From Card Games to Consoles: The Journey of Hiroshi Yamauchi and Nintendo

From card games to consoles

Nintendo is a gaming industry dinosaur. However, the firm did not begin by creating video games, but by that of card games. We are in 1889 and the company is run by a real dynasty, that of the Yamauchi.

Hiroshi does not arrive until 1950 at the head of Big N when he was 21 years old. Yamauchi settles at his post, but is already the victim of a strike by his employees who are contesting his arrival. But Hiroshi proves to be intransigent, hyper authoritarian and very firm, not hesitating to fire those who block his card workshops. Once this problem is solved, he begins to analyze the market and installs his values. He realizes that the company is stagnating. For him, Nintendo must see more grand.

To achieve this, Hiroshi Yamauchi began to take an interest in the international market and made sure to work with everyone, including Disney. He even launched a line of erotic playing cards. However, it smacks of the era of playing cards and is coming to an end. In the premises of the workshop, Hiroshi notices Gunpei Yokoi, the future inventor of the Game Boy. The CEO saw potential in him and at the end of the 1960s, Yamauchi made a shift for Nintendo, moving from cards to toys. One thing leading to another, all these games will become electronic and the company will naturally launch into consoles with the Magnavox Odyssey (so it recovers the distribution contract).

Hiroshi Yamauchi and the end of an era

Nintendo continues to develop and even enters a golden age, thanks to its boss. The man seeks above all creative people. The most telling example is when he entrusts a whole team to the young Shigeru Miyamoto, incapable of coding the slightest video game, who has no technical knowledge, but who has ideas. It is he who will launch Mario, Donkey Kong or Zelda. Gunpei Yokoi will invent Games and Watch or GameBoy. Find out more about Hiroshi Yamauch in the video at the top of the article!

Everything is fine for Nintendo, but in the 90s, Hiroshi knows that he is now overtaken by the business. In addition, the firm has several failures, including the Virtual Boy. In the 2000s, it is time to bow out and find a replacement, which will be Satoru Iwata. Leaving his post, Hiroshi Yamauchi will have a nice gesture: to refuse his pension estimated between 9 and 14 million dollars, which he considers more useful in Nintendo’s budgets to face the crisis. He will fund a baseball team and donate most of his fortune to a cancer treatment center in Kyoto. The man will also found a poetry museum and will die of pneumonia in 2013.