Donkey Kong Nintendo History # 6

When people think early Mario they usually go with Super Mario Brothers. Saving the Princess with your Brother Luigi against Bowser. But it wasn't long before that that the Brothers were not even super. No saving Princesses or Bowser. Going a tad further there were no Mario Brothers at all. Just Mario although his name was Jumpman back then. Before he was known as a plumber he was originally known as a carpenter. You are tasked with saving your girlfriend who is a damsel in distress who is kidnapped by your mistreated pet Gorilla, Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong is considered to be one of the earliest examples of the platform game. It was the first to feature jumping. Winning meant successfully jumping over pits and obstacles to get to the damsel in distress. Donkey Kong is also considered to be the earliest game with a storyline that was revealed on screen.

The birth of Mario could not be told without talking about Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto had started working at Nintendo in 1979. By 1981 Miyamoto had helped with creating art for Nintendo's first coin-operated arcade video game, Sheriff. He also helped develop Radar Scope, an early cabinet arcade game. Radar Scope did well in Japan but poorly in North America. Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to convert all unsold Radar Scope units into a new arcade game. Miyamoto was tasked with this while Gunpei Yokoi supervised. Nintendo was pursuing a license at this time to create a game based on Popeye. When this fell through Miyomoto decided to model the three characters of Donkey Kong off of the the three main characters in Popeye. Yamauchi wanted to target the North American market with an English title which caused Miyamoto to name the game after the ape. Miyamoto was hoping the name of the ape would convey the sense "stupid ape. The creation of the game came from Miyamoto coming up with concepts. These were very complex. Finally Miyamoto was able to work with the technicians and Yokoi to find a concept that worked.

Most of Nintendo of America had reservations but the first president of Nintendo of America, Minori Arakawa, swore it would be big. The damsel in distress became Pauline, after Polly James who was wife of Nintendo's Redmond warehouse manager. Jumpman became Mario after Mario Segale who was the office landlord. Nintendo's American distributors started with two machines at two different local bars. These machines did so well that all of Nintendo of America began converting 2,000 Radar Scope units into Donkey Kong units. These sold quickly and within about a year Nintendo had sold 60,000 Donley Kong machines. The money from this first year was what bought land for Nintendo of America's headquarters.

Virtual Boy Nintendo History # 5

This is article is about the first 3D Nintendo handheld. Not the Nintendo 3DS. The Virtual Boy. The system is also known as the only Nintendo system to fail. This is surrounded by a history of systems by Nintendo that always turned a profit at the very least.

The story of the Virtual Boy begins with Gunpei Yokoi. At the time of the Virtual Boy, Yokoi was the general manager of Nintendo's Research & Development 1 division. During this period Nintendo allowed some of the divisions (including R&D1) to experiment with new ideas for products. Nintendo reportedly wanted focus to be brought to the Nintendo 64 and pre-maturely released the Virtual Boy. Yokoi supposedly did not feel it was ready for retail. Nintendo attempted to make the console with the cheapest options. The reason for the red color was due to red being the cheapest color for LEDs. Color displays supposedly would have caused quality issues. The price of the Virtual Boy was $180 despite these cost saving measures. This was lower then home consoles but considerably more costly then Nintendo's previous handheld, The Nintendo Game Boy. The system was never intended to replace the Nintendo Game Boy. This was in part due to the system not being very mobile as you need a flat surface for it to rest on.

Nintendo spent $25 million on early promotional activities. Nintendo expected to sell 3 million systems within a year. The system had a huge push from Blockbuster to allow the system to be rented for $10 at the time to try the system out which lead to 750,000 rentals of the system. Only 770,000 units were sold before Nintendo discontinued the product without even a press release. The system did not even last one whole year.

Seattle Mariners Nintendo History # 4

We have talked about the many different businesses that Nintendo has been in in the past. Nintendo is primarily seen as a video game company but in the past they almost seemed to be able to do anything. This seems to have waned in recent years to where they focus on their core business but other then cards and video games there is still one other business that Nintendo is still involved in. Major League Baseball.

Ever since 1992 Nintendo has been the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners. They are only one of three teams that are actually owned under corporate ownership. Hiroshi Yamauchi has been a majority stockholder of Nintendo to this day as well as being the previous president. Despite him then being the owner of the Seattle Mariners, he has never attended a game. Yamauchi has never traveled to North America and is said to hate travel. Even so his attendance record includes games that were played in Japan by the Seattle Mariners, although he did own tickets during one of these trips by the Seattle Mariners to Japan but the games were canceled due to the Iraq war at the time. He is said to be the only owner to have never seen his team play in person. In 1992 the Seattle Times reported that up to this point, Yamauchi had never even been to any baseball game before. He was on hand during signings for famous Japanese baseball players that were signed to the Mariners. This included Ichiro Suzuki who was a favorite in Japan. Suzuki was said to meet with Yamauchi yearly during his time with the Mariners. Yamauchi's purchase in 1992 is said to be the main reason why the Seattle Mariners did not move back then while they were on the verge of moving. Also Major League Baseball was strongly opposed to someone outside the United States owning a club. He was at first only allowed to have 50 percent voting rights which has increased to 55 since then.

