Nintendo

Nintendo Company Limited is a multinational corporation, originally founded on September 23, 1889 in Kyoto, Japan by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards. Over the years, Nintendo became a video game company, growing into one of the most powerful in the industry, and the oldest intact company in the video game console market.

The company first broke into the console market when they secured the rights to distribute the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, in Japan in 1975. They then released a hugely popular range of handheld games called 'Game & Watch' from 1980 to 1991, before releasing their own home console in 1985 - the Nintendo Family Computer or Famicom (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) outside Japan). They then continued in the handheld gaming market with their highly successful GameBoy, and later, the Nintendo DS.

The company is now one of the largest and well-known console manufacturers, and the most dominant entity in the handheld console market. By the end of 2006, Nintendo had sold over 387 million hardware units worldwide.