This is an essay I made in the first grade of Sweden's high school at the age of 16. I have converted it into .txt because I don't have the patience to HTMLize it. Excuse me for some bad spelling/grammar. My English was worse 1.5 years ago. There won't be any updates. The History of Nintendo Christian Wall St Mikaelsskolan (St Michael's school) Class SP1c Autumn term 2001 Introduction Why I have chosen to write my English essay about Nintendo is because I love their games and I thought it might be easier to write about something I really like in a foreign language. I started to play when I was eight years old. We bought a Game Boy, my brother and I. Since then I have been very interested in videogames, mostly Nintendo's videogames. I think that is enough as an introduction. I hope you enjoy my essay about the history of Nintendo because I enjoyed to write it. Summary Nintendo was founded in the late 19th century in Japan. In those days they were making playing-cards. Around the 50's they started creating toys and twenty years later they started to create games. Game&Watch was produced by Gumpei Yokoi, small machines that didn't have exchangeable cartridges. In the middle of the 80's they created NES which became extremely popular all over the world with the world famous developer Shigeru Miyamoto producing the best-selling games. In the late 80's they released the follow-up to Game&Watch, the Game Boy which is the world's best selling system, bragging with 100 millions of sold copies. In the early 90's the Super NES was sold, the follow-up to NES and 1996-1997 the Nintendo 64 was released. Both successful, though the N64 was beaten by Sony's PlayStation. Now the next console GameCube is knocking on the door. The diligent worker Now let us begin the story of Nintendo, one of the world's biggest game developers. In the end of the 19th century in the eastern part of the big Japanese city Kyoto, there lived a diligent carpenter named Fusajiro Yamauchi. He made a sort of playing-cards which were called Hanafuda. There was forty-eight cards in each package and they were smaller but thicker than ordinary playing-cards. He made them by hand, all by himself. In 1889 he established Marufaku Company to produce Hanafuda and soon he had started selling so good that he could sell the cards over whole Japan and soon he exported them to the USA. In 1907 the name was changed to Nintendo Koppai. No one really knows what Nintendo really means so that I can't explain. It's probably just Fusajiro who knows that. This year he started to manufacture them and Nintendo was the first Japanese company to produce playing-cards for the US market. From Fusajiro to Hiroshi Nintendo Koppai grew further and further. In 1929 the husband to the daughter of Fusajiro Yamaushi took over the company. His name was Sekiryo Kaneda but he changed his name to Yamaushi after his father in law. It is or was a Japanese tradition for the man to take his father's in law name if he wanted to run the company. Sekiryo did never get any sons either so the same thing happened here. His daughter's husband was supposed to take Sekiryo's place when he retired but before that he divorced his wife. They got a son, Hiroshi Yamaushi who today runs Nintendo. Because his parents was divorced he was raised by his grandparents'. There he was raised very strict. 1950 he became the president of Nintendo only 23 years old. Hiroshi Yamaushi makes Nintendo bigger Only 23 years old Hiroshi became Nintendo's third president and he soon started to annoy the other employed on Nintendo. He was superior and nonchalant and fired people who didn't suit him. I can imagine how the workers on Nintendo must have felt. An annoying kid comes and thinks he's better than everybody. In 1951 Yamaushi changed the name of his company to Nintendo Playing-card Co. Ltd and 1959 Yamaushi made a very smart move. He made an agreement with Disney and sold his Hanafuda with Disney pictures on it. Of course this made Nintendo sell even better. 1963 was the year Nintendo changed their name again. This time to Nintendo Co. Ltd., the company's name today. The reason? Yamaushi thought that Nintendo could grow even further by making other stuff. Nintendo started to sell rise in small packages and began to run a taxi company. It didn't go very well so Yamaushi decided that Nintendo would concentrate on the entertainment business. Nintendo created its first R&D team. Research and development. Yamaushi wanted the team to create a toy and it was the recently employed Gumpei Yokoi who took care of the project. Gumpei Yokoi was one of the most important persons for the videogames market. He created the Game Boy which has been sold in over 100 millions copies, and games as Metroid. More about his products later. Yokoi made Nintendo's first toy: the Ultra Hand. The Ultra Hand was an extension of the arm with mechanical fingers. It was a great success and Yokoi continued to use his imagination to create other thing with the Ultra name. Around 1970 Nintendo and Sharp started an agreement and Nintendo was the first Japanese company to use electronics in a toy. Beam Gun was the first invention. You could shoot with a gun against targets and they would react on the light stream coming from the gun. Of course this idea went further developed, but let us leave this area now and continue to the games. The first games I would say that Nintendo's first step into the videogame market was the Magnavox Odyssey which were an American console but Nintendo gain the rights to distribute in Japan. Nintendo gained the rights 1975. The Magnavox was a system you could play on your own TV and I think it must have inspired Nintendo to go into the business of videogaming. 