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Nintendo Businesses Entertainment Games

The Complete History of Nintendo 118

Posted by timothy from the modulo-the-really-juicy-bits dept.
SlappingOysters writes "Gameplayer are running a comprehensive feature on the history of Nintendo that runs through all 119 years of their existence, from humble card maker to gaming powerhouse. It is documented in chronological order and includes a stack of trivia about the company that will be thoroughly enjoyed by all Nintendo fans. As an interesting side note, it links to a sister article that explores how Mario can improve your sex life."
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The Complete History of Nintendo More

The Complete History of Nintendo

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  • Plumbers lead to greater sex? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Vertana ( 1094987 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @05:14PM (#24914037) Homepage

    What does Mario leading to "greater sex" have anything to do with Nintendo's history? On a side note... I shoulda been a plumber. I never knew that plumbing and jumping would lead to better sex. Thanks for the life tip Slashdot!

  • I wish it were true.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Naughty Bob ( 1004174 ) * on Sunday September 07, 2008 @05:16PM (#24914063)
    Fellow geeks. Mario cannot 'improve' your sex life.

    Most mentions of Mario only have a deleterious effect on same.

    Instead, be cool, don't appear desperate, and lower your sights. Unless you are horrific, you'll do fine. Just don't rely on Mario.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 )

      Fellow geeks. Mario cannot 'improve' your sex life.

      How do you know? None of us have one to be improved.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rubah ( 1197475 )

      Mario might not have been able to, but Final Fantasy sure did!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      But it will do you old enough to to have a sex life [google.com]. (not work or school friendly)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Renraku ( 518261 )

      Mario can, in fact, improve your sex life.

      Believe me, plumbing pays decently since its a skilled profession. With about $40k/year median in most areas. At $40k/year, you can live pretty comfortably and still have money to buy the ladies drinks over the weekend. You could probably afford a half-decent car, too. Throw in some classier things and some good music and getting laid is inevitable.

      Besides, some mushrooms are quite the aphrodisiac. At least, before the kidney and liver failure set in.

    • Mario can improve your sex life if you master control of your Wii.
    • In one of my sociology classes, my teacher said the good news was that, for every person, there is somebody out there who is the perfect match. But the bad news is it is very unlikely that these two will ever meet. So if that's true then maybe setting up facebook and myspace accounts and adding as many "friends" as possible is the way to go.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RyoShin ( 610051 )

      Mario can, however, get you a tremendous amount of cake.

    • Instead, be cool, don't appear desperate, and lower your sights.

      Trust me it's better to look in the eyes instead of lowering the sight.

  • 8 pages? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by magus_melchior ( 262681 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @05:17PM (#24914071) Journal

    8 pages worth of stuff, 1/3 of which is denied by Privoxy/Adblock, and no "print version" in sight?

    At least some of the big journos have done something right. Print version style sheets.

    Okay, rant over.

    • Little known fact about script blockers: You can actually unblock stuff to make it work. D'uh. Site works no problem with privoxy/noscript.

      • Re:8 pages? (Score:5, Informative)

        by dafrazzman ( 1246706 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @05:42PM (#24914295)

        I think he was pointing out how unprofessional this article is. I, for one, agree. Each of those pages has at most a few hundred words of text. It's a smallish article spaced out very unnecessarily.

        If I turn off adblock and script block, it's even worse. Nothing on there needs to work, it's all ad junk and clutter. It may be interesting, but the quality of the site is not so good. I feel like slashdot should maintain a higher standard than this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by halcyon1234 ( 834388 )

      For anyone thinking this was a bastion of good reporting, it isn't. It's just a reprint of an article that appeared in Ultimate Nintendo (as referenced at the end of their 8 page long, ad filled reprint). So, yeah, here's the FTA, and fuck Game Player:

      119 years have culminated in that little white box that sits beneath your TV. No bigger than a DVD case, the Wii is essentially the same machine - albeit slightly prettier and technically more robust - that Nintendo would release back in 1985.

