Here Comes Nintendo

Podcast: Today In History with The Retrospectors · The Retrospectors

Opublikowano: 2026-09-23

Nintendo was world-famous by the 1980s but the origins of the company go back a century earlier - to September 23rd, 1889, when Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai, a maker of brightly-coloured ‘Hanafuda’ cards. The hand-painted playing cards, made of mulberry bark, were produced for decades and were a favourite of Yakuza gangsters for use in illegal gambling. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly look into the bizarre businesses with which Nintendo experimented before their pivot into video games; explain how a plastic concertina hand changed the fortunes of the company’s toy division; and reveal...