers. When you have developers, you have the games. Their first self-inflicted wound was building under-performing hardware, Nintendo stubbornly stuck with cartridges for the N64 while competitors embraced CD-ROM technology. Even GameCube, as an example had a much smaller disc capacity—1.5GB vs DVD's 4.7GB—meaning developers had to compress or cut content for Nintendo versions altogether.

But it wasn’t just ‘content’ that developers began to cut. Due to hardware limitations, and cost of production—it’s much cheaper to press a DVD than to build for Nintendo. This meant many developers simply skipped Nintendo platforms entirely, focusing on creating games that could easily port between PlayStation and Xbox. Major franchises like Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, and Final Fantasy became PlayStation exclusives by default.

Add to the fact that many developers, frustrated with Nintendo's demanding licensing terms and censorship policies, jumped ship to Sony's more developer-friendly PlayStation. This is the business definition of biting your hand to spite your face.

It’s safe to say that by 2016, many were questioning Nintendo's future in the home console market. The company needed something revolutionary—a device that could bridge the gap between their successful portable systems and struggling home consoles. Luckily that innovation was afoot, with the pending release of a new hybrid system that would help restore Nintendo to its former glory.

“Marrrriiooo … this is for youu”

On June 19th 2016, LeBron James won a championship for the Cleveland Cavaliers in the National Basketball Association, the NBA. Who cares right?! And more importantly, what the heck does this have to do with our story. A lot it seems.

It was not the fact that LeBron and the Cavs had won it, it was how they had won it. In the days leading up the 19th, the Cleveland Cavaliers, who LeBron has returned home to play for, had found themselves down 3-1 in a best of 7 series against MVP Steph Curry’s near insurmountable Golden State Warriors. A Golden State Warrior team that not only were the reigning champions, but had just set the regular season record of 73 wins and only 9 losses. Team that have been down in the NBA Finals by a 3-1 deficit on 32 occasions, and exactly 0 of them had managed to come back. It was a bridge too far.

But just as LeBron and the Cavs orchestrated one of sports' greatest comebacks, Nintendo was about to launch their own revolutionary response: the Switch. Released in March 2017, this hybrid console would go on to sell over 132 million units (as of late 2023), becoming Nintendo's best-selling home console ever.

The Switch succeeded by combining home console and portable gaming, offering both Nintendo's beloved franchises and strong third-party support, while its flexibility appealed to casual and hardcore gamers alike. The masterstroke that was the Switch, single-handedly rocketed the company back to place they had spent much of the the last decades; the very top of the cultural video game zeitgeist. Marrrriiooo … this is for youu.

Nintendo’s intellectual property push

Now that Nintendo has its swagger back, their next likely foray is into other art forms. Case in point, the incredibly successful launch of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, starring Chris Pratt as Mario, Jack Black as Bowser, and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong. Expect more of this.

Even though Disney totally fucked it by turning the Marvel brand into a pile of stinking, slimy, gutter-trash by putting profits ahead of the people, companies saw what Disney achieved with the first half of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and are licking their lips. It really started with Marvel and Star Wars, but now franchises like Lord of the Rings, Dune, Game of Thrones, the Batman universe and more are spreading their IP across more movies and tv (streaming) than ever before.

Only recently, Nintendo announced its plans for an upcoming feature film on the Legend of Zelda. Take a look at this treasure trove of IP Nintendo can and will likely call on in the not too distant future to exploit / extend their brand.

If the massive success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie is anything to go by, Nintendo has only scratched the surface. Expect expansions into streaming series, theme parks, and maybe even more unexpected collaborations—I’d see Donkey Kong on Broadway, wouldn’t you? The sky’s the limit when your characters have already been etched into the cultural consciousness for generations.

Failure Innovation

Like all good companies though, it hasn’t always been purely up and to the right for Nintendo—they have also failed often. We mentioned earlier about the failure that was the Wii U, but who remembers the 1995 Virtual Boy, or the even more obscure R.O.B.—the Robotic Operating Buddy that accompanied the 1985 NES release.

Nintendo has had its share of missteps: the Virtual Boy, R.O.B. the Robotic Operating Buddy, the clunky Power Glove, the short-lived Game Boy Micro, the Wii U, the Pokéwalker (yes, really), and even the ill-fated partnership with Sony that gave birth to their biggest rival, the PlayStation.

The fact of the matter is, companies like Nintendo need to fail—at scale—to eventually create something worthwhile. In my recent piece on Jeff Bezos, we highlighted his mantra of; “Failure and invention are inseparable twins.” The tricky part, is the dance Nintendo needs to do atop of a knife’s edge. One step too far and you have a major loser on your hands. Two or three major losers in a row and you may have a bad decade. A bad decade may lead to a drain of the creative horsepower in the company, and then you are not really Nintendo anymore.

Nintendo know this. And they have been successful for so many decades now because they have managed to thread the innovation needle enough times to stay on top. Some companies do not.

Playbook / How you can apply this

Usually, when doing these deep dives and trying to apply some sort of a playbook to the subject it’s a little easier. SaaS tool that does X, consumer app that does Y. It’s a little harder to break apart the success beacons attached to a company like Nintendo that: a) is 130 years old, b) is in video games and c) has reinvented itself so many times, but a few things come to mind, here they are.

Future

For me, the Nintendo is a story of continuous reinvention, decade after decade, and one that I personally hope to see play out for many decades more. Sure they may have done dealings with the Yakuza, but hey, we’re all young once.

The main thing Nintendo should be remembered for is how much joy it has brought to kids all around the world. And the exciting part is to think of how much more of this beautiful elixir it still has to serve up. Long live Mario, long live Luigi, hell even long live Bowser the cantankerous old fuck, and long live Nintendo.

Fun facts

Extra reading / learning

And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed the piece, now go out and play some video games.

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