Fusajiro Yamauchi
Birdslip
Fusajiro was born in Kyoto, Japan on the 22nd of November, 1859. He was an artist.
At the time, Japan had placed a ban on playing cards due to the spread of illegal gambling. To circumvent the ban, a new kind of playing cards were invented. The Hanafuda used images instead of numbers, but they were not as popular as the banned playing cards.
Fusajiro started his business producing Hanafuda playing cards. As an artist, he would paint illustrations on the back of his cards. He opened his shop in 1889 and named it Nintendo Koppai.
Nintendo means, leave luck to heaven. It was an apt name for a game that was largely based on luck.
Nintendo's Hanafuda cards were a huge success. Soon Fusajiro had to set up a factory to mass produce his card. Nintendo became the biggest gaming cards manufacturer in the whole of Japan.
In 1929, at the age of 70, Fusajiro retired from Nintendo, leaving the management of the company to Sekiryo Kenada, his son in-law. Perhaps to connect himself to the gaming legacy of Fusajiro, Sekiryo changed his surname to Yamauchi.
From playing cards, Nintendo transformed into a toy making company.
In 1949, Fusajiro's great grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, took over the leadership of Nintendo. Under Hiroshi's leadership, Nintendo experienced phenomenal success.
From toys, they moved to electronic games. Breakthrough came for Nintendo when they launched the GameBoy in the U.S with the famous brick-laying game, Tetris. The Nintendo Game Boy remains the third highest-selling game console ever made. So far it has sold nearly 119 million units worldwide. It comes third only to Sony's PlayStation 2 (158 million units) and Nintendo DS (155 million units).
Nintendo, a company established in the 19th century, has remained a giant in the electronics gaming industry. The company currently has a market value of over $60 Billion.
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