      Don't believe us

      • For anyone thinking this was a bastion of good reporting, it isn't. It's just a reprint of an article that appeared in Ultimate Nintendo (as referenced at the end of their 8 page long, ad filled reprint)

        Sorry for the self-reply, but I just RTFA, and noticed that it must have been a magazine from 2006. Because the article ends abruptly in 2006. They didn't update it or provide any original material. How non-2.0 of them! Or maybe there just wasn't any content to add. Because, after all, Nintendo hasn't done

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by halcyon1234 ( 834388 )
        And now, because I'm bored, the article with Super Commentary!

        1889 to Present - the full story
        Written by: Clint McCredie | 9/5/2008 5:54:04 PM

        Or, as you'll find out by the end of the article, OCR'd by Clint McCredie from a magazine he read back in 2006. And for the record, 2006 isn't "the present".

        119 years have culminated in that little white box that sits beneath your TV. No bigger than a DVD case, the Wii is essentially the same machine - albeit slightly prettier and technically more robust - that

  • Not a history (Score:5, Informative)

    by Darundal ( 891860 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @05:18PM (#24914089) Journal
    It is more of a timeline of the company that ends at 2006. Although, if anyone is interested in a good account of Nintendo's history, check out the book Game Over: Press Start to Continue by David Sheff. It is a bit dated, and doesn't cover anything newer than the n64 (and that depends on when the copy you look at was produced) but it goes into great depth regarding Nintendo's history.

    • Re:Not a history (Score:4, Informative)

      by bigbigbison ( 104532 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @05:58PM (#24914405) Homepage
      Unfortunately, it is also out of print. It is a pretty fun book and more or less the best Nintendo book. Maybe one of these days it will be back in print.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jorophose ( 1062218 )

        For the sake of preservation, I'm sure there's got to be someone out there with a copy and close to an OCR device. Either that or it's sitting around in the belly of the internet, along with every other book (and a clockwork orange of course).

        It's a shame to see books out of print. Wasn't there a startup that designed and started selling these printers intended to print out books at a time for libraries and such, as a sort of on-demand-printing for them to make some money? Sort of like Lulu.com but this one

        • If it is out there on the internets I couldn't find it. I wanted my students to read it and searched and search but couldn't find it. I especially hope that the second edition is out there somewhere and someone will link to it since it has some corrections and new(er) material (not by Sheff though)
          • Yeah, but the newer material isn't nearly up to the quality of the other stuff. The corrections however definitely make finding a copy of the second edition (which was the one I recommended) worthwhile.

          • Well, have you tried the butthole of the internet? They get a lot of stuff washing up on their shores...

        • Do you mean something like this? http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm [ondemandbooks.com]

    • Re:Not a history (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Haoie ( 1277294 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @07:08PM (#24914857)

      Yes, that's a good book.

      The Ultimate History of Video Games [Steve Hunt] is also a very worthy read. The focus isn't on Nintendo, but still worthwhile.

  • busy schedule (Score:5, Funny)

    by emart ( 1343753 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @05:19PM (#24914093) Homepage
    video gaming has never, doesn't, and will never improve the sex life of any one. unless it happens to be a female who plays video games, in which case every male video game player wishes to have sex with her.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by R2.0 ( 532027 )

      Don't ever underestimate manual dexterity - there's a reason a Trackpoint is called a clit-mouse.

    • video gaming has never, doesn't, and will never improve the sex life of any one

      hmm... DOA Volleyball... I'd say it doesn't improve any two people's sex lives

    • unless it happens to be a female who plays video games, in which case every male video game player wishes to have sex with her.

      As opposed to females who DON'T play video games, which case every male gamer wishes to have sex with...

  • Should be concentrating on learning, say, the history of Western Civ or the ancients.

    Now, I'm off for some more BF2.
    • Do you know how dreadfully dull Western Civ is? Ever wonder why it's the junior history professors and TAs who get dumped with it in the Universities?

