NintendoNintendo started as a small Japanese business by Fusajiro Yamauchi near the end of 1889 as Nintendo Koppai. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The handmade cards soon began to gain popularity, and Yamauchi had to hire assistants to mass produce cards to keep up with the demand.
In 1963, Yamauchi renamed Nintendo Playing Card Company Limited to Nintendo Company, Limited. The company then began to experiment in other areas of business using the newly injected capital. During this period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo set up a taxi company, a "love hotel" chain, a TV network and a food company (trying to sell instant rice, similar to instant noodles). All these ventures eventually failed, and after the Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped, leaving Nintendo with 60 yen in stocks. In 1966, Nintendo moved into the Japanese toy industry with the Ultra Hand, an extending arm developed by maintenance engineer Gunpei Yokoi in his free time. The Ultra Hand was a huge success, selling approximately 1.3 million units.[citation needed] Gunpei Yokoi was moved from maintenance to the new "Nintendo Games" department as a product developer. Nintendo continued to produce popular toys, including the Ultra Machine, Love Tester and the Kousenjuu series of light gun games. Despite some successful products, Nintendo struggled to meet the fast development and manufacturing turnaround required of the toy market, and fell behind the well-established companies such as Bandai and Tomy.
Game&Watch und Gunpei Yokoi
When Nintendo eventually began selling video games, Yamauchi asked Yokoi to come up with products in this field. After viewing a bored business-man playing with a calculator on a bullet-train, Yokoi invented a prototype.The initial result was Nintendo's popular Game & Watch series of handhelds. Game & Watch games were individual handheld games which featured an LCD-display. Some consider the small handhelds to be a prototype of the Game Boy, which would be released later and prove to be Yokoi's greatest work. These games also featured a "control-cross," which many video game enthusiasts today know as the D-Pad, a controller part that consists of four buttons grouped in a + shape which correspond to the directions up, down, left, and right. In most games this is used to control the direction of certain objects. The Game & Watch series saw 59 titles between 1980 and 1991. Many popular arcade games were translated into Game & Watch titles, including Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., which Yokoi helped to create alongside Shigeru Miyamoto. Many of these Game & Watch titles were put onto large compilations for the Game Boy series of handhelds, and included classic as well as reinvented versions of Ball, Flagman, Oil Panic, and Fire among other titles. These are known as the Game & Watch Gallery series.
On October 4, 1997, Yokoi was involved in a car accident. He was riding in a car driven by Etsuo Kiso, a businessman from Nintendo. After a minor car accident involving a truck, Kiso and Yokoi pulled over to examine the damage of the two automobiles. While examining, a passing car sideswiped them. Yokoi was grievously injured and pronounced dead two hours later. He was 56. Kiso suffered two badly broken bones and severe whiplash.
Source: Wiki
Edited by: Gawaleus