1977 Nintendo released Colour TV Game 6 in Japan. It was a videogame console which could play six variations of Pong. Pong was one of the first games and it was a very simple sort of tennis. The machine sold very good. Over one million copies so Nintendo upgraded the system and created Colour TV Game 15 which also sold in more than a million copies. Game&Watch The next step for Nintendo was Game&Watch. Game&Watch was developed by Gumpei Yokoi and they were small machines that one could take with you everywhere. It had an LCD-screen, and small buttons and it wasn't possible to change cartridge. It was very simple games but very addictive and they often required fast reflexes. They also had a clock built in and a sound alarm. These handheld machines was sold during the whole 80's. Miyamoto and Donkey Kong In the beginning of the 80's Nintendo started to make coin-up games. Arcadegames. Those of you who aren't familiar with coin-up machines, to you I can say that they are big, expensive machines that one can find in places like restaurants. You put coins in them to play. One game Nintendo made, Radar Scoop, wasn't by Yamauchi's opinion good enough so he took a chance and hired an artist, a friend son. His name was Shigeru Miyamoto and he is no doubt today the most famous person in the videogaming business. He is the man behind the Mario and Zelda series and his imagination never seems to end. I really admire this man. Back to Radar Scoop. The reason why Yamaushi hired Miyamoto was of course part of the fact that he knew the boy's father and because he liked Shigeru's ideas. Now Miyamoto had the Radar Scoop's fate in his hands. He knew nothing about the technique of the system he was working so first he asked the programmers and then he discarded the whole idea. Instead Miyamoto created a game where the player was a little carpenter who should reach the top of a building to rescue his girlfriend from a big ape called Donkey Kong which was throwing barrel's at the poor carpenter. Donkey Kong became a very popular arcade and this was only the beginning of Miyamoto's career. The carpenter by the way became later Mario and people said that he more looked like a plumber so he became one and soon another game was created, Mario Bros. This time even Mario's brother Luigi was included and another videogame-character was born. Nintendo Entertainment System Of course the Game&Watch games sold well but Yamaushi wanted to follow-up Colour TV Game 15. He ordered his co-workers to invent a new system. A system which hadn't the latest technology, but instead was much cheaper than their competitors systems. Nintendo would produce the best games for their system. 1983 Nintendo released Family Computer or Famicom in Japan. In the name it is told that Famicom was a computer but there was no keyboard or mouse and it was played on TV and it was only designed for gaming. The Famicom had ports for two controllers. And the controller had two action- buttons, a digital joystick and "start" and "select" buttons. Two years later in 1985 Nintendo owned 90 % of the videogame market in Japan and then it was time for the US release. Nintendo had by the way established an American base five years earlier in Seattle, Washington. The Famicom made a few changes before the American release. The design of the console and controller changed and so did the name. It was released as Nintendo Entertainment System or NES. Here in Sweden many called it Nintendo. At first NES didn't sell very well but it grew. After five years there was a NES in one third of all American homes. At first Nintendo wouldn't allow other companies to make games for their console because then Yamaushi thought that the quality of games would be too bad. Ironically I would say because today a console can't survive without other companies games. But after a while Yamaushi let other companies release games but under strict regulations. For example a company was only allowed to release five games a year. That didn't stop Konami, a very popular Japanese game creator, they started several subsidiaries to be able to make more games. Famous series that arrived to NES and is still living today was for example Final Fantasy by Square, Mega Man by Capcom and Castlevania by Konami. Games has always been Nintendo's strong side and during the NES era Nintendo made many very good games. Gumpei Yokoi was the leader of R&D1 as I said before and he made games as Metroid. Shigeru Miyamoto led R&D4 also known as EAD. He made the Super Mario Bros series and the Zelda series. Super Mario Bros (1) is the best selling game ever. In Sweden it's Super Mario Bros 3. The Mario and Zelda series is today one of the most loved series if not the most loved. The Mario games have always been about jumping. Jumping and running through courses. The Zelda games have always been about adventuring. With a map and compass navigating and solving puzzles in dungeons. R&D2 and R&D3 also made games but mostly developed accessories to the NES. It's worth mention that in Japan Nintendo released a disk drive accessory to the Famicom (NES). It wasn't such a good success so it was never released in US or Europe. The idea was that the games was stored on diskettes and players could download new games on their disk for a small fee in stores. Many may think it's a good idea, but I am a little sceptical. It may sound silly but I think that a game is a work of art and selling a game or in this case overwriting it is terrible. Because