The Story of Nintendo (2023) - full transcript
Over 133 years in the making, from humble beginnings manufacturing 'Hanufuda' cards came the world's most recognized video game companies.
(Birds trilling)
(Traffic murmuring) (Cars beeping)
- There's different translations,
but roughly it means work
hard, leave luck to heaven.
- Just super interesting,
'cause I don't think a lot of people
think about where the
name Nintendo came from.
(Gentle music) (Fire crackling)
- [Narrator] Greatness
always starts with an idea.
The idea should remain malleable
to create something of longevity.
It is ever changing,
and yet remains
faithful to its core values,
to bring positive change,
to bring hope, to bring fun.
(Uplifting music)
- [Speaker] I have a
wonderful electronic invention
I want you to see, it
looks something like this.
- [Computer voice] 3, 2, 1, game begin.
(Lively music)
(Playful music)
(Video reel rasping)
- [Narrator] On September 23rd, 1889,
Fusajiro Yamauchi began
manufacturing Hanafuda,
Japanese playing cards of floral design.
Fusajiro was born in Kyoto
and it was here that he
established Nintendo Koppai,
Koppai meaning playing cards in Japanese.
During such time,
a widespread ban on playing
cards swept through Japan
due to their ties with gambling,
foreign trade, and usage by the Yakuza.
(Video reel rasping) (Gentle music)
- Nintendo is one of the world's
biggest gaming companies.
They're a Japanese company
and they've actually been going
for well over a hundred years now.
They started making playing cards,
but they really reached their stride
in the eighties and nineties,
when they started releasing Arcade machines
and then home consoles.
And that was about the same time as well
when we got introduced
to their biggest franchises,
like "Mario and Luigi",
"legend of Zelda" "and Kirby".
(Upbeat music)
- As you can see,
they're a bit smaller than
the western playing cards
that we are used to,
and they're printed with
beautiful flower patterns
and scenes from nature.
(Film reel rasping)
(Upbeat music continues)
- Nintendo's earliest and best customers
were the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza.
They ran lots of illegal gambling dens
and they needed playing cards.
And because no one wanted cheating going on
every game started
with a new pack of cards.
So Nintendo had a great business early on
because these gangsters would buy cards,
they'd open the cards, play a game,
throw 'em away, get new set playing cards.
So it was a good business to get into.
(Upbeat lively music)
- [Narrator] Yamauchi found great success
in his newfound company.
Before long, he had
established a new shop in Osaka
and began to develop
a more comprehensive array of card games.
It was in 1929 when
yamauchi decided to step down
from the company, passing
the business to his son-in-law,
Sekiryo Kaneda, who adopted
the name Sekiryo yamauchi
in respect of the family.
Fusajiro remained
uninvolved with the company
for the remainder of his life,
eventually passing away from a stroke
in his home city of Kyoto,
on January 1st, 1940.
- And the founder of the
company continued until 1929
when his son-in-law, Sekiryo Kaneda,
who took the name yamauchi as well,
took over the company and
kind of professionalized it,
improved the manufacturing processes,
and started manufacturing
western style playing cards.
- [Video narrator] War has struck again.
(Airplane purring)
(Lively music)
- After world war ii Japan was in ruins.
It was occupied most,
there wasn't much food,
the buildings were flattened.
I mean, the country had to
rebuild from absolute scratch.
And from that came this kind of, you know,
essentially a new start,
it tried to move into
electronics and kind of,
that was really kind of where
Japan found a new future
post-war.
(Video reel rasping)
(Lively music continues)
- [Narrator] The years
following world war ii
allowed Japan to further
its industrialization.
Markets for electronics were established
alongside the rise of
strip mills for iron and steel.
Among such technological innovations,
were transfer machines
for the automobile industry,
automatic control systems
in new steam power stations,
and catalytic cracking
in oil refining industries.
(Video reel rasping)
- Akihabara is an
electronics district in Tokyo,
and it came like the
hub of electronics shops.
You'd have these kind
of multi-story arcades
and shops selling all kinds of electronics.
It was really kind of very,
kind of geeky mecca if you like.
You know, if you were into
electronics and you are in Tokyo,
you're gonna make a beeline for that area.
- [Narrator] After the death of Sekiryo,
Hiroshi yamauchi, the grandson of fusajiro
was ordered to step up
and assume the mantle of company president.
Being young and inexperienced,
Hiroshi suffered some initial backlash
from the company's employees.
- In 1949, Sekiryo became ill,
called up his grandson to his hospital bed
and said, "okay, you
give up your law degree
and take over Nintendo from me."
That was Hiroshi yamauchi.
And over the course of the next 50 years,
he was destined to turn Nintendo
into a multinational conglomerate.
But at the beginning, it wasn't so easy.
(Gentle music)
- [Narrator] Strikes would take place
to test the new president's
dedication to the role,
and firmly Hiroshi would make a stand.
He chose to fire a handful of employees
and set his eyes on the future.
With a traditional imperialist demeanor,
Hiroshi ran the company
intending to keep up
with the changing times.
The first step,
was to develop a new
style of plastic playing cards
influenced by western markets.
However, due to Japan's strict restrictions
on unsanctioned gambling,
the plastic and Hanafuda cards
were now struggling to make a profit.
Luckily, the company
now called Nintendo Kurata
made a licensing deal with Walt Disney
to merge the new plastic
cards into family oriented games,
with a small booklet
outlining the many games
one could play with the cards.
The new product would
sell 600,000 units in one year,
allowing Nintendo to
dominate the card game market
in its own country.
- They also had a deal with Disney
that allowed them to
make Disney playing cards.
- That had Disney characters on them.
And so this sort of made Nintendo
kind of take a little side step
into manufacturing things for children,
wherein they discovered
there's a lot of money to be made
here.
And so that was another stepping stone
on the way to them creating video games,
which at that time were
basically considered toys.
- [Narrator] Once again, the
company name was changed
to the Nintendo company limited,
and the business was made public
with Hiroshi yamauchi as its chairman.
