In each sector or area of work there are always some names that stand out . It may be because they did what others had not achieved or because they gave seven turns of the screw to what had already been standardized, but they did something to earn their fame and renown. If we look at the world of video games, there is no doubt that the most colossal colossus of all is Nintendo , the Japanese company that on September 23, 2019 turned 130 years of history .
The company was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamuchi and was dedicated to making decks of playing cards of the hanafuda variety, famous for their traditional floral motifs. The beginning of the Meiji era had broken with Japan’s isolationism from the rest of the world and this opened a new horizon of possibilities and markets . Nintendo was the first company to commercialize Western-style decks in the Japanese islands and its success was such that it ended up specializing in entertainment products and board games . One of its great milestones was the decks of cards with Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, which became a real success in the late 50s.
It was in 1963 that the company officially took the name Nintendo and put all its efforts and resources in the games department . The first time that innovative electronic technology was used in a toy was in 1969, when the company founded by Yamuchi created a pistol with a laser firing system called the Beam Gun . In just four years it became the best-selling hobby in the country, above bowling. This success made the use of technology gain weight and began to collaborate with other companies such as Mitsubishi Electronic. , with whom he created a video game system with an electronic video player.
The first arcade games conquered the youngest in half the world and Nintendo saw an opportunity that it could not miss. In 1979 it opened its first headquarters in New York, dedicated exclusively to coin-operated machines. It was here that the machine with the 1981 hit Donkey Kong was produced. But if something changed the history of video games, it was the arrival of the Nintento Entertainment System (NES) in 1986, its first desktop console and a turning point.
Since then, Nintendo has chained numerous triumphs among which the GameBoy stands out, a small portable console that allowed to try different games stored in cartridges and that continues to be the third best-selling console in history (118 million units) and the Wii , a system that used the corporal movement for the development of the games. His most recent creation, the Nintendo Switch , conquered the public with its combination of desktop and laptop .
