Nintendo story led by Hiroshi Yamauchi

    Three days ago, former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi died of pneumonia, who worked in this position from 1949 to 2002 - that is, as many as 53 years.

    During this time, Nintendo has evolved from a manufacturer of playing cards into a world-renowned video game company with multi-billion dollar turnover.

    Let's remember what happened to Nintendo when Hiroshi Yamauchi was at the head of the company - remember Donkey Kong, Super Mario, Game Boy and many other games, as well as toys such as a radio-controlled vacuum cleaner and candy floss machine in home conditions.

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    Of course, you have to expand the period a bit and start with the very creation of the company.

    Nintendo has been around since 1889. Its first name is Marufuku, and the first products were playing cards. The company received the name Nintendo Koppai only in 1907. The Hanafud deck in question consists of 48 cards - 12 suits of 4 cards.

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    The Nintendo logo for the first 75 years.
    任 (Nin) 天 (ten) 堂 (dō)

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    Hiroshi Yamauchi took charge of Nintendo in 1949. He inherited this position from his grandfather, Sekiri Yamauchi. Hiroshi was distinguished from the previous head of the company by his carelessness, arrogance and commitment to his own management style - Nintendoism: no corporate hymns and other team building that interferes with your creativity.

    The new director was tough in his decisions. He answered one of the strikes connected with the decision to centralize the work capacities in one place with letters of approximate content “Pack your things and look for another job”.

    Nintendo logo in the 1960s.

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    Such a cute deck was sold in the first half of the 1960s. The size of the cards is 15x24 millimeters.

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    In the 1970s, Nintendo opened its own toy factory. They even included a candy floss machine and a radio-controlled vacuum cleaner .

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    The Ultra Hand toy was created in 1966.

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    Nintendo toys from the 1970s.

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    Color TV Game 6 appeared on the market in 1977 - it is a game console for TV with 6 types of light tennis. Management was carried out using disks on the console. In the same photo - a racing simulator, a game console Game Racing 112.

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    Nintendo Beam Gun Game - a light gun.

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    In 1978, the company opened a division, the purpose of which is the production and launch of arcade games for gaming machines on the market. One of the first products was Computer Othello, an analogue of Reversi.

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    For several years, the company has introduced the world to Radar Scope and Donkey Kong.

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    The gameplay of Radar Scope.


    Gameplay Donkey Kong: Mario first appeared in this game.



    Separately, it is necessary to mention one of the most important characters in the history of Nintendo - of course, this is Mario. Having first appeared in the Donkey Kong game in 1981 as the Carpenter of the Jumper, he was then used in more than 200 games - both arcade games, races, and puzzles. In total, more than 210 million units of games were sold with him. In the list of fifty best characters of computer games according to the Guinness Book of Records, Mario is in 1st place.

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    In the 1980s, in order to continue the conquest of the world, Nintendo opened a division in New York, USA. Hiroshi Yamauchi's son-in-law suddenly becomes the head of the unit .

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    In the same year, sales of Game & Watch games started. There were about ten modifications of this system, including versions with two displays. One console - one game.

    Something that reminds me ...

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    1983: the company launches the Nintendo Entertainment System and becomes the leader in the gaming market. This system also came to Russia - in the form of a clone under the Dendy brand. In Japan itself, this is Famicom.

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    Who had this?

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    In 1989, the Game Boy pocket console appeared. It was a new generation of handheld consoles - much more advanced than Game & Watch. The first model was equipped with a black and white screen with a resolution of 160 × 144 pixels and stereo sound. The processor used was Sharp LR35902 DMC-CPU [2] at a clock frequency of 4.194304 MHz. There was also an interesting Game Link feature - two consoles for playing in multiplayer mode were combined using a cable.

    Nintendo used this strategy: as soon as Game Boy sales were on the decline, the company released a new version.

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    In the early 1990s, a new generation of game console appeared: the 16-bit Super Nintendo. In Japan - Super Famicom.

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    A Super Nintendo ad in 1991 starred Paul Rudd. Strange, but for 22 years he has not changed at all.



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    21 Nintendo commercials from the 1980s and 1990s: Star Wars, Simpsons, Super Mario, etc.



    The first home console from Nintendo, capable of three-dimensional graphics, was the Virtual Boy, released in 1994. It uses technologies similar to the “virtual reality helmet” - you immerse your face in the device and two monochrome (black-red) projectors transmit the image separately for each eye.

    But the system was expected to fail - users mostly had a sore neck. Yes, and the black and red image did not please.

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    The Nintendo 64 64-bit game console was released in 1996 - it was the company's response to the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The clock frequency of the NEC VR4300 CPU is 93.75 MHz, the GPU - 62.5 MHz. Memory - 4.5 megabytes. Games were released on cartridges up to 65 MB. At first there were few games (one of the reasons is the use of cartridges when competitors release discs), but after a couple of years, by 1998, the console still took second place in the market for game consoles - after Sony PS.

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    In 2000, Space Boy introduced the 32-bit Game Boy Advance portable game system and the next-generation GameCube home console. It is noteworthy that Game Boy Advance is compatible with all previous versions of Game Boy, and is also able to interact with GameCube. The GBA used a 32-bit arm7tdmi processor at 16.78 MHz and a Z80 at 8 MHz, 32 KB of RAM, 256 KB of external RAM.

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    The GameCube is the predecessor to Wii and Nintendo’s fourth home gaming console. Games were delivered on mini-DVD. In total, 21.74 million copies of the GameCube were sold in the world. Hiroshi Yamauchi touted the GameCube as a machine designed to be just a game console — you couldn't watch movies on it, nor did you play an audio CD. The GameCube was designed to offer a much more powerful gaming experience as opposed to the universal entertainment centers from competitors. They tried to make the price as low as possible: after all, the main thing is to buy more games.

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    Two years later, in May 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi resigned as president of Nintendo and became chairman of the company, but in 2005 he resigned from the board. He also refused an old-age pension, which could be from 9 to 14 million dollars, as he thought it would be more beneficial for the company to leave her this money. On September 19, 2013, Hiroshi Yamauchi, aged 85, died of pneumonia.

    Interesting:
    Nintendo products from 1965 to 1983
    Old Game Boy ad

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