Videogames.
I'm not going to claim to be a gamer girl.
My lack of hand-eye coordination means that I usually play...nothing...
But even I could not escape the reaches of Nintendo.
My childhood has scattered memories of falling off Rainbow Road,
getting hit in the face during a Wii Tennis game,
and pretending I understand what's happening while...playing Smash.
In my mind, Nintendo is kind of synonymous with videogames.
So, imagine my surprise when I learned that the company originally had nothing to do with them.
Hello, welcome to NerdyAndQuirky!
Here's some cool history.
Our story starts in 1889 with Fusajiro Yamauchi.
54 years before the first computer was even invented.
Fusajiro was producing Hanafuda cards, western playing cards that were primarily used for gambling.
He called this company "Yamauchi Nintendo"
Now, no one knows for sure what "Nintendo" actually means, but, there are two theories.
One, it is a combination of the Japanese words "nin," meaning "entrusted,"
and "tendou," meaning heaven.
In other words, "leave your fortune to fate," which is a great slogan for people producing gambling cards.
Or two: with "nin" meaning "let someone do" and "ten" from Tengu, the creature associated with gambling,
and "do," a suffix used for prestige.
So, "let people gamble!"
Either way, for all intents and purposes, Nintendo was a pretty successful company.
But in 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi, Fusajiro's grandson and replacement,
visited America's largest card manufacturer, and was shocked by its small size.
He wanted more for his company, and found inspiration in Disney's incredible international influence.
So, Nintendo partnered with Disney to print characters on cards
So, their consumer market expanded from gamblers to children,
and as you can imagine, if there's a Disney character on something...
...they make dolla dolla bills y'all.
and with the success and goal in mind, Nintendo went public,
and using the newfound capital, branched out from cards and into...
Love hotels
and Taxis
and Instant Rice
and toys!
And since I'm not riding a Nintendo taxi to a Nintendo love hotel while snacking on some Nintendo rice,
it was evident that Hiroshi was seeing a whole lot more misses than hits...
...but it all changed thanks to Gunpei Yokoi.
You see, Yokoi was an electrical engineer working maintenance in a Nintendo factory
while designing some toys in his free time.
On a visit to this factory, one such toy caught Hiroshi's eye, and so he placed Yokoi in toy development,
and the Ultra Hand was released.
It was an instant hit.
Now Yokoi decided that it was time to put his electrical education to use,
and started developing electronic toys, some of the first of their kind.
At the same time in 1975 across the ocean, Atari released Pong.
Now Hiroshi recognized this trend, and pushed Nintendo into the videogame industry
and just a year later, in 1976, a recent art grad named Shigeru Miyamoto
walked in for an interview with Hiroshi he got thanks to his dad.
And he got hired to work as an apprentice for...toy planning or something.
For a while, Nintendo just copied the leaders in the market,
producing knockoffs of big names like Pong and Space Invaders.
But when their highly anticipated Radar Scope flopped,
Nintendo was left with thousands of arcade machines in a warehouse, unsold.
Now Hiroshi, prepared to cut his losses, kept his established designers on their own projects,
and just made an open call for replacement ideas within the company.
Hiroshi did not have high expectations...
...except, enter Miyamoto, an avid storyteller since birth.
He ignored the trends that Nintendo was failing to hop on,
and decided that the mechanics of his game would be simple: running, jumping and climbing.
He focused more on his story, which was originally centered around Popeye for publicity's sake.
But when Nintendo couldn't get the rights, he just changed the names.
A damsel in distress named Pauline, her captor a goofy gorilla,
which Miyamoto translated as "Donkey Kong" because his dictionary sucked,
and finally a protagonist who was originally going to be...
"Mr. Video."
and then, "Jumpman."
and finally, after the landlord of the warehouse with the 2000 unsold machines,
"Mario."
It was the birth of the most iconic video game character in history.
Speaking of which, it's SPONSOR TIME
This video was sponsored by Audible.
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Let's be real...there's no other way I was going to do my class readings...
Audible has got an unmatched selection for you to check out,
but if you think this video was interesting, I recommend Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America
by Jeff Ryan.
He goes into way more detail than I could in this video,
and you can listen to it or any book of your choice for free with a 30-day trial
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Okay, back to the video!
After the success of Donkey Kong, Yokoi saw a dude playing with a calculator on his way to work,
and was hit with inspiration. What if instead of a calculator, it was a game?
So he created the Game & Watch, designed to be a handheld console and an alarm clock.
and with this system, Yokoi invented the Directional Pad, that thing you see on literally every controller today!
The Game & Watch was also the predecessor to Yokoi's final invention:
The Game Boy.
Now at this point, Nintendo was taking its form as a fixture in the gaming market,
and it only grew more and more secure as it introduced hits and innovations every few years.
And now, in 2017, it's really easy to think of Nintendo as this ubiquitous success,
a sort of inevitable installation in the industry,
but looking back in 1889, Nintendo was printing floral playing cards for gangsters to gamble.
No one could have seen its future coming,
But they kept moving forward, keeping an open mind to good ideas from anyone and anything,
and used each failure as a lesson, rather than a signal for the end.
So, ironically enough,
Nintendo did not leave their fortune to fate.
Well, that was just some cool history on the birth of Nintendo
Now, what about you guys? What is your favorite game?
Tell me down below.
If you enjoyed this video, or you just want to support the show, liking and sharing would help out so much
But, either way, have a lovely day.
That's right, it was an Audible sponsorship.
That was probably the most exciting email that I've ever received.
Which is a low bar, because emails are the worst, but you know...
thrilling