"My name is Reggie. I'm about kicking ass, I'm about taking names, and we're about making games."—
Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America,
E3 2004
Although Nintendo is the world's most widely known video game company, they didn't become one until the late 1970s. These guys have been around for a while, a
really long while: Nintendo dates to 1889, when the company founder Fusajiro Yamauchi created playing cards called
hanafuda. The business was successful enough to create sufficient demand, and Nintendo had modest expansion through much of the 20th century. (Though its influence on the video game industry is both widespread and undeniable, it continues to manufacture hanafuda, together with playing cards,
shogi and
go to this day.)
Under the leadership of young Hiroshi Yamauchi after
World War II, the company expanded its business model to everything from a taxi service to a chain of
Love Hotels to children's toys. Many of those were invented by talented young people like Gunpei Yokoi, and Nintendo hit it fairly well with inventions such as the Ultra Hand, the Love Tester, and the Ultra Machine. Eventually, Yamauchi decided that Nintendo would become an entertainment and games company.
Tinkering around with solar cells and transistors lead Yokoi and another engineer to create a series of basic light gun games - shooting a bottle in the right spot would cause it to pop apart, a toy lion would roar, and so on. Moving these into abandoned bowling alleys gave Nintendo their Laser Clay Ranges, where players would insert some coins and shoot at electronic targets installed at the ends of lanes.
Basic video games like Pong and the Odyssey were becoming popular, and Nintendo soon created the Color TV Game 6, complete with cheesy plastic overlays. Soon after was the more powerful Color TV Game 12. Soon, Nintendo moved into arcade games, with help from games like the original
Donkey Kong, which was designed by a young artist named
Shigeru Miyamoto. Deciding that simple Pong clones were not enough, Yamauchi wanted to create a more powerful gaming system, one that was so much better than the competitors that it would not even be a choice as to which the consumer wanted. With this in mind, Nintendo eventually released the Family Computer in Japan.
The Family Computer, or Famicom, was a massive success. After only a few years on the shelves, it had a lock on 90% of the Japanese home video game market. Eventually, Yamauchi decided to expand overseas, and he asked his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa to run Nintendo of America. After braving some initial struggle, Nintendo of America found massive success with an arcade game starring a
portly red-clad carpenter and a
large hairy ape, giving them the necessary capital and support to make more arcade games.
At this point (early to mid 80s), the American home video game market was dead from
The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. Deader than dead, really. Arcades were still booming, so Nintendo decided to give the home market a shot. Nintendo of America worked hard translating and porting games over from Japan, the system was redesigned several times to look more like a consumer electronic product and less like a video game machine, and several cool looking peripherals were designed to help sell the system - primarily, the NES Zapper Gun and R.O.B, the Robotic Operating Buddy. R.O.B. didn't do much, admittedly, but he still looked pretty good for the early 1980s.
Though early comments from testing with kids proved discouraging, with the typical comment from an 8-year-old being "this is crap!", Yamauchi told Arakawa to get the system out anyway. Showing some true entrepreneurial determination, he told Arakawa that they must get the system into the hands of the consumers - that was the only test that mattered. Working through the winter months, Arakawa and the fledgling Nintendo of America got the system onto store shelves in New York in time for the Christmas season of 1985. Over half of the 100,000 systems sold. Though not as successful as Nintendo had hoped, the retailers had seen the viability of the product.
More systems and games were shipped over to the States. Sales were slow at first, but word spread (as did Nintendo's distribution channels) and the system sold more and more - over 1,000,000 systems by the end of the first year and 3,000,000 by the end of the second. Consumer analysts were baffled, having predicted that the system would go the way of Atari and Coleco before it, but they didn't count on Nintendo's aggressive strategy and controlled releasing, which avoided the flood of terrible-quality product that had caused the market to die before.
More games were translated. Original, American-developed titles were created. Licensing contracts were created and signed.
Nintendo Power, a magazine all about Nintendo games, was published. Help lines and call centers were being used night and day. Soon, home video games were booming once again, and all of it was Nintendo's doing - they single-handedly revived the dead-in-the-water industry and guided the market to the smashing success it is today with a portly red plumber and a small grey box.