then you can't enjoy it anymore. I have sold games, but most of them I've missed very much. It is like throwing away feelings. I'm sure that many serious gamers agree with me. Game Boy In 1989 the Game Boy was released in Japan and USA. I would like to call it a follow-up to Game&Watch. Gumpei Yokoi made it and it was his last really big project. Many people know what a Game Boy is. A Game Boy is a handheld system with changeable cartridges. The screen was black and white and the system was not at all advanced. The reason was to save battery power. The competitors handheld have always been to advanced so Nintendo really were smart when they made the Game Boy use little battery power. The maingame that sold the Game Boy was the Russian game Tetris. Tetris is the world's most played game. It's a puzzle game were you put falling blocks together to make them disappear. Of course Mario showed up on the console though Miyamoto hadn't much to do with it. Nintendo have always own the handheld market and Game Boy has been upgraded several times to maintain Nintendo's monopoly. The Game Boy has been sold in more then 100 millions of copies and is therefore the best selling videogame system ever. The first upgraded Game Boy was Game Boy Pocket released in 1996 which was lighter, had a better screen and it needed less power supply. Around this time the Pokémon hysteria broke out. Two games were released, Pokémon Red and Blue. The goal was to catch monsters in a realistic world on the Game Boy. The two versions was identical except for some few monsters that you could catch in one but not in the other. This was solved by letting players exchange monsters with each other. Everyone loved Pokémon in Japan and children as well grown-ups couldn't let the thought go to catch all 150 cute monsters. Pokémon was the boost the Game Boy needed to continue but I think the game is rather mediocre, at least if you compare it to other Nintendo titles. The next upgrade was a colour screen, Game Boy Color. Did Game Boy Color sell well, or what? Let's move on. This year (2001) the latest upgrade has been released, but it is not really a upgrade because this machine have much better performance. A 32-bit processor instead of the Game Boys 8-bit. New technology. In Japan this machine sold 600 000 copies the first day. I don't need to say that Nintendo have always ruled the handhelds. Super Nintendo Entertainment System 1991, seven years after Famicom was released in Japan the Super Famicom was released there. Nintendo's competitors had released their next generation- consoles a couple of years before which made Nintendo look a little slow. But with a whole bunch of new games Nintendo manage to make their consumers change system and make the competitors consoles look weak. Nintendo released the console with Super Mario World, Pilotwings, Sim City and F-Zero. The console sold out in Japan in two days and by Christmas 1991 the console was released in USA with a new design. It was released here a while later with the Japanese design which I prefer. Of course the name was changed to Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Super NES. Even more shortened SNES. When I was younger I always called it Super Nintendo. It didn't go as well for SNES in US as in Japan. The reason was Sega's Mega Drive or Genesis as it was called in US. Mega Drive had already established well in US and this console was made for fast games. Sega made a lot of arcadeconversions to their Mega Drive and they introduced a counterpart to Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic ran through the courses in speed that hadn't been showed on any of Nintendo's consoles before. Though the games lack the depth which the Mario games had Sonic was fast and had an attitude Mario didn't have. And when Sega marketed Mega Drive saying: "The Genesis does what the Nintendo doesn't" Nintendo had to face that Nintendo wasn't the only alternative anymore. The design of the SNES was of course much rounder than the NES and the SNES really looked like a "super" console. Of course the controller was also redesigned. Two button above the ordinary action button and shoulder- button which you could control with your fore fingers. The controller was also rounder and it was much more comfortable to hold than the NES's unergonomic creation. Nintendo also introduced a 3D chip that they placed in the cartridge in some of their games. The 3D-chip made simulated 3D graphics. You can say that this was something Nintendo had to do to match the Genesis' speed. Nintendo's game Star Wing or Star Fox as it was named in US and Japan had this chip and it impressed many people with its "3D" graphics. Rare, an English company, partowned by Nintendo, which means that they have to make games only for Nintendo's consoles. In 1994 they showed their game Donkey Kong Country which used ACM-graphics. Nintendo had lend them their Donkey Kong license and they showed again that nobody believed the game was to the SNES because the graphics were so nice. This game certainly gave the SNES more life because this console was going down. Rare made two sequels to their popular apegame and Nintendo released its Super Mario World 2. 