Forgive my ignorance, but for one reason or another, I always thought of Nintendo as a relatively new company. I say new to mean maybe 20 years or so.

How wrong could I have been!

The history of Nintendo is much more interesting and diverse than you think.

Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the company in 1889, don’t you know? Yes, 1889 not 1989. Nintendo turns 119!!! The company’s full name was Nintendo Koppai in Japan, and it began by manufacturing and selling playing cards for a game they called Hanafuda.

After Fusajiro Yamauchi, who was childless, Sekiryo Yamauchi, his adopted son-in-law, took over the business. Sekiryo Yamauchi changed the company name to Yamauchi Nintendo & Company.

Hiroshi Yamauchi became president of the company when he was 21 years old. This is the man worth almost £4BN today!

After a deal with Disney in 1959, Nintendo playing cards sold 600,000 in 1 year!

Following several failed business ventures in the 1960s and falling sales of its playing cards, Nintendo shares fell from £4.34 to just 29 pence.

Later, during the seventies period, Nintendo started looking at electronic toys instead of traditional ones. In 1978 they released their first arcade video game: Computer Othello. Other games followed: Donkey Kong, Mario Bros and others.

By the mid-1980s, most, if not all, companies that made and sold video games went out of business due to overwhelming declines in sales numbers. One of the only ones left standing was Nintendo.

In 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System, NES, was released worldwide. In 1989 they launched Game Boy with great success.

In the late 1980s, Sega began manufacturing and selling its own consoles, and in 1996 Sony released its Playstation. And so began the console sales war, during which the Nintendo 64 was launched and proved to be another hit.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance and the Gamecube.

Hiroshi Yamauchi passed his presidency to Satoru Iwata in 2002.

In 2004, the Nintendo DS was so popular that demand outstripped supply. At one point, 3 million DSs were ordered before they were even made. Two years later, the DS Lite was launched to great acclaim.

The Nintendo Wii was released in November 2006 and to this day it remains a huge success story.

Nintendo, at 119 years old, is still going strong and still churning out some great products.

If you don’t have a Nintendo Wii, you haven’t lived!