Though several companies have come and gone, Nintendo remains strong in both hardware and software thanks to a constant cycle of innovation with their consoles and games. Nintendo's first-party games are nearly always high in quality, and they show a remarkable commitment to ensuring that even long-running series like
Zelda or
Mario remain fresh and interesting with each new installment.
Nintendo is currently the only one of the big three players in the current console wars to solely make video games and consoles; Microsoft and Sony are enormous titans in other industries
* Chances are high you are on a computer running Windows, with headphones made by Sony
but Nintendo is forced to stay viable in order to compete in the game market. They must do this by keeping their products affordable and selling them at a profit, forcing them to use older technology instead of selling at a loss with newer technology. This also forces them to cut some features that the competing consoles have such as DVD/Blu-Ray playback and an expansive online service at the level that the Xbox Live and Playstation Network do. The stakes are also much higher for them, as they've stated that the day they no longer make consoles is the day they drop out of the game business entirely. Granted, business smarts may say otherwise if that day happens.
On the other hand, these same attributes also ensure that Nintendo is never hurting for cash. Nintendo is one of those rare few companies that not only makes a profit, but makes consistent profit and has a tremendous bank account saved up for "rainy days". Indeed, there has been no generation where Nintendo has not made a profit from day one where as competitors generally require years before hardware and software begins to make money. More than that, since Nintendo has such strong power as a company and as a brand, a good part of their success lies in transforming games into franchises (see
Pokémon for a good example of how Nintendo parleyed a game into everything from stores to movies). Suffice to say, while the stakes are higher for Nintendo, they're in the business of video games because they want to be despite easily being able to drop out and be a pure media company.
Nintendo also created and monopolized hand held units until the Japan-only
WonderSwan, and later the
PlayStation Portable arrived in 2004 (after which they merely dominated handheld consoles). The
Game And Watch was the greatest handheld console in the
1980s. Following it was the
Game Boy in 1989, which was a similar success, thanks (in part) to the bundle-packaging of
Tetris. Nintendo's biggest console failure was the
Virtual Boy, which failed due to headache-inspiring pseudo-3D visuals and few good games besides
Virtual Boy Wario Land. The Game Boy was succeeded by the
Game Boy Color and the
Game Boy Advance.
One element of Nintendo which became deprecated was the Official ("Original" in Europe) Nintendo Seal of Quality. It was originally created to show which games had been licensed for publishing by Nintendo officially, as opposed to being a pirated or counterfeit releases, for the NES. Eventually, they dropped the "of Quality" during the
GameCube/GBA era, with consumers finally realizing it didn't stand for game quality
note the intent was to indicate the quality of the hardware the games were on and that it would work on the console it was intended for without any problems provided there are no defects, but as mentioned it was misunderstood to mean software quality.
Nowadays, Nintendo is first in both the handheld and home console wars with the
Nintendo DS and Wii, and while the creation of things like
Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's Move have led to the Wii losing some of its steam, the recent release of the
Nintendo 3DS (which, as the name implies, is the Nintendo DS's successor) and the
Wii U show that Nintendo isn't going to be leaving the hardware business anytime soon.
They also own the Seattle Mariners, a US
baseball team.
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Home Consoles
- Nintendo Entertainment System (NES): The eight-bit system that gave us many of the venerable franchises that are still around today. Credited with spurring the recovery of the industry after the Great Crash of 1983.
- Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super NES): 16-bit generation. It was the best seller of the generation, according to That Other Wiki.
- Satellaview: A Japan-only add-on for the Super Famicom allowing broadcast downloads of games through satellite radio, backed by live-streamed audio sometimes featuring voice-acting.
- Nintendo 64: Fifth Generation. While not so successful as its two predecessors, mostly due to sticking with the cartridge format over the cheaper and (for the time) high-capacity CD format, it did help jump start the industry shift, and it introduced analog sticks and force feedback on first-party controllers, creating a new standard of modern General Gaming Gamepads. It also brought about titles that are still highly regarded, such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64 and Golden Eye 1997, the last which managed to show that not all licensed games have to suck.
- Nintendo GameCube: Sixth Generation. Their first system to use optical discs (albeit mini-DVD size instead of 8"), but like the Nintendo 64, it suffered from a lack of third-party development in part due to the format being smaller then its competition and lagged behind in support. However, in recent years, the console and a handful of its games were Vindicated by History.