- So in the beginning,
Hiroshi Yamauchii was only 21 years old,
and the workers in Nintendo
didn't necessarily take
him entirely seriously.
He was really ambitious
and really ruthless.
He fired anyone that disagreed with him.
- [Narrator] Visiting
Cincinnati in the United States
provided Hiroshi with some disappointing
yet valuable information.
He'd gone to examine
the world's largest
manufacturer of playing cards,
the us playing card company.
However, on his arrival,
a small office and factory greeted him.
To Hiroshi, the scale of the facility
represented the success
of the playing card industry,
and there wasn't much to be seen.
(Upbeat music)
Concerned for the company's future,
Hiroshi returned to Japan
in search of new ways to
ensure the longevity of Nintendo.
- After Nintendo had established themselves
making these playing cards,
they tried a bunch of different
things before they landed
on what would eventually
make them so successful.
So they tried a whole
range of different companies,
including taxis and even love hotels.
- He went into the food
business making instant rice,
and he went into the taxi business.
And that one seemed to go okay
until there was a labor revolt,
and that was the end of that idea.
- So by the early seventies,
Nintendo was struggling.
It spent a fortune trying
all these businesses,
getting nowhere, and had a lot of debt.
- [Narrator] The outlandish ventures
proved unsuccessful for the business
and were soon disbanded.
The company was on the brink of bankruptcy.
Desperately searching for ideas,
Hiroshi spotted a factory
engineer called Gunpei Yokoi.
(Upbeat music)
- Around that time,
Hiroshi visited one of the factories
and saw Gunpei playing
with an extendable claw,
a toy which he'd invented himself.
And instead of telling him off for that,
he was fascinated by this
and asked him to put these extendable claws
into manufacture.
- [Narrator] The ultra hand was distributed
and became a massive hit.
Such simplistic ingenuity
spurred new ideas for the company.
Soon a toy department was made in Kyoto,
solely led by Gunpei who
would develop new concepts,
such as the love tester and the light gun.
(Upbeat music)
♪ Love tester ♪
♪ love tester ♪
- [Narrator] By the 1960s,
Nintendo had solidified
itself as a significant player
in the toy market.
The early seventies came rolling in,
and with it the idea of a video game
was being conceptualized.
- Around that time in the early seventies,
video games were
becoming a really big thing.
"Pong" had come out in 1972
and suddenly video games were cool.
- [Narrator] Atari became
the first in the race,
releasing "pong" in 1972.
It was inspired by a game
developed by physicist William Higinbotham.
Atari leap towards mainstream distribution,
giving the public a
groundbreaking discovery,
which took America by storm.
Nintendo had to react fast.
Hiroshi hired employees
from sharp electronics
to develop a new system
that could compete with the
emerging video game consoles.
Soon in cooperation
with Mitsubishi electric,
the TV color 6 was made
and distributed in June, 1977.
(Video reel rasping)
- So after Nintendo had been
going for quite a long time,
they really started to branch out
into the burgeoning gaming world.
So at the time,
Arcade machines were
hugely popular around the world.
Atari had already been
producing them for quite a while.
Classics like "pong" had been around
for a little bit of time,
but they were really
starting to take off in Japan,
in America, and in Europe.
So Nintendo decided that
they would try and get in on this
really expanding market as well.
And when they did,
they really worked on how
they were going to make a game
that would stand out.
- But it wasn't actually meant
to be Nintendo's console.
Mitsubishi had created it for
another company that went bust
and decided to give Nintendo a call,
see if they'd put it out instead.
And that's how Nintendo
got into video games.
- So Nintendo's very first console,
games console was
actually the "color TV-game".
It was a very, very simple
device, but it paved the way.
I think Shigeru Miyamoto,
who would go on to make
some of Nintendo's most important games,
did actually work on the "color TV-game".
I think he designed like the outer casing
or something really random like that.
So it paved the way for
one Shigeru Miyamoto
to then go on to design "donkey Kong".
(Upbeat music)
- [Narrator] In response,
Atari returned with the 2600,
popularizing microprocessor
based hardware and games
stored on swappable rom cartridges.
It was the most popular
second generation console
by a large margin
during the time of release.
Nintendo would follow
with four more iterations of the TV color,
and soon both Atari and
Nintendo were being recognized
as big fish in a huge pond.
And competitiveness was on the rise.
(Speaking in a foreign language)
(Computer beeping)
- [Narrator] In response to
America’s growing Arcade market,
hiroshi expanded Nintendo into the us,
releasing new titles such as "radar scope",
"space fever", and "sheriff".
Though effective in the Japanese market,
the games weren't financially
successful in America.
To counter this, hiroshi
turned to Shigeru Miyamoto.
And upon deliberation,
"donkey Kong" was made,
becoming a smash hit in both countries.
(Playful music)
- The Arcade machine that they came out
with was "donkey Kong",
which is obviously one of
their most famous franchises,
and starred the main character of Jumpman,
who was originally actually a carpenter.
But he would eventually become
our most beloved Nintendo character, Mario,
who's actually a plumber now.
But the idea was that
as he was a carpenter,
the level was based
around kind of like a workman
sort of environment,
where he's dodging
barrels from a big gorilla
also called donkey Kong.
And this just took off across the world.
It was a really fantastic Arcade machine,
and kids loved to play it.
And that was really the start
of how Nintendo managed to
dominate the gaming market
at that time.
(Playful music)
(Upbeat music)
- So Shigeru Miyamoto
is probably one of the most
important video game designers
there's ever been.
He is a producer, a creative director,
a game developer, a game designer,
and he created much of
Nintendo's early output.
So he created "Mario",
he created "donkey Kong",
he created "the legend of Zelda".
So his contribution to the games industry
really can't be understated.
- He's kind of like the
Michelangelo of video games,
if you like.
He joined Nintendo out of art school
and really bought kind of, you know,
the whole Nintendo style as we know it,
really kind of emerged
from him and what he did.
And he always wanted to make
games that appeal to everyone,
you know, they were never aimed at kids,
they were never aimed purely adults.
