History
How old is Nintendo?
The short answer
Nintendo was founded in 1889, making playing cards. It is older than sliced bread, the Ottoman Empire's collapse, and both world wars. The company spent its first seventy years in paper before it ever touched an electronic anything.
The company began in Kyoto in 1889 producing hanafuda — traditional Japanese flower cards, hand-painted on mulberry bark paper. It was a card company, and a successful one, for the better part of a century.
What followed is one of the strangest corporate résumés in existence. Before it settled on games, Nintendo tried a taxi company, instant rice, a television network, vacuum cleaners, and a chain of love hotels. None of them worked.
Put it on a timeline for the full effect: when Nintendo was founded, the Eiffel Tower had been open for a few months, the Ottoman Empire had another 33 years to run, and the first video game was about eight decades away.
Source
- Nintendo Company HistoryNintendo Co., Ltd.