- Wii: Seventh Generation. Nintendo's fifth home system, the selling point being its simple motion controls. It has been the basis for a rise in Nintendo's fortunes, outselling its competitors by tens of millions. A focus on drawing in casual gamers, as well as drawing in the long-timers by assimilating its own past, as well as that of others, has been the impetus for that. The Wii became known for many of its health and sports-related games rather than the company's traditional run-and-gun gameplay.
- Wii U: Eighth Generation. The current system, and Nintendo's first HD console. It's noted for its controller, called the GamePad, which incorporates an HD touchscreen, and can stream the game onto the screen without a TV. Coincidentally enough it was released on the eleventh anniversary of the launch of the GameCube.
Portable Consoles
- Game And Watch: A popular series of handheld games that predated the Nintendo Entertainment System.
- Game Boy: The portable equivalent of the NES, their first handheld console that used interchangeable cartridges. Despite being less powerful than the other handhelds on the market, its superior battery life, Nintendo's hold of 3rd partys at the time and a little game known as Tetris led to widespread popularity.
- Game Boy Color: Same thing as the above, but with color and slightly more power behind it.
- Game Boy Advance: In graphical power, roughly equivalent to the SNES. One of the best-selling game consoles of that system, and the last 2D-gaming dedicated device created by Nintendo.
- Nintendo DS: One of the most successful gaming consoles ever created by Nintendo, next to the Wii. The first mainstream gaming device to utilize a touchscreen. Equal to the N64 in power.
- Nintendo 3DS: Just as powerful, if not more so, than the Wii, the handheld's major selling-point was its stereoscopic 3D visual features.
- Also see Nintendo Power, which for years was the company's in-house magazine and remained one of the most popular gaming publications until it ended in 2012.
Nintendo was once the go-to company for video-games, and as such, they hold a larger place in entertainment history than any other video game company. The list that follows is only a partial selection of an absolutely massive 30+ year lineup on at least five different consoles and many hand held variants:
Nintendo has developed/published the following titles:
Nintendo's subsidiary, HAL Laboratory, has developed/published the following titles:
Licensed Games
Notable people and companies associated with Nintendo, its franchises and its subsidiaries:
Tropes associated with Nintendo:
- Ascended Meme: Non-Specific Action Figure
, an Ensemble Darkhorse of the Pre-E3 2012 video, gets some recognition during E3 itself - one in the 3DS Software Showcase, and the last Nintendo E3 2012 video on YouTube. - Bleached Underpants: Before video games, one of their ventures was a chain of Love Hotels. It didn't go very well.
- Breakthrough Hit: Donkey Kong. The story goes that after ordering several thousand machines of a game called Radarscope, the game simply didn't perform very well, and Nintendo of America was on the verge of going under. Their parent company in Japan sent over a machine with Donkey Kong on it, and Nintendo soon converted all the Radarscope machines into Donkey Kong machines. The game made obscene amounts of money, and NOA was saved.
- Cash Cow Franchise: Not just with their first-(and second-)party games - especially the Mario, The Legend Of Zelda and Pokémon series - but also their systems. Nintendo itself is seen as a Cash Cow Company.
- Console Wars: The longest-standing player in them today. The Sega Genesis vs. SNES conflict was one of the most infamously brutal in gaming history.
- Create Your Own Rival: Nintendo is the reason why Sony got into the video game market, and the decision to use cartridges on the Nintendo 64 indirectly led to the PlayStation's success. (See the SNESCDROM page for more details) However, despite the PS1 and PS2 out-selling the N64 and GameCube, Nintendo is still going strong, and the Wii is selling better than the PS3 could ever dream to. In the end, Nintendo just made things Nintendo Hard for themselves, with an end result that's pretty good for everybody.
- Digital Piracy Is Evil: After their experiment with discs with the Famicom Disk System led to massive piracy on the system, Nintendo has been massively cautious when it comes to piracy ever since. Most system updates for the Wii have been intended solely to kill potential exploits for homebrew.
- This doesn't stop the Wii from being one of the most easily homebrewable systems ever. Thankfully, most homebrewers prefer to insert their own content into official games (thus requiring prospective players to actually have said game in order to play) rather than pirate games left and right.