      The History of Nintendo is what they do for fun: it's got a manageable subject and it has fascinating resonances in social, political, economic and intellectual history. Western Civ is such a vague, artificial concept that no matter how small you slice it, it's still too big to give people more than a taste of real history. I mean, you can make it fun and enl

  • No Gamecube (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I actually rtfa and the Gamecube isn't even mentioned. They just go from GBA to DS to Wii.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rhapsody Scarlet ( 1139063 )

      Well who can blame them? I'd detail my experiences with the GameCube, but I might as well just write a review of Super Smash Bros. Melee instead, that was the only truly remarkable game I played on it. Super Mario Sunshine? Patently inferior to Super Mario 64. Soul Calibur II? Can't match the original. Mario Kart: Double Dash? Simply couldn't hold my interest.

      I know I'm missing some good stuff (Metroid Prime, why did I never play that?), but my experiences were poor. SSBM is the only game to not be surpasse

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Sabz5150 ( 1230938 )
        One word sums up my GameCube experience: Ikaruga. Incredible sounds, beautiful graphics, gameplay rivaled only (ironically enough) by Radiant Silvergun. There is no better game for the 'Cube IMHO.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by renegadesx ( 977007 )
        As somebody who owned all 3 consoles (4 if you include the Dreamcast) I must say the cube did have its place deserved in my living room.

        Metroid Prime was extremly well done, props to Retro Studio's for that one, Prime 2? Good but didn't do anything new. Double Dash wasn't a major step up but still an improvment

        There were quite a few awesome games that were either Cube exclusives or timed exclusives, RE4 being the best of them (IMO best game of last gen). Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, Eternal Darknes,

        • No, they did quite well all around... I'm wondering how many Xbox sales were for XBMC? And how many PS2s went unsold and were for sale now?

          It could have gotten #1, but I think the problems were mainly due to piracy... And sadly it's a double-edged sword.

          I can't find most of those classic gamecube games. I found a lot. But games like Tales of Symphonia, Luigi's Mansion, Double Dash, Metroid Prime, etc. I have to borrow, and games like RE4, MGS: TS, ED, and Ikaruga (along with the original pikmin) can't be fo

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by renegadesx ( 977007 )
            Nah, it was never going to get #1, devs were still burnt after the way Nintendo treated them during the first period so they were never going to get all the major multiplatform hits and less exclusives than say Sony.

            Also dont forget the PS2 won by a very large margin. In 2004 they were in 2nd place but in 3rd by the 360's launch. The PS2 really dominated towards the end due to titles like Singstar, all of a sudden teenage girls wanted PS2's which really skyrocketed sales by turning it into a glorified ka

            • Re:No Gamecube (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Jorophose ( 1062218 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @06:55PM (#24914767)

              The only problem with Nintendo's methodology is that they don't want shit games.

              When Sony opened the floodgates you got all the shovelware games. Haven't you noticed that?

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by CronoCloud ( 590650 )

                No, what I notice is the fact that I can get more than 1 or 2 RPG's a year, and the fact that more games from Japan are released in the US. Sony respected the US market in a way Nintendo never did. Sony actively recruited non-Japanese devs early in the PSones life, hell they even encouraged ports of some PC games. List the "greatest" N64/Gamecube games, and then list the greatest PS1/PS2 games. There's more diversity of developers and gameplay in the PS1/PS2 list, while for the N64/Gamecube they're almos

                • Well, that's probably more related to the fact that I don't think Sony ever published games itself. Nintendo is a mongrel of a games publisher, reason why it often, sadly, kills scores of good 3rd party games.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Krilomir ( 29904 )

                    SCEI published plenty of games. Games like Gran Turismo and Arc the Lad among others.

                  • Psygnosis has been part of Sony since 1993, (Destruciton Derby & Wipeout)
                    SCE also published Grand Turismo, the PS1's highest selling game ever.
                    Twisted Metal, developed by Sony Interactive, published by SCE

                    Sony has been a games developer and publisher before they were a console maker, but they would actually promote 3rd party games, help out 3rd parties work out how to code for its hardware etc. Something Nintendo has never done. Nintendo was ALL about the 1st parties and treated the 3rd parties

                    • Because Sony doesn't do software... Sony does hardware.

