When it comes to video games and home entertainment next to Atari, Nintendo remains a company that had a great impact on popular culture. Despite the fact that Nintendo has long since eclipsed Atari's longevity in the gaming market most people are not familiar with the history of Nintendo and this is a shame as Nintendo's history is a colorful one filled with ups and downs and eventually dramatic success. So, let's take a brief look at the wonderful history of Nintendo.

If you were to ask the average person when did Nintendo first emerge on the gaming landscape the most common response will be the 80's. Well, this is partially accurate because Nintendo did start in the 80's but not the 1980's. Believe it or not, Nintendo originally launched in 1889 in Japan as a playing card company! The company remained primarily a playing card company until the early 1960's when it decided to diversify its business into other areas. These areas ranged dramatically and included such ventures as the taxi business, hotel business and even the food business. While you do have to admire Nintendo's desire to diversify itself you can not call these ventures a success. In fact, they were mostly failures which left Nintendo deeply in debt. Nintendo struggled aimlessly until 1970 when its toy division was a surprising success during the Christmas season. This success set the stage for Nintendo to set the groundwork for what would be its greatest success ever: videogames.

In 1975, Nintendo released the Odyssey video game system and while it was hardly a huge success it did last until the early 1980's until the Atari 2600 killed off Odyssey's sales. Nintendo soon become involved with arcade games and produced one of the all time most popular video game of the early 1980's fad: Donkey Kong a massive money maker that would also launch the careers of The Super Mario Bros who would eventually bring billions of dollars into Nintendo's coffers.

The arcade game fad eventually faded and Nintendo opted to shift gears and launch a new gaming system similar in concept to the Atari 2600 and its competitors. Many thought this was a bad idea because the home video game fad appeared dead. Oh, the critics were so wrong! Released in 1985, the Nintendo Home Entertainment System was a multi-billion dollar success that re-launched the entire video game industry that is stronger today that it ever was in its history. It should also come as no surprise that Nintendo still remains at the top of the heap even today.

Every few years Nintendo would release a new gaming system with each system being more popular than the one that preceded it. The Super NES, the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo GameCube were all major hits but their success may have been eclipsed by the Nintendo GameBoy which essentially resurrected the long dead concept of hand held electronics games that were hugely popular in the early 1980's. Oh, surely you remember those cool Mattel handheld games don't you?

Today, Nintendo's new system is the Wii and its success is stratospheric as the sales of the system are well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, the ability for Nintendo to remain an innovator in such a competitive market is nothing short of shocking. The system is in such demand that it is impossible to keep on the shelves. In fact, used games are being auctioned at twice their retail price! (Whether or not this is ethical is up to the individual) So, it is clear that Nintendo will remain a force on the electronics market for years to come. Yes, the company has come a long way since its playing card days.