- Excuse Plot: The company had their original heyday when this was the norm, but they've still applied it to certain franchises today, sometimes because of the Grandfather Clause, other times because they've found that having a plot is secondary to the quality of the main game. Miyamoto himself has gone on the record to say that sometimes a plot can be an obstruction to the quality of the gameplay, regardless of how good the plot itself is. That's not to say there aren't any exceptions.
- Giant Hands of Doom: The developers of this company seem to like this type of boss.
- Grandfather Clause: The Mario series in particular is prey to this. Though each game has pretty good gameplay evolution, the plot's often thin and usually just an excuse to get Peach kidnapped and Mario out adventuring. Other key franchises such as Zelda, Metroid, and even Star Fox have received much more character and plot intricacy in recent games.
- Heroic Mime: Most of their leads are this or have been this, but some have been given a voice, for better or for worse.
- Iconic Logo: Red for most of the company's video game-making history, but officially switched to gray in 2006.
- Mascot: Mario, who is also considered to the mascot for video games in general.
- Mercy Mode: Their patented Super Guide, which was made as an excuse to bring back Nintendo Hardness without alienating less skilled players.
- Necessary Weasel: See Excuse Plot.
- Nice Guy: The entire company, very explicitly so; and an absolute necessity (not to mention potentially FATAL FLAW, depending on your POV) in the modern gaming world.
- Nintendo Hard: Trope Maker and Trope Namer; largely the case with NES games, present in a small few titles since, and coming back through the creation of the Super Guide feature in recent first-party games.
- Not in just the games they made; the NES versions of Battletoads and Ghosts N Goblins were much harder than their Sega and arcade counterparts.
- No Export for You: Many, many examples in North America and Europe. The Fire Emblem series is probably the largest example of this trope, but it seems to be on its way to aversion. A good deal of titles, starting with Blazing Sword note (ironically, one game after the one that features Roy, one of the characters whose appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee sparked enough interest for localization, although it did feature his father) have come across the border.
- Xenoblade Chronicles was also going to be subject to this, but fan interest actually pulled off its North American release, where it went on to sell more than it did in Europe and Japan.
- And then there's the MOTHER series...
- Platform Game: Codified this genre. While Nintendo has many many successful games, series, and IPs spread over a variety of genres, some of the most loved and well-received series and franchises are of this genre as well.
- Quality Over Quantity: This trope was Nintendo's whole argument during their dominance in the 80s and early 90s before they changed their policies after being accused of monopolistic practices with their licensing agreements. The original agreement was that licensees could only make up to five games a year; the reasoning behind the decision was that it was better for the developers to focus on creating a few smash hits than to flood the market by churning out mediocre games, as was the case with Atari before the crash.
- Becomes a Hilarious in Hindsight moment when the Mario Party series were introduced and had a new installment nearly every year, which caused most gamers and critics to view the series as mediocre after a while. Mario Party 9 broke the trend by being released several years after the 8th installment and changing up the basics, which was something most critics liked.
- Rule of Fun: The foundation of game design at the company.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Many of their franchises gravitate heavily towards the idealistic end of the scale. Even darker franchises of theirs, such as Metroid, still tend to have an optimistic tone.
- Super Title 64 Advance: They are mostly associated with this trend, doing it with their own games and sometimes letting third party developers do it when releasing on their consoles.
- Surprise Creepy: They have a reputation for making sweet, family-friendly games... and thus a lot of the weirder and scarier elements of games they develop or publish tend to blindside people. Kirby games in particular are infamous for this, due to them being in the Lightest and Softest of Sugar Bowl settings yet still having Eldritch Abominations as the Final Bosses most of the time.
- The Great Video Game Crash of 1983: Their success with the NES helped end it. Also, many of their long-standing business practices developed to combat the problems that led to the Crash in the first place; their recent disinterest in making games for iOS, despite fervent demands from investors, had its roots in Nintendo's efforts to avoid the pre-Crash market over-saturation by keeping their console exclusives.
- Tonka Tough: ALL of their consolesnote (though maybe not the hinges and shoulder buttons of the Nintendo DS Lite) were/are nigh-indestructible, especially the Game Boy and GameCube. The usual joke is that Nintendo products are made of Nintendium.
- The Nintendo World store in New York City has an original Game Boy that was hit by artillery fire during the first Gulf War and still runs (more specifically, the Tetris opening/demo).
- Wiimotes are said to be coated in the stuff, as they smash TV screens and windows with little to no damage to themselves.
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