                      Nintendo does software. And yes, you are a threat to nintendo. But I really think you're blowing this out of proportion; I'm damn sure nintendo's helped third party developpers. And if not, well, doesn't the sense of competition make things better?

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by KDR_11k ( 778916 )

                  Well, Nintendo dominated their own platforms because noone else was up to par. Even now that the Wii is the market leader it still gets mostly crappy ports and half-assed shovelware while all the competent teams are put to work on making PS3/360 games (which then sell less than Nintendo's cheaply made Wii games while costing about 10x as much to make). Let's see... Massive first party behemoth known for GOTY-caliber games... Yep, C or D level teams are going to make a dent there... I think one of the Ninten

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Darkness404 ( 1287218 )
              The PS2 had an early head start with the DVD format. At the time of its launch, it was an affordable DVD player that played games. Secondly, it was backwards compatibly with all the PS1 games giving it a larger library of games. Third, it had a lot of exclusive system selling titles such as Final Fantasy. The Xbox had Halo which was a system seller. But the Gamecube had a lot of exclusive titles but just never managed for them to sell systems, Melee was a great game, and Tales of Symphonia is one of the bes

              • The thing that I really liked about the gamecube was the short load times compared to the PS2 and Xbox. Seriously, it seemed to take at least a minute to go back to the world map after a battle in Final Fantasy...

                Extended load times in PS2 and PS1 games are a sure sign your PS2 (or PS1) is about to give up the ghost and give you DRE's. It shouldn't take a minute to get back to the world map in FFX. Some games are very hard on the drive, Everquest Online Adventures for example, if your PS2 is going bad, yo

                • Yes and no, nothing you say is wrong, yes the Playstation brand has always had issues with their disk drives/lasers.

                  The thing I think he was refering to due to it being a smaller disc (in size and capacity) the Gamecube on average had faster load times due to the laser doing alot less work and data transfer from the disk being usually smaller. The sacrifice was you couldn't fit as much but Nintendo didnt see that as an issue for them themselves, they had some sweet graphics compression technologies, the
      • lol @ Soul Calibur II being worse than SC1 when most hardcore fans (that is, the tournament-goers pros, not the scrubs) would agree that it's the best of the series.
      • Windwaker is fantastic. For my part, it's surpassed only by OOT. Don't believe anyone who says the cell shaded art takes away from it. If you haven't played it, I strongly recommend it.
    • I don't know whether to be more surprised that you RTFA or that they left off the Gamecube. Melee was THE party game for many people until Brawl came out.

  • Shitty layout (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Jorophose ( 1062218 )

    Is anybody else having problems with this site's horrible layout?

    There's some sort of option to log in with an ad in a column blocking a large chunk of the text...

    Idiots. This is not how you design a web page, ever.

  • 1400 pages about Nintendo history (Score:3, Informative)

    by FornaxChemica ( 968594 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @06:13PM (#24914499) Homepage Journal

    This looks like an enhanced version of the company history Nintendo gives to the press, the one you can see on the European site too:
    http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/service/corporate_2001.html [nintendo.co.uk]

    Much more interesting, at least if you speak French, is the "History of Nintendo", so far only one book has been published:
    http://editionspixnlove.fr/collectiondetail.php?ID=6 [editionspixnlove.fr]

    The book is 228 pages long and showcases 500 Nintendo toys and games prior to 1980 (took them 6 years of research!). The whole series will have 6 volumes totalling more than 1400 pages. Flabbergasting I daresay.

  • Unreadable (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by srothroc ( 733160 )
    Using Opera 9.27 here, and unfortunately I can't read the page because the content all loads under the ads and crap on the right.

    Hate it when that happens.

  • In Florida?? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EEBaum ( 520514 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @08:41PM (#24915381) Homepage
    From TFA: 1989 - The Wizard movie is released in the US. Starring Fred Savage, Christian Slater and Beau Bridges, it chronicles the story of a young boy with a talent for videogames who enters a Nintendo tournament in Florida. Nintendo uses it as a vehicle to promote the NES and unveil Super Mario Bros 3 in the West.