It was about games for everyone to enjoy,
and games that were very
much about joy, you know,
and happiness, it was
kind of a very kind of bright,
optimistic kind of style, he brought.
- [Narrator] Hiroshi instituted
three separate innovation
and development facilities
under the Nintendo banner.
This unique method would
allow each department
to outplay the other within the company,
constantly guaranteeing
new innovative results.
In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi conceived the idea
of a handheld video game,
while sitting on the bullet
train on a business trip.
- So around 1979,
the story goes that Gunpei was commuting
and he saw on the train
Japanese businessmen
playing with lcd calculators.
- At that time you have to remember,
there's not much entertainment
you can carry with you.
You can have a newspaper,
a magazine, a book.
If you don't have any of those,
you can stare out the window.
So there's not much choice of what to do.
And he notices further down the carriage,
there's this guy with a pocket calculator,
which is, you know, pretty
high tech for the late seventies,
and he's just playing
around with the calculator
to pass the time.
And so Gunpei kind of thinks, hang on,
what if I took technology
of the pocket calculator,
turned it into a game?
That would be something people could take,
and it could kind of help commuters
on their boring journeys
have something fun to do.
- And that's who created the game & watch.
- Nintendo first entered the
kind of handheld gaming world
with the game & watch,
which was kind of an led games console,
not even what we would
consider a console today really.
Each of them was only
preloaded with one game,
so you couldn't put multiple
games into that console.
But it was still really popular.
People liked having a
handheld gaming device
to take with them.
(Arcade games beeping)
- [Narrator] The seventies
would become known as the
golden age of Arcade games.
People crowded around machines,
placing coins on the
screen to reserve their turn.
The eighties came rolling in,
and with it a massive
advancement in gaming technology.
But with it came many
more consoles manufactured
to capitalize on the rise of gaming
from "pong" clones to home computers,
most of which weren't
functioning as promised.
Before long the market was
saturated in off-brand consoles
and choosing one which work
as intended became a minefield.
This climate would be known
as the video game crash,
aka the Atari shock.
- In the eighties,
video games felt like they
were just reaching new heights
and just getting more and more popular.
But then actually there was something
that's known as the video game crash.
What had happened was a lot of companies
were just churning out
kind of lower quality games
really quickly to try and hit that market,
and make money out of it basically.
So this led to a crash
where people didn't really
have faith in video games
for a little while.
Nintendo introduced a
thing called the seal of quality,
which just meant that
they were gonna guarantee
that the games they were producing
were gonna reach a
really high quality level
and meant that people could have faith
in the games they were buying again.
(Upbeat music)
- [Narrator] The year is
1983, summer in Japan.
The video game recession is at its height
with companies going bankrupt
and global video game
stock depleting by almost 97%.
After years of work,
Nintendo released a product
which would change the
video game climate forever.
It is called the Famicom,
known to the west as the
Nintendo entertainment system.
(Static rasping)
(Lively music)
- [TV speaker] Nintendo, a
quick loading cartridge system
with over 60 of the hottest titles ever.
Games like "Batman",
a life and death struggle
to end the evil jokers reign of
terror and save Gotham city.
Games like "super Mario brothers",
a battle to rescue the mushroom Princess
from the evil koopa turtles.
Go for the joystick for extra control
or go to infrared for remote control.
The hottest games are on Nintendo,
the world's number one games system.
(Game beeping)
- Nintendo had developed the
Famicom, the family computer,
and this was a video game system
that had more than just one game on it.
You could actually swap out the cartridges
and play lots of different games on it.
So Japan was protected
from this international
video game market crash
because Nintendo was
doing really well in Japan
with the Famicom from 1983 to 1985.
- The Famicom console was
released in Japan originally
and was called the Famicom.
But it then came out
in the us and in Europe
as the Nintendo entertainment
system, or the NES,
that was their first really
popular at home console.
It became the thing to
have across the world,
especially for kids.
- But at that time,
the industry was very
skeptical of video games.
This enormous market crash
had damaged the reputation of video games.
And so they went to great lengths
to distinguish their new system
from all of the video game
consoles that had gone before.
At that time, 1985, vhs and
betamax videos were cool.
And so they made the
Nintendo entertainment system
look like a vhs, with cassettes
that went in sideways.
(Upbeat music) (Speaking
a foreign language)
- [Narrator] The NES became a staple
for the development of video
games and their longevity
in an otherwise uncertain climate.
The system was affordable and reliable,
being marketed with the
Nintendo seal of quality,
countering concerns for potential faults.
(Playful music)
With the release of "the legend of Zelda"
and "super metroid"
Nintendo became synonymous
with its characters and iconography.
It also provided the
public with the zapper,
the first widely distributed
light gun designed for games
such as "duck hunt" and "hogan's alley".
However, nothing would prepare Nintendo
for what might have been its
most significant decision yet.
(Video game beeping)
"Super Mario brothers".
(Playful music)
- And really, I don't think you can mention
all of those early Nintendo games
without mentioning the soundtracks to them.
Koji Kondo the composer to all
of those early Nintendo games
is just a master, I think
at creating those sounds
and effects and melodies
that just get stuck in your head forever.
(Playful music)
- Nintendo's first big
success was "donkey Kong".
It was a coin operated Arcade game,
and that really made its name worldwide.
It just became huge.
It was one of the first
sort of platform games.
Introduced the world to Mario
or everybody knew him
as Jumpman at the time.
And it was a big hit
everywhere in the world.
It was big in Japan, it
was big in North America,
big in Europe.
So that really established Nintendo
as a force in video games.
And then a few years later,
it brings out the Nintendo
entertainment system.
It's first proper home video game console.
And that has "super Mario
bros", which is, you know,
a wonderful game even
now, huge at the time.
And that really established Nintendo
as the leader of the video game market.
(Gentle music)
- I mean, Nintendo became
so popular around the world
because of how initially simple,
but how gorgeously complex
and gorgeously well designed its games are,
I mean, you look at things like,
let's take "super Mario",
you know, the level 1-1
for example, I actually spoke
years ago to Shigeru Miyamoto
about how he went about creating this.
