The History of Video Games by Charlie Fish

Author:Charlie Fish
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / History
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2021-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

A sentry turret fromPortal 2, in Valve’s US headquarters. (Claire Bateman)

Level 4

COMPANIES AND CAPITALISM

Before Pong in 1972, there was no such thing as a video game industry, so most of the companies that built the foundations of the industry were not video game companies.

Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and sell ‘hanafuda’ – playing cards carefully handmade from the bark of mulberry and mitsumata trees and printed with symbols inspired by nature. The word ‘Nintendo’ in Japanese means roughly ‘leave luck to heaven’.

The cards became popular for gambling, allowing Yamauchi to expand his operations. In 1907, he successfully introduced Western-style playing cards to the Japanese market, distributing them via cigarette shops. Yamauchi’s son-in-law Sekiryo Kaneda took over the company in 1929 and continued to grow the business, until 20 years later he suffered a stroke that forced him to retire. He summoned his 21-year-old grandson Hiroshi Yamauchi to his death bed in 1949, and asked him to abandon his law degree so he could take over the company.

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