When someone says Nintendo, you immediately think of the best gaming consoles and classic games ever made. Nintendo’s success mainly started with Mario, but few people know that the creator, Fusajiro Yamauchi, began by making flower playing cards. These small ideas evolved into one of the top gaming companies in the world.

In 1980, Nintendo developed the game Donkey Kong where the Jumpman is a carpenter trying to save Pauline, his girlfriend, from a crazy ape. The Jumpman was renamed Mario, in honour of Nintendo’s office landlord, Mario Segali, because the Jumpman and Segali resembled each other. Also, some may be wondering how Mario ended up being a plumber. Mario was actually meant to be a carpenter, but since the obstacles in the game ended up including a lot of big, green pipes, he looked more like a plumber. Soon, he wound up being one.

1984 came around and Nintendo released the Famicom, short for “family computer”. It was later renamed the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) when it was released to the rest of the world. Two years later, Europe jumped on the Nintendo bandwagon and decided to start selling the NES there – and it was an instant success. They began making new games such as Excitebike, Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Punch-Out!, and of course, the Super Mario Bros., which was an international hit. Back then, studies even showed that kids were just as acquainted with Mario, possibly even more than with Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny.

In 1989, the Game Boy was released in Japan as the first portable handheld gaming system, and with that came the game Tetris. A year later it was released in Europe, and as well as the new Super Famicom in Japan. In 1992 the Super NES, which was renamed once again, came out in Europe and eventually sold 46 million SNES consoles around the world. They were released with the highly anticipated sequel to The Legend of Zelda, which was partly a reason for the vast success. Donkey Kong Country, a new game, was made using Advanced Computer Modeling later in 1994, and everyone wanted the game because it was one of the first of it’s kind.

In 1995 Nintendo produced it’s billionth game cartridge, and they also released the Virtual Boy, which was a Virtual Immersion system. One year later the Game Boy Pocket and the Nintendo 64 were launched in Japan, Super Mario 64 was also released and dubbed “the greatest video game of all time”. A couple more successful years sped by with the Game Boy Color and the Nintendo 64 version of The Legend of Zelda, and in 1999 Pokémon was released- and ever since then it has been a global sensation.

Nintendo is no doubt the most successful video gaming industry in the world, so be caught up with the latest things Nintendo has to offer!