In level 1-1 a player will
encounter absolutely everything
that they possibly need to
understand how the game works.
And so in subsequent
levels, it's what they know,
what the game can assume
that they already know about it
is challenged, so the very first, you know,
little bit that Mario runs
along and he jumps up
and he hits the box and
the mushroom comes out,
it's actually very hard for a
player to avoid that mushroom
because the game wants you to run into it
and discover Mario can make himself bigger.
And that's one core mechanic
of the game right there
that you've discovered
without, you know, any tutorials
without being told, you've
just found it out for yourself.
And that's the beauty of a Nintendo game,
they want, I think at the core
of every good Nintendo game
is the joy of discovery,
the joy of curiosity.
And that is,
I think that's inherently
Shigeru Miyamoto thing.
You know, that's "legend of Zelda" to a T,
it's all about discovery,
it's all about going out into the world
and seeing what you can find,
and seeing what you can uncover.
- In the late eighties, I
was living in America.
I didn't have a Nintendo console myself,
but after school I was so
excited to walk to Danny's house
and played "duck hunt" with the light gun
on his Nintendo entertainment system.
There was nothing more exciting.
And "super Mario brothers" blew my mind.
- There's just so many fascinating elements
to early Nintendo design,
I mean, Mario, right?
Take for example, Mario,
Mario's got his blue overalls,
he's got his red hat,
he's got his mustache,
he's got a big nose.
All of those things that make Mario, Mario,
were done just because it
made him easier to animate.
It was just cutting corners essentially.
And he was blue and red
so that he would stand out on
the background, number one,
he had a hat so that they
wouldn't have to animate any hair.
He had a mustache so that
you didn't have to see his mouth
and he wouldn't have to talk or, you know,
make signs or do anything like that.
Every little thing about that
it's just very clever design.
And that was, again, that was Miyamoto,
that was early Nintendo to a T.
I always remember
you described goombas
as suspicious mushrooms,
'cause you have the
mushrooms that you know,
let you power up and
you've got one extra life,
and then the goombas are suspicious
'cause they're a little
bit shady and you know,
I always find that very
funny 'cause it's like,
"hmm, suspicious mushrooms.
Okay, how does one go
about making one of those?"
(Funky music)
(Video game beeping)
- [Narrator] In 1989,
Gunpei Yokoi revealed his latest invention,
the game boy released in
Japan alongside "Tetris",
the game boy would birth
the now $90 billion pokemon franchise.
(Playful music)
This revolutionary console was a smash hit
and began developing more
complex handheld consoles.
- There were handheld video game consoles
that allowed you to play
lots of different games
by swapping cartridges,
like the Atari lynx,
and the game gear and
of course, the game boy.
The game boy was
different to its competitors.
Its competitors had color screens.
- So the game boy was,
even for 1989, quite primitive.
It was black and white,
its rivals were in color.
You know, it seemed
quite retro even in 1989.
But because it was a
handheld and it was primitive,
it could use less batteries.
And that meant it was far
more portable and reliable.
So basically, Nintendo beat
much more advanced competition
by having something that
was much more practical.
- Gunpei Yokoi's design philosophy
was lateral thinking
with withered technology.
And what that meant is
that he didn't want to design
a cutting edge video game system.
He wanted to use technology
that was already well used
and already cheap.
And that has been
Nintendo's most successful
design philosophy ever since.
- [Narrator] "Super Mario"
became loved by millions
and slowly but surely sealed
itself as the brand mascot
for the company.
When Nintendo was dominating the market,
a new competitor joined the scene, Sega,
with the release of the sg-1000.
- It's quite expensive though,
and it's better then watching TV I think.
- I'm addicted to it, "street fighter".
- I like fighting and adventure.
- Sega's got more better games,
but Nintendos more sort off fantasy games.
- [TV reporter] British market alone
is worth over £500 million a year.
Video games outsell music cds,
and so far there seems to be room
for more than one Victor Ludorum.
- In the nineties,
Nintendo were right at
the top of their popularity.
The game boy was out,
the Nintendo entertainment system was out,
but Sega were also hot at their heels
trying to really recapture
some of that market.
So while Nintendo had Mario,
the friendly Italian plumber,
Sega had Sonic the hedgehog,
a cool blue hedgehog.
And the contrast was that Mario games
were often kind of seen
as more family friendly,
more kind of cuddly in a way.
And they were quite slow
paced compared to Sonic,
which really sold itself on speed.
So the Sonic games
really positioned themselves
as quite edgy, and that really
spoke to a lot of teenagers
and kids at the time,
which meant that Nintendo and Sega
ended up kind of battling
it out with their mascots
for console supremacy.
- [TV narrator] Danita
Stokes, president of H.A.G.
- It's bad enough
that Sega Genesis has
the most 16-bit games,
but this new "Sonic the hedgehog",
oh, he really dusts my doilies.
They say he's incredibly fast.
Well, what's the hurry, Mr? Hmm?
And about his attitude, smarty pants.
Why can't he be more
like that nice boy Mario?
(Lips sputtering) Oh.
(Wind whooshing) Little brat.
- [TV speaker] Now get "Sonic" free
when you buy a Sega Genesis system
at its new price of 149.99.
- The rivalry between Sega
and Nintendo was aggressive.
They really were going for it at that time.
Like they just wanted to corner the market.
So Sega had a slogan on their advertising
that was pretty pointed.
It was, "Sega does what nintendon't."
- It is what we call eyeballing the kid
and actually going up to
him saying, "this is Nintendo,
this is what it does.
Go on, have a go, what do you think?"
And of course, added to that,
there's the imagery of
Nintendo, which is very important,
which the kids also find important.
It's a kind of a badge brand
because there's a
playground battle out there,
Nintendo v Sega.
And it's important to us that
most kids in the playgrounds
are talking about Nintendo.
(Static rasping)
- Really what we have here is a format war,
just like vhs and beta in video.
