Everything started in 1889 when Fusajiro Yamauchi began producing Japanese playing cards called Hanafuda; apart from Hanafuda cards he also imported some western games, mixed ideas and set up two stores, one in Kyoto and one in Osaka. Playing cards were a novelty for Japanese people and were very succesful at the time. Fusajiro Yamauchi decided to expand his business and in 1933 he legally established Yamauchi Nintendo & Co, establishing as well the first factory in Nintendo’s history. Nowadays Nintendo still sells playing cards in Japan, however its video games division was the responsible for its international expansion. Nintendo is now the leading video games company in the world thanks to the success of Nintendo DS and Wii.
I was searching around online to see if I could find the location of that 1933 first building of Nintendo, however I was not successful until it occured to me to use Google Maps and search for YAMAUCHI NINTENDO!! and it worked! Here you have the pictures of what probably is a reconstruction of the original building on top of the original location. When I went there I peeped inside the building and nobody seemed to be using it nowadays.
