Nintendo
From Sonic Retro
Revision as of 16:23, 19 October 2005 by Ss is testing (talk | contribs)
Nintendo was originally founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards, for use in a Japanese playing card game of the same name. Over the years, it became a video game company, one of the most powerful in the industry.
Nintendo is the longest running company in the history of the video game console market and historically the most influential and best known console manufacturer. They began in the Japanese market in 1983, the U.S. market in 1985, and the European market in 1986. Over time Nintendo has manufactured five TV consoles — the Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom/Super NES, the Nintendo 64, and the present GameCube and the upcoming Nintendo Revolution — and many different handheld portables, including six versions of their popular Game Boy, the Game & Watch, the Virtual Boy, the Pokémon Mini, and the Nintendo DS. They have also published over 250 games, developing at least 180 of them, and have sold over 2 billion games worldwide. Their flagship mascot is Mario, a fat Italian plumber carpenter.