And of course every Nintendo
sold from our point of view
is one person out there
not buying Sega software.
And this market is all about
razors and razor blades,
if you like, in other words,
we make the money on the software
rather than on the hardware.
So it's important that we get
as big a user base out there
as possible.
(Upbeat funky music)
- So Sega during the eighties
was always the number
two console manufacturer,
and by number two, it
had 10% at the market,
Nintendo had 90%, so
you know, it is not even,
it's number two, but the gap is enormous.
So as the nineties began,
Sega gets ready it's new console,
the mega drive or the Sega Genesis,
and decides it's gonna
fight again and try and win.
And it launches a couple of years ahead
of the super Nintendo.
And basically markets
itself at older teenagers,
and with the helper
Sonic, it breaks through,
it sells a few million
before Nintendo has even
released its own console.
So certainly it's gone from
this kind of distant number two
to an actual serious force.
And so the early nineties
were this kind of power struggle
between Nintendo and Sega.
Sega kind of aiming for
a slightly older audience.
Nintendo aiming for a
slightly younger audience.
In the end, Nintendo won out.
Nintendo eventually
managed to outsell Sega.
But you know, it was close
run for a good couple of years.
(Lively music) (Video game chattering)
- [Narrator] The nineties began
with the release of the super
Nintendo entertainment system
and super Famicom
transcending from 8-bit game play
to 16-bit.
The new console found
great success across seas
and competed with Sega’s
new console, the Genesis.
It was here that both Nintendo and Sega
were considered at war
with Sega releasing the new
hit, "Sonic the hedgehog".
- Gotta go.
Hey guy, you're the first serious gamer
I've seen all morning.
Check this out, brand
new 16-bit super Nintendo
with "super Mario world", wow.
- [Customer] What's this one?
- Oh, this is "Sonic the
hedgehog" from Sega Genesis.
Hey, look at these radical colors, huh?
- [Customer] Wow, Sonic's fast too.
- No, overhear.
- [Customer] I like Genesis
and it costs a lot less.
- But kid, that game there...
- [Customer] I'll take Sonic and Genesis.
(Person chuckling) - I knew that.
- [TV speaker] "Sonic the
hedgehog", more action,
more speeds, Sega Genesis,
it's a whole lot more for less.
(Lively music)
- [Narrator] With "super
Mario 64", "golden eye",
and "the legend of
Zelda: The ocarina of time"
the Nintendo 64 saw the
threshold made by the SNES
and hiroshi looked to surpass
it in a grandiose fashion.
It was a statement for 3D gameplay
and character maneuverability.
However, though Atari had beaten Nintendo
in the race for dynamic 3D
gameplay, Nintendo discovered
how to flawlessly execute
the newfound dimensions
and utilize vector models
to enhance the gameplay experience.
- When I was a kid,
I didn't really even know that
the job of game Dev existed,
but I've always been someone
who loved to play games.
When I was younger,
we actually at home weren't
allowed to have a Nintendo 64
or the PlayStation 1,
which were the massive
consoles at the time.
But I had friends who
did have those consoles
and I would constantly go
over to their houses to play them.
We also had a PC at home
where I could play really chuggy games
on our not very good computer.
- In the mid nineties,
gunpei Yokoi was still working for Nintendo
and he wanted to develop
a virtual reality system.
This was way ahead of its time.
He developed what eventually
became the virtual boy,
but it didn't go as planned.
Nintendo didn't give
him enough time to finish
the development,
and the final product he
wasn't happy with it at all.
In the end, instead of
being a portable headset
like gunpei Yokoi had envisaged,
it was actually table mounted,
and you played it by
kind of leaning forward
and looking into this lens.
And you could see these 3D graphics,
it was only one color, everything was red.
Playing the virtual boy gave
you massive headaches,
the games were awful, it was a total flop.
Gunpei Yokoi was really upset about this
because this was not the
system he had imagined.
And as a kind of apology,
he developed the game boy pocket
before leaving Nintendo to go off
and start his own product
development company.
- [Narrator] In march, 1997,
the Nintendo 64 launched in Europe
and sold 2.3 million
units in the first year.
Nintendo introduced the rumble pack,
which enabled players to
feel the realistic vibrations
contained in the game.
In the early 2000s,
Nintendo began its expansion,
establishing offices all around the globe.
The following years saw
the release of the game cube,
building upon the technical
prowess displayed by the N64.
The game boy would
continue to undergo upgrades,
and soon there would be six
more iterations of the console,
each possessing unique qualities.
- So after the game boy
had been so successful,
they released the game boy color,
which was kind of a step up.
It was smaller, it allowed
you to play games in color,
which was obviously really exciting.
And then after that,
they also released the game boy advance.
So they'd been kind of
on the game boy model
for quite a while,
and they really knew what they were doing
with handheld consoles.
- [Narrator] Not long following
the release of the game cube
hiroshi yamauchi stepped
down as president of Nintendo.
After an incredibly successful run,
instigating the company as a household name
for tech development,
hiroshi would be replaced by Satoru Iwata.
Iwata's succession would mean the end
of the yamauchi family's
long-running ownership.
- In the early 2000s, Satoru
Iwata made some changes
to the way that Nintendo was run.
Hiroshi yamauchi had always created
a very competitive atmosphere,
but Satoru iwata's approach
was completely different.
He created a very collaborative atmosphere.
Satoru iwata's business style
was very influenced by
the blue ocean strategy.
He didn't want to compete
with all of these video game consoles
that were at the cutting
edge of graphic technology.
He wanted to create a new market,
he wanted to do things differently.
(Gentle music)
- [Narrator] In 2013, hiroshi passed away.
His legacy, however, would live on.
Retaining a similar presentation
to the original game & watch,
2004 brought the release
of Nintendo's highest selling console ever.
The Nintendo DS.
- When the Nintendo DS came out,
it had two screens and kind of flipped.
And this meant that you were
able to use the bottom screen
as kind of a touch screen
and the top screen could show
something completely different.