50 millions copies of the SNES was sold around the world which was very good but way behind the NES. PlayStation In the middle of the 90´s the CD-rom technology was about to go in to the market. Both Nintendo and Sega had planes to put CD-ROM accessories on their consoles. Nintendo began to work together with the Japanese electronic giant Sony. No one really knows why but the project was cancelled and Nintendo started to work with Philips instead. But because Sega didn't succeed with their add-on Nintendo cancelled this project as well. They said that the CD-ROM technology was way to slow because of all the loading times. The cartridges doesn't load and they were created for games in the beginning. Sony turned their SNES add-on to a whole new console with the working name PSX. Nintendo also announced their next generation console Project: Reality. PSX became PlayStation and it was released 1994 and 1995. Sony manages to get almost all the other game companies on their side because of the "easy to develop" CD-ROM technology and besides that it was cheap to make CD-ROM games. Sony also strike at the right moment. Nintendo's console shouldn't be released yet for a couple of years and Sega had made a fool out of themselves with all their add-ons to their Mega Drive. Sony put more money on the marketing part of the console than anyone've done before and they made gaming look like a way of life. Nintendo and Sega always made their own games and it was always these games that sold the console but Sony used their money instead to do it. It was released thousands of games to the PlayStation and it was sold in more than 80 millions of copies. Today, six years after the release, the games is still being released for the console and Sony released PlayStation's sequel PlayStation2 (!) a year ago. This console is very expensive and it has been sold very good. I think that Nintendo made their biggest mistake when they cancelled their work with Sony or else Nintendo had been apart of all the money collecting with the PlayStation. Sony manage to breakthrough the videogame-business just because they had a fat wallet. Virtual Boy In the middle of the 90´s Nintendo wanted to take the first step into the virtual reality gaming. The only thing that was reality after playing the console was pain in the head and neck. The console was a helmet with glasses and a controller. This console became a fiasco and it is nothing else but a sad part in Nintendo´s history. Gumpei Yokoi was the creator and he dropped of Nintendo after this. Sadly he died a year after in a car accident in 1997. Nintendo 64 Project Reality became Nintendo Ultra 64 which later became Nintendo 64. Nintendo marketed this console as "the most powerful gaming console on earth" with its 64-bit processor and 3D-graphics. The main competitor's console PlayStation had a 32-bit processor. Sega released their Saturn which also had CD-ROM technology as the PlayStation. Nintendo decided to stick with their cartridges and they also released their consoles years after the others. PlayStation and Saturn was released 94-95 the N64 was released 1996 in Japan and US and in Europe 1997. Nintendo had very bad support from the other game companies because they saw no reason developing games to the expensive cartridges when they could do it to the cheaper CD's. But when Nintendo released its 64 in Japan it was sold in 500 000 copies together with Mario´s first 3D-adventure Super Mario 64 the first day. It also sold well in US and Europe in the beginning. The Japanese were after a while tired of the lack of games on the N64 so the N64 died pretty soon in Japan but in USA it sold very well. World wide it sold in more than 30 millions of copies. It's not bad but the PlayStation was sold in more than twice as much. Nintendo was beaten by Sony. It went worse for the Saturn which only was sold in eight million copies and Sega's last try the Dreamcast sold even worse. Sega is today producing games for other consoles. The games for the N64 is in my opinion the far best games ever released to consoles. Nintendo started to produce videogames in 3D and there they really found there way. Shigeru Miyamoto produces Super Mario 64 which is the best game ever made in my opinion and two Zelda games. These are even more loved I think. Other games like Waverace 64, Yoshi's Story, Lylat Wars and Mario Kart 64 was also very successful. Of course Rare also helped with games like Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing and Donkey Kong 64 and of course Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark. These two games helped Nintendo get rid of the mark that Nintendo's games only were kidfriendly. Though all Nintendo's games can be played by anyone. Now the N64 is almost dead and it is probably just two more games that will be released here in Sweden. I forgot two things. The controller was something new. It had a new joystick which was very good for 3D gaming and besides that C-button which also were used for 3D-games. This controller is very nice to hold though there is one bad thing. The joystick easy becomes worn out. The other thing was the 64DD. That was an add-on which only was released in Japan and there it became a fiasco. The future and my own thoughts September the 14th this year Nintendo's next generation console GameCube was released in Japan. It didn't sell as well as we thought but I think it will sell better soon. Because now Nintendo is going to take back the other companies and really succeed this time. This time Nintendo uses MiniDVDs and these are much cheaper to develop games for, than the cartridges. The GameCube is much cheaper than PlayStaton2 and the upcoming Xbox and it is only developed for games so this time it probably will go well. Next spring the console will be released in Europe and my money is saved. Sources Club Nintendo Magazine http://www.videogames.com http://www.nintendo.com http://www.geocities.com/hoz14_2000/history.html © Copyright 2002 Christian Wall