Jeff Greenberg/UIG via Getty Images
A girl looks at Super Nintendo video games in 2001.
- World-famous video game company Nintendo was founded in 1889 selling Japanese playing cards, and has found both success and failure throughout its 130-year history.
- In the '60s, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi tried expanding the games manufacturer to taxi and food services.
- It was Nintendo's foray into electronic games in the '70s that would pave the way for its astronomical success with video game systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System and its now-iconic "Super Mario Bros."
In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi began manufacturing Japanese playing cards called Hanafuda for his company Nintendo Koppai in Kyoto, Japan. Nintendo would become the biggest card-selling company in the country, before morphing into its numerous iterations (a taxi company, a food manufacturing company, a toy company) and finding worldwide success with its enterprising video game systems and games in the '80s.
From "Super Mario Bros." to Gameboy to Nintendo 64, here's a look at the iconic company's storied past.