So you had the same kind of controls
that you did on the game boy,
but you were able to do a lot more.
Game designers were able to make games
that really utilized this new tech
and that was incredibly popular.
A lot of shops sold out of the Nintendo DS
when it first came out.
And around the same console generation,
the Nintendo Wii came out.
- So the Wii was really like,
I don't know if anyone expected it
to be as successful as it was.
The funny thing about the Wii
was it wasn't the franchises
that Nintendo was known for,
that were the reason for its success.
I think the real reason for the Wii success
was things like Wii sports.
It was the games that
your granny could play,
you know, the people that
had no gaming knowledge
or vocabulary whatsoever,
they saw this really fun, silly thing.
You know, waggling the
Wiimotes and stuff like that,
like instantly, you know,
you don't have to have
any gaming language at all
to know how to play that.
And so it opened up gaming
to a whole new audience.
You know, it didn't last long
because the Wii U was
horribly marketed and you know,
it couldn't really get that
lightning in a bottle effect
that the Wii had.
But for a moment, yeah, the Wii was huge.
Everyone wanted to
play it, literally everyone.
- If the Nintendo DS was popular,
the Nintendo Wii was
wildly popular at launch.
I actually worked in a
game shop around that time
and we were constantly
sold out of Nintendo Wiis,
they really managed to corner
the market on family gaming,
which is something
Nintendo's always been good at.
But they released a lot of titles
that were aimed at the
whole family and not just kids.
So they had things like
Wii fit and Wii sports,
which had a really low barrier to entry
and adults were often a
little bit more interested in
than the classic Nintendo games.
And I think that meant
that a lot of families saw it
as a real great investment
and something that
they could get for the kids,
but which the adults would play as well.
- [Narrator] The DS Rose to
the top of the gaming world
as the most popular portable console,
thanks to games suitable for everyone.
Players all over Europe made
"animal crossing: Wild world",
"new super Mario brothers",
and "metroid prime hunters" bestsellers.
Including "nintendogs" also boosted sales
as it allowed experimentation
with the new voice recognition software.
Games like "Wario ware:
Smooth moves", "endless ocean",
and "big brain academy:
Wii degree" for the Wii
invited everyone to dive into the fun
regardless of previous experience.
While the arrival of "super Mario galaxy"
and "metroid prime 3: Corruption"
brought cherished Nintendo
franchises back into being,
with the addition of new
features only possible on the Wii.
With the new consoles in place,
the time was right to fall back
from inventing new products
and refining what was already made.
The DS had many upgraded
versions such as the DSi
and eventually the Nintendo
3ds released in 2011.
- The next console that Nintendo
came up with was the Wii U,
a much more powerful console
with high definition graphics.
Nintendo couldn't compete
with these other systems
that had phenomenal graphics.
Also the name Wii U,
people just thought it was
an extension of the Wii,
they didn't realize it was
an entirely new beast.
So the Wii U did not sell well.
- Yeah, the Wii U was
Nintendo's worst selling console.
It was pretty much a disaster financially.
It came off the back of the Wii,
but people didn't really
understand it was a new console.
The idea was to kind of
combine an iPad like tablet
with a games console.
And when they were developing it, you know,
that idea was ahead of its time,
by the time they released
it, it was a bit dated.
It looked like a kind of
Fisher-price version of an iPad.
It never really quite gelled.
It didn't really know what it was.
And consumers looked at it went,
"I dunno what that is or what it's about."
So it was a handy step on
the way to Nintendo switch,
but as a console on its own
it just never quite clicked with anyone.
- [Narrator] Though the
new version of the Wii
underperformed in sales,
it provided a massive step
up in graphic capabilities.
An asset that went under the radar
as it didn't attract the
same broad audience
the original we had done previously.
The Wii U, however, was
the most powerful console
on the home market
before the release of the ps4
and Xbox One.
The game pad was a new idea,
which brought the handheld
advantages of the DS
to a home console and paved
the way for what was to come.
In 2017, we were introduced
to the Nintendo switch.
(Upbeat funky music)
- So the switch is huge.
I mean it was such a success for Nintendo
because Nintendo took
everything that it had learned
from the console market,
from handheld, you know,
from all its handheld expertise,
everything that it had
learned from the game boy,
from the DS, from the 3ds from everything.
And it was like, why
don't we take both of these
and make a console
that literally does both?
And that was just, I mean,
it's just a master move.
Like, and that's what
I love about Nintendo.
Nintendo doesn't really
see itself as a competitor
to PlayStation or Xbox.
All Nintendo is interested
in is interesting innovation,
experimentation and
making games that are fun.
- Nintendo is so known for
innovating with their hardware
and the switch was no different.
All of the big console companies
were coming out with innovations,
but none of them were quite
as different as the switch felt.
It felt like a bit of a natural
progression from the Wii
and the DS, but also
completely new at the same time.
So the thing about the switch
is it can both be a handheld console
or you can put the
handheld screen into a dock
that attaches to your TV
and then use the controllers on the side.
So it's like a home console
and a handheld at the same time.
And that came out with
fantastic games at launch as well.
- I'm a massive fan of Mario games.
I never really played Zelda
much when I was a kid,
but I have to say,
"Zelda: Breath of the wild" is
my favorite game of all time.
It's incredible and that
really helped to sell switches.
- Does the Nintendo switch hold up
in terms of graphical capability
when put alongside the
PlayStation 5 or the Xbox series x?
No, but is it unbelievably fun?
Do people love it?
You know, do people
take it everywhere they go?
Absolutely, it has a, you know,
it doesn't really suffer all that much
for the amount of games
that it has access to.
Nintendo's third party support
has actually never
been better, I don't think
than with the switch.
Traditionally, I don't think Nintendo
was a very friendly third
party development platform.
It was just a bit more difficult
to get games onto Nintendo consoles
than it was for PlayStation and Xbox.
But the switch is
just, it's just fantastic.
You know, you can slot it
into its port or to its dock.
You can pick up where you left off
seamlessly from where
you were out and about.