Nintendo's presence is not hidden at Safeco field. There are advertisements and even Mario has visited games. In recent years you have been able to use handheld systems all the way back to the Nintendo DS during the games to do a variety of things. These include ordering food  and drinks (you can also see the progress of the order), viewing player stats, looking up the map of the stadium, watching the live tv game, multiplayer baseball trivia against the entire stadium, and more. This is done over the internet at the stadium and the cost is 5 dollars per game or 30 dollars per season. Nintendo also has rental systems available and also systems are available for purchase during the games. It is rumored this system might become available elsewhere but this has not happened yet.

Game & Watch Nintendo History # 3

This is the story of Nintendo's first handheld electronic games. Most people think of the Nintendo Game Boy when they think of this but before even Donkey Kong hit arcades in 1981, there was the Game & Watch in 1980. Each Game & Watch came with a game that played on the LCD screen. The name comes from the fact that other then playing games, it had a clock and alarm.

Gunpei Yokoi got the idea after seeing someone bored pressing the buttons on a calculator. The D-pad which is used even in modern controllers was created by Yokoi for the Donkey Kong Game & Watch in 1982. These games were very basic and each system only had one game on each due to the design of the systems. There were 60 different Game & Watch systems created with only 59 being for sale and the last being  only given away as contest prizes. Over 43 million systems were sold with the last being released in 1991. To get an idea for that period of time, the Game Boy was already released worldwide and even the Super Nintendo was getting its start. The clam shell design that came with the multi-screen series looks almost like a Nintendo DS and in fact this design was what inspired those future handheld designs.

The series has lived on in every Nintendo handheld as there has always been either a re-release or compilation available for each one thus far. Also the character, Mr. Game & Watch, was created as a sort of mascot for this series. The character was first seen in the Game & Watch game Ball but it was Super Smash Brothers Melee that made this character into this mascot position he now holds. Since then, Mr. Game & Watch has shown up multiple times in recent years as a background character in addition to being a character in the Smash Brothers series.

Early History Nintendo History # 2

What better place to start with Nintendo history then at the beginning.

It all began when Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo in 1889. Nintendo was originally a playing card company and they started by producing and advertising Hanafuda cards. In fact it wasn't until 85 years later that Nintendo ventured into video games. In 1974 they secured the rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey in Japan. Then it wasn't until 7 years later in 1981 that Mario was created as Jumpman in Donkey Kong. It's amazing to think that there is almost 100 years of Nintendo history that doesn't get talked about much. Even Nintendo employees rarely goes back before Donkey Kong when talking about the company. It does happen though such as Nintendo releasing Mario themed Hanafuda cards for Club Nintendo users. The WarioWare series has numerous times referenced these past business moves. The farthest back I have seen is going back to 1966 when Nintendo went into the Japanese toy industry with the Ultra Hand. The Ultra Hand even got a WiiWare game for Club Nintendo users. It is worth noting that Nintendo had numerous business ventures over the years but still were mainly a playing card company until 1963. That is 74 years of focusing on only playing cards. You may wonder what snapped to cause so much change after such a long time doing the same thing. The answer would be Hiroshi Yamauchi, the third president of Nintendo. In 1949 his Grandfather suffered a stroke and named Hiroshi his successor. In 1956 he visited the United States Playing Card Company and realized that the biggest company in the world in Playing Cards was ran in a small office. Realizing the limitations of the business, Hiroshi tried many business ventures. Famously Nintendo also owned a chain of love hotels as one of these business ventures. The Playing Card market dropped in 1964. The price of Nintendo stock was only 60 yen. All business ventures failed up until entering the toy industry. The success in the toy industry is in large part to Gunpei Yokoi. Yokoi invented the Ultra Hand in his spare time as a maintenance engineer for Nintendo. Yokoi soon produced several popular toys for Nintendo. These two men shaped Nintendo from just a Playing Card company and into the toy industry. Without this change and the success that was had, Nintendo would not have been there to become the Nintendo that many know today.

But that will be a story for another day.

It begins... Nintendo History #1

Hello Internet,

It is my pleasure to introduce the web to my take on any and all things Nintendo. I plan on writing about Nintendo's history every Thursday, going over Nintendo news of the week every Saturday, and doing a review of a game for a Nintendo console every Sunday. To start things off I would like to go over my short personal history with Nintendo

I have been playing Nintendo games since before I can remember. I was born into the NES era of gaming. I spent a lot of my childhood playing the small amount of games that I owned and doing a lot of game rentals for ones that I did not. I did not have any friends or members of the family that shared my passion so when I connected to the internet for the first time as a kid it was a shock to learn that many my favorite games were made by the same company. The internet was a large source of my learning about Nintendo at that time. I went back to play games that I missed out on during my rentals and updated myself with the upcoming Nintendo news. This desire to learn more about Nintendo is still present in me as I still go online to find the latest Nintendo news and look for any gems coming through the pipes to play.

I want to finish this post noting that I have a passion for gaming as a whole. This blog may be focused on Nintendo but that does not mean that I'am blind everything else. I own and love a large amount of 3rd party games on my Nintendo systems and even play games that are not on Nintendo systems at all. My passion for gaming as a whole is so much larger then my passion for just Nintendo. Before I knew what Nintendo was I knew one thing, I love video games. That has never changed. Long live gaming!