    The tournament was in California (Universal Studios, Hollywood, to be precise), thank you very much. Hence the protagonist incessantly whining "California!" through half the film.

    Yes, I saw it in theatres. The announcer's cry of "Super... Mario... Brothers... THREE!!!!" remains one of the more memorable moments of my childhood.
    • I love The Wizard. It's so...bad.

    • Yeah, I saw it in the theater too. I spotted another erroneous trivia claim:

      Trivia - Star Fox, released in the US in 1993, was the first 3D polygon game to ever appear on a home console.

      Not True. EA's F-22 Interceptor (Sega Megadrive) predates Star Fox by two years. It contains no fancy chip; instead, it uses the Megadrive's beefy 68000 main processor to create a fully-polygonal 3D world.

      Star Fox's claim to fame is that it has better graphics and a higher framerate than F-22...but it most certainly is no

  • Is it just me or did they completely skip the GameCube? The timeline went from the N64 to the GBA to the Wii without mentioning anything about the GameCube.

    Is this even a complete timeline? Nintendo had a lot of other projects out there that weren't even mentioned in this article.

  • NES in 1987????????? (Score:4, Informative)

    by keepper ( 24317 ) on Sunday September 07, 2008 @10:51PM (#24916111) Homepage

    1987 - The Famicom is released in the US and Europe as the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). Selling for $300, it would sell 60 million units worldwide.

    Uh... maybe i'm wrong.. but i remember getting my NES x-mas of 1985.... and wikipedia confirms this...

    Great "article".. they can't even copy paste well.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PKFC ( 580410 )
      Yeah I'm reading this and finding things just from my memory that are incorrect. (So yeah if I'm wrong, a little wikipedia would help that)

      1985 - Nintendo releases the Famicom (Family Computer) in Japan priced at 54,800 yen. Designed by Masayuki Uemura, it is released with 20 software titles, including a home port of Donkey Kong. The machine was originally beige and maroon and its game cartridges had to be slotted in through the top.

      It was released in Japan in 1983 with three games. Donkey Kong, Mario Bro

      • Also, the version of Wild Gunman released in 1974 was an EM game, not the video game shown in Back to the Future II.

        This timeline is rife with mistakes and = FAIL.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rgo ( 986711 )

        I want to say that the CD add on development started later than that, but 1991 then switching to Phillips in 1992, back to Sony in 1993 and then Sony releasing the PSX in 1994 after being thrown out sort of makes a reasonable timeline..

        The last effort in making a CD addon was a joint venture between Sony, Philips and Nintendo, developing a custom optical disc (Nintendo Disc) addon.

  • media companies... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cpotoso ( 606303 ) on Monday September 08, 2008 @12:01AM (#24916415) Journal
    My favorite line in the saga (from the article):

    1982 - Nintendo vs Universal

    Donkey Kong's success caught the eye of Universal Studios, which felt the character was a direct infringement of its film King Kong. Nintendo was taken to court by the studio, but the judge ruled in Nintendo's favour after it was brought to light that in a previous court case Universal fought to prove that the character of King Kong was within the pubic domain so it could make its movie. Nintendo was awarded $1.8 million from Universal.

    Quite amazing how media companies want to have their cake and it it too... Unbelievable: to sue someone for infringement for something they fought to be in the public domain (they were presumably the original infringers, eh?). This is one of the (many) reasons I am in a war against media companies. I have been violating their copyrights as much as I can. If they do not respect the rights of others I won't respect theirs either.

  • That stupid timeline fails to mention the Gamecube!
  • where is super mario bros on this timeline ?

  • Not only was that not the complete history (as many here have already pointed out), but both articles are rife with spelling and grammar errors.

  • Gotta love websites that put [AD] a small amount of content [AD] on multiple pages [AD] to up their ad co- [AD] unt.

  • Complete? (Score:1, Troll)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 )

    Does it mention how they illegally controlled the gaming market back in the 80's?

  • Wow, never seen this before (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gravis777 ( 123605 ) on Monday September 08, 2008 @10:59AM (#24920763)

    The site is slashdotted. Same content available here [wikipedia.org]

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