You can transition from being out,
playing your console
on the train, or wherever
to going indoors, slotting it in
and there it is exactly
where you were before.
It's the perfect console I think,
for a lot of kids and adults alike
because if you don't have the time
or the inclination to
sit down in front of a PC
or a console in front
of a TV in the evening,
you want to just, I
don't know, get into bed
and play your switch, that's
absolutely a thing you can do.
- [Narrator] The switch was an amalgamation
of everything Nintendo
had achieved thus far,
merging the idea of a home
console with a handheld device.
The system was versatile, ergonomic,
and capable of handling the stories
the company wanted to tell.
(Upbeat music)
- Nintendo has always been
a pioneer in the gaming world.
One of the things that
they do that is fantastic
is they have a real focus on family gaming
and that's allowed them
to stand out from the crowd
sometimes when the other companies
are doing something a little bit different.
They're really invested in
making games that are fun
and creative and that everyone can play.
And the other thing they do
is that their consoles and their hardware
is always new and always interesting.
Sometimes it doesn't land
as well, but when it does,
it absolutely blows everything else away
when it comes to innovation.
- It was really satoru Iwata,
professionalized Nintendo's
merchandising arm
and expanded into other areas,
and created an Nintendo
theme park in Japan.
And there's now another one in America,
and of course the "super
Mario brothers" film,
which I'm very excited about.
(Playful music) (Photographers chattering)
One of the reasons I
really love Nintendo games
is that all of the games
on the other consoles
really focus on guns
and violence and crime.
And I mean, these games look fantastic,
I would love to play them,
but actually I don't want to get involved
in all of that violence.
I love that Nintendo don't do that.
- Nintendo was a pioneer of
video game quality in consoles.
I mean,
it essentially rewrote the video
game console business model
and saved the video
game industry by doing so.
It was a pioneer in game design.
It's attention to the feel
of video game mechanics
really kind of upped the quality bar.
You know, game designers
back in the eighties
were not that great.
You know, they would make
these punishing games that,
you know, would make
children cry they were so hard.
Whereas Nintendo is like,
no, a game should be fair.
And it seems very obvious to us now
that a game should be enjoyable,
not punishing, but you know,
that's not how people were
making games back then.
It was a pioneer in broadening
out the video game audience
with the Wii and the DS.
Nintendo created the
handheld, you know, game.
We play iPhone games and Android games now.
But you know, before
smartphones came along,
we were playing on Nintendo portables.
But it's a company that's
really defined video games
throughout its history.
It's had an enormous
shaping influence on it.
And it's still going strong today.
It's still setting the tone
for a lot of companies.
Valve steam deck is quite clearly modeled
on the Nintendo switch in lots of ways,
you know, there's no escaping it.
- I think Nintendo brings
up feelings of nostalgia
because, well, first of
all, I think it, you know,
it's been around longer
and when Nintendo was in its early days,
it was marketing games for children.
But even now, you know, kids,
their first console is very
often an Nintendo console.
I mean, my nephews, they
all have Nintendo switches,
so they, weirdly, their
nostalgia will extend to Mario
as you know, plenty of
older gamers does as well.
But I think it's because, again,
at the heart of every Nintendo game
is that childhood childlike
curiosity and wonder
at the world that's really
what makes their games sing.
- Well, particularly for people of my age,
we grew up with Nintendo.
I'm the perfect age to have been swept up
by Nintendo's ascendancy in the 1980s
and it's absolutely an
indelible part of my childhood.
- I think
because it's tied into that
feeling of childhood fun,
it really just evokes
a feeling of nostalgia
in a lot of people, and
especially people my age.
- Nintendo's most important legacy
is saving the video game console industry.
After Atari’s collapse,
it was possible that game
consoles would not come back.
It did look like home computers
would be where people played games on.
Nintendo changed that,
Nintendo said, no, there
is still room for consoles.
If Nintendo hadn't come
along when they did,
we'd probably all be
paying on pcs at this point.
(Upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Nintendo has
a remarkable philosophy
to put smiles on the faces
of everyone they touch.
To this remarkable company,
which started from humble beginnings,
making consoles isn't about
how much processing power they possess,
it is about the stories themselves.
It is about the characters
and open-mindedness of all who play.
To Nintendo it is all about fun.
Nothing more, nothing less.
(Upbeat music continues)
(Traffic murmuring) (Cars beeping)
- There's different translations,
but roughly it means work
hard, leave luck to heaven.
- Just super interesting,
'cause I don't think a lot of people
think about where the
name Nintendo came from.
(Gentle music) (Fire crackling)
- [Narrator] Greatness
always starts with an idea.
The idea should remain malleable
to create something of longevity.
It is ever changing,
and yet remains
faithful to its core values,
to bring positive change,
to bring hope, to bring fun.
(Uplifting music)
- [Speaker] I have a
wonderful electronic invention
I want you to see, it
looks something like this.
- [Computer voice] 3, 2, 1, game begin.
(Lively music)
(Playful music)
(Video reel rasping)
- [Narrator] On September 23rd, 1889,
Fusajiro Yamauchi began
manufacturing Hanafuda,
Japanese playing cards of floral design.
Fusajiro was born in Kyoto
and it was here that he
established Nintendo Koppai,
Koppai meaning playing cards in Japanese.
During such time,
a widespread ban on playing
cards swept through Japan
due to their ties with gambling,
foreign trade, and usage by the Yakuza.
(Video reel rasping) (Gentle music)
- Nintendo is one of the world's
biggest gaming companies.
They're a Japanese company
and they've actually been going
for well over a hundred years now.
They started making playing cards,
but they really reached their stride
in the eighties and nineties,
when they started releasing Arcade machines
and then home consoles.
And that was about the same time as well
when we got introduced
to their biggest franchises,
like "Mario and Luigi",
"legend of Zelda" "and Kirby".
(Upbeat music)
- As you can see,
they're a bit smaller than
the western playing cards
that we are used to,
and they're printed with
beautiful flower patterns
and scenes from nature.
(Film reel rasping)
(Upbeat music continues)
- Nintendo's earliest and best customers
were the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza.
