Name: Evolution of Nintendo [1889-2021]
Uploaded: 2021-05-27T16:55:00.000Z
Duration: 28 min 53 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

When it comes to gaming, there's one company that evoked more nostalgia than any other.

It continues to publish and develop some of the most popular video game franchises in the world…

and competes among the big 3 to this day.

Nintendo's origins can actually be traced all the way back to 1889,

when it was founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi as Yamauchi Nintendo.

Mr. Yamauchi started off by producing handmade Hanafuda,

which is a type of Japanese playing cards.

In 1959, Nintendo, which changed its name to Nintendo Playing Card,

entered into an agreement with Walt Disney to use the Disney characters on their cards.

A few years later, the company's name was shortened to just 'Nintendo',

with nobody being 100% sure what the word Nintendo actually means,

though it's thought to loosely translate as 'leave luck to heaven'.

Over the following years playing cards became less popular among Japanese households

and in 1964, the value of the company's stock began to plummet from 900 to just 60 Yen.

Nintendo was in heavy debt and Yamauchi was desperate to find the next big thing.

So, they decided to invest in new ventures,

And the not so very family-friendly love hotels.

Eventually Nintendo decided to venture into the weapons business…

and released Japan's first electronic toy in 1970,

This would become an ancestor to the NES Zapper that was later used in video games such as Duck Hunt.

In 1972, an American company named Magnavox created the first commercial home video game console,

Nintendo developed and produced a light gun accessory for the console.

Two years later, Nintendo also secured the rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey in Japan.

Having witnessed first-hand how popular video games were,

Nintendo began to work on building its own consoles.

Nintendo's first official console was a joint effort with partner Mitsubishi.

Released in 1977, it was given the unimaginative title of the 'Color TV-Game 6,'

with the number 6 denoting how many games could be played on it.

Soon after, they also released the 'Color TV-Game 15',

It's hard to imagine that games on these consoles really were this simple.

At the same time, Nintendo was also working on developing games for arcades,

many of which would later be ported to consoles

The company's first venture into handheld electronic gaming came in 1980 with the Game & Watch.

The product derived its name from featuring just a single game,

Multiple series of the Game & Watch were made.

like the Multi Screen that featured two screens and a clam-shell design

that would later be replicated in future handheld Nintendo consoles.

Until 1991, Nintendo released around 60 different Game & Watch games,

To keep gamers entertained, most games came with two modes,

and 'GAME B'  representing a faster, harder version of the same game'.

The Game & Watch sold 43.4 million units worldwide.

Gunpei Yokoi got the idea to create the Game & Watch

when he saw a bored man play with his calculator in the train.

In 1985 Nintendo really started to stand out from the crowd,

as they released the much-loved Nintendo Entertainment System, or 'NES'.

It was Nintendo's first home video game console released outside of Japan.

A different-looking version had already been released within Japan in 1983,

known as the Family Computer or 'Famicom',

and while some games and art styles varied, the consoles were essentially the same in terms of performance.

To say the NES was significant is an understatement.

It helped to revive the video game industry after the crash in 1983,

going on to sell 62 million units worldwide

and set the record for the longest-surviving video game system in history.

It stayed on the American market until 1995,

and in Japan it wasn't discontinued until 2003!

Many of Nintendo's most successful game franchises were born on the NES,

but the most-sold game for the NES, with over 40 million copies sold, was, of course,

The NES was praised for its simple, yet at the time, innovative controller.

Joysticks were the common method of control before Nintendo designed and patented their D-pad.

Even though the trend has now reversed, with joysticks often being preferred,

D-pads were much better for playing 2D games like Donkey Kong.

Donkey Kong was the first game that involved jumping

and is therefore considered to be the first true platformer.

In 1989, Nintendo offered more versatility to gamers

with the handheld, brick-like Game Boy that used interchangeable cartridges.

This meant that gamers could simply buy a game, rather than a new device,

each time they wanted a different experience.

Remaining popular until this day, the Game Boy was portable, durable

and came with hugely popular titles like Super Mario Land,