Nintendo Made Playing Cards for 77 Years, Ran a Love Hotel, and Sold Rice — Before Making Mario
Before the Game Boy and Mario, Nintendo was a playing card company founded in 1889. It also tried taxi services, instant rice, a TV network, and love hotels before finding its way to video games.
The Real Problem
Japan's playing card market was shrinking — Nintendo had to reinvent itself or die
IMPACT: Transformed from a 19th-century card company into the creator of the world's most iconic video games
The Unsung Heroes
Fusajiro Yamauchi
Founder
Started Nintendo in 1889 as a hanafuda playing card manufacturer in Kyoto
Gunpei Yokoi
Engineer
Invented the Game Boy and the D-pad — the most influential controller input in gaming history
Key Takeaways
- •Founded in 1889 — Nintendo is older than the Eiffel Tower
- •Tried taxis, instant rice, TV, and love hotels before gaming
- •Super Mario Bros. (1985) is credited with saving the U.S. video game industry
- •The Game Boy was invented by a former janitor turned engineer
Root Connection
Nintendo's name means 'leave luck to heaven' — and the company has survived 137 years of reinvention, from handmade playing cards to defining the modern gaming industry.
Timeline
Fusajiro Yamauchi founds Nintendo Koppai in Kyoto — making handmade hanafuda cards
Nintendo licenses Disney characters for playing cards — massive hit in Japan
Nintendo enters the toy market after playing card sales plateau
Nintendo releases its first video game console — the Color TV-Game
Super Mario Bros. launches on NES — saves the American video game industry
Game Boy releases — becomes the best-selling handheld of the 20th century
Nintendo was founded in 1889. The Eiffel Tower was completed that same year. One became a symbol of Paris. The other made Mario.
Fusajiro Yamauchi started Nintendo Koppai (roughly translated: 'leave luck to heaven') in a small building in Kyoto, Japan. The business: handmade hanafuda playing cards. These are traditional Japanese cards decorated with flowers, used in a variety of gambling games.
Yamauchi's cards were beautifully crafted, and the business grew. For 70 years, Nintendo was a playing card company. A successful one — by the 1950s, it was Japan's largest playing card manufacturer.
But the market had a ceiling. Playing cards were a niche product. Hiroshi Yamauchi, the founder's great-grandson, took over as president in 1949 at age 22. After visiting American playing card companies and seeing their similarly limited businesses, he realized Nintendo needed to diversify or die.
Between playing cards and video games, Nintendo tried taxi services, instant rice, a TV network, and a chain of love hotels. None of them worked.
What followed was one of the most chaotic periods of corporate experimentation in business history. Nintendo tried everything.
Taxi company? Started one. Failed. Instant rice company? Launched a brand called 'Chiritorie.' Flopped. Love hotels? Yes, Nintendo actually operated a chain of love hotels — short-stay hotels popular in Japan. It was profitable but embarrassing. A TV network? Attempted. Didn't work.
By the mid-1960s, Yamauchi realized that toys and games — not food or hospitality — were Nintendo's future. He hired a young maintenance worker named Gunpei Yokoi, who had been caught playing with an extending mechanical arm he'd built to pass time on the factory floor. Instead of firing him, Yamauchi told him to turn it into a toy.
The Game Boy was designed by a janitor. Gunpei Yokoi was maintaining assembly lines when Nintendo's president noticed him playing with a toy he'd made.
The Ultra Hand became a massive hit in 1966. Yokoi was promoted from janitor to the games division. He went on to invent the Game & Watch handheld series, the D-pad controller, and — in 1989 — the Game Boy.
Nintendo entered the video game market in 1977 with the Color TV-Game series, followed by arcade games. In 1981, a young designer named Shigeru Miyamoto created Donkey Kong — which introduced a jumping carpenter named Mario.
In 1983, the American video game industry crashed. Atari collapsed. Retailers refused to stock games. Everyone thought video games were a dead fad.
Nintendo launched the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in North America in 1985 with Super Mario Bros. The game was so good — and the NES so reliable — that it single-handedly revived the American gaming market. By 1988, Nintendo had a larger operating profit than all of Hollywood's movie studios combined.
The Game Boy launched in 1989 with Tetris as its pack-in game. Critics said the green-tinted monochrome screen was outdated compared to competitors. It didn't matter. The Game Boy was cheap, durable, and the battery lasted forever. It sold 118 million units.
Nintendo continued to innovate: the SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii, DS, Switch. Each generation brought new ideas — analog sticks, motion controls, hybrid portable/home consoles.
From handmade playing cards in 1889 to a global gaming empire in 2026 — Nintendo's 137-year journey is the ultimate story of reinvention. Most companies that old are making the same product they started with. Nintendo has reinvented itself at least six times.
The root of Nintendo isn't gaming. It's a willingness to fail at everything until you find the thing you were meant to do.
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