Nintendo was founded as a playing-card company

On September 23, 1889, craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai in Kyoto, Japan, to make and sell hanafuda, traditional Japanese playing cards decorated with flowers.

The timing was shrewd. Japan had banned most gambling in 1882 but tolerated hanafuda, and rival makers fled the trade rather than tangle with its underworld reputation. Yamauchi stayed, crafting decks from mulberry-bark paper and woodblock prints, and soon became the leading producer.

For decades Nintendo was simply a card company. Only after the Second World War did it begin casting about for new lines, dabbling in toys, a taxi service, even instant rice, before electronic games finally found their mark in the 1970s and 80s.

A company older than the lightbulb’s mass production grew up to sell Mario.

That long history is why Nintendo, today a giant of video games, still counts its age in well over a century.