10 FUN FACTS ABOUT Nintendo

1. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a manufacturer of playing cards.

2. Nintendo owned a taxi cab company called Daiya in the 60s.

3. In 1964 after the failure of several ventures, Nintendo’s stock plummeted, which caused them to enter the toy industry.

4. Nintendo found major success with a series of light gun games in the early 70’s.

5. The Laser Clay Shooting System was developed for arcades using technology from Nintendo’s home light gun games.

6. In 1977, Nintendo released the Color TV-Game home console, which was essentially a clone of Atari’s Pong.

7. Gunpei Yokoi got the idea for the Game and Watch by observing a businessman playing with an LCD calculator on a train.

8. Due to the video game crash of 1983, American stores were reluctant to carry the NES. Nintendo at that point decided to bundle in the R.O.B. robot add-on and market the NES as a toy instead of a game console. This is also why the main console is referred to as the “Control Deck”.

9. The Super Mario series of games has sold over 262 million units worldwide.

10. By 1995, Nintendo had sold over one billion cartridges worldwide.