They ran lots of illegal gambling dens
and they needed playing cards.
And because no one wanted cheating going on
every game started
with a new pack of cards.
So Nintendo had a great business early on
because these gangsters would buy cards,
they'd open the cards, play a game,
throw 'em away, get new set playing cards.
So it was a good business to get into.
(Upbeat lively music)
- [Narrator] Yamauchi found great success
in his newfound company.
Before long, he had
established a new shop in Osaka
and began to develop
a more comprehensive array of card games.
It was in 1929 when
yamauchi decided to step down
from the company, passing
the business to his son-in-law,
Sekiryo Kaneda, who adopted
the name Sekiryo yamauchi
in respect of the family.
Fusajiro remained
uninvolved with the company
for the remainder of his life,
eventually passing away from a stroke
in his home city of Kyoto,
on January 1st, 1940.
- And the founder of the
company continued until 1929
when his son-in-law, Sekiryo Kaneda,
who took the name yamauchi as well,
took over the company and
kind of professionalized it,
improved the manufacturing processes,
and started manufacturing
western style playing cards.
- [Video narrator] War has struck again.
(Airplane purring)
(Lively music)
- After world war ii Japan was in ruins.
It was occupied most,
there wasn't much food,
the buildings were flattened.
I mean, the country had to
rebuild from absolute scratch.
And from that came this kind of, you know,
essentially a new start,
it tried to move into
electronics and kind of,
that was really kind of where
Japan found a new future
post-war.
(Video reel rasping)
(Lively music continues)
- [Narrator] The years
following world war ii
allowed Japan to further
its industrialization.
Markets for electronics were established
alongside the rise of
strip mills for iron and steel.
Among such technological innovations,
were transfer machines
for the automobile industry,
automatic control systems
in new steam power stations,
and catalytic cracking
in oil refining industries.
(Video reel rasping)
- Akihabara is an
electronics district in Tokyo,
and it came like the
hub of electronics shops.
You'd have these kind
of multi-story arcades
and shops selling all kinds of electronics.
It was really kind of very,
kind of geeky mecca if you like.
You know, if you were into
electronics and you are in Tokyo,
you're gonna make a beeline for that area.
- [Narrator] After the death of Sekiryo,
Hiroshi yamauchi, the grandson of fusajiro
was ordered to step up
and assume the mantle of company president.
Being young and inexperienced,
Hiroshi suffered some initial backlash
from the company's employees.
- In 1949, Sekiryo became ill,
called up his grandson to his hospital bed
and said, "okay, you
give up your law degree
and take over Nintendo from me."
That was Hiroshi yamauchi.
And over the course of the next 50 years,
he was destined to turn Nintendo
into a multinational conglomerate.
But at the beginning, it wasn't so easy.
(Gentle music)
- [Narrator] Strikes would take place
to test the new president's
dedication to the role,
and firmly Hiroshi would make a stand.
He chose to fire a handful of employees
and set his eyes on the future.
With a traditional imperialist demeanor,
Hiroshi ran the company
intending to keep up
with the changing times.
The first step,
was to develop a new
style of plastic playing cards
influenced by western markets.
However, due to Japan's strict restrictions
on unsanctioned gambling,
the plastic and Hanafuda cards
were now struggling to make a profit.
Luckily, the company
now called Nintendo Kurata
made a licensing deal with Walt Disney
to merge the new plastic
cards into family oriented games,
with a small booklet
outlining the many games
one could play with the cards.
The new product would
sell 600,000 units in one year,
allowing Nintendo to
dominate the card game market
in its own country.
- They also had a deal with Disney
that allowed them to
make Disney playing cards.
- That had Disney characters on them.
And so this sort of made Nintendo
kind of take a little side step
into manufacturing things for children,
wherein they discovered
there's a lot of money to be made
here.
And so that was another stepping stone
on the way to them creating video games,
which at that time were
basically considered toys.
- [Narrator] Once again, the
company name was changed
to the Nintendo company limited,
and the business was made public
with Hiroshi yamauchi as its chairman.
- So in the beginning,
Hiroshi Yamauchii was only 21 years old,
and the workers in Nintendo
didn't necessarily take
him entirely seriously.
He was really ambitious
and really ruthless.
He fired anyone that disagreed with him.
- [Narrator] Visiting
Cincinnati in the United States
provided Hiroshi with some disappointing
yet valuable information.
He'd gone to examine
the world's largest
manufacturer of playing cards,
the us playing card company.
However, on his arrival,
a small office and factory greeted him.
To Hiroshi, the scale of the facility
represented the success
of the playing card industry,
and there wasn't much to be seen.
(Upbeat music)
Concerned for the company's future,
Hiroshi returned to Japan
in search of new ways to
ensure the longevity of Nintendo.
- After Nintendo had established themselves
making these playing cards,
they tried a bunch of different
things before they landed
on what would eventually
make them so successful.
So they tried a whole
range of different companies,
including taxis and even love hotels.
- He went into the food
business making instant rice,
and he went into the taxi business.
And that one seemed to go okay
until there was a labor revolt,
and that was the end of that idea.
- So by the early seventies,
Nintendo was struggling.
It spent a fortune trying
all these businesses,
getting nowhere, and had a lot of debt.
- [Narrator] The outlandish ventures
proved unsuccessful for the business
and were soon disbanded.
The company was on the brink of bankruptcy.
Desperately searching for ideas,
Hiroshi spotted a factory
engineer called Gunpei Yokoi.
(Upbeat music)
- Around that time,
Hiroshi visited one of the factories
and saw Gunpei playing
with an extendable claw,
a toy which he'd invented himself.
And instead of telling him off for that,
he was fascinated by this
and asked him to put these extendable claws
into manufacture.
- [Narrator] The ultra hand was distributed
and became a massive hit.
Such simplistic ingenuity
spurred new ideas for the company.
Soon a toy department was made in Kyoto,
solely led by Gunpei who
would develop new concepts,
such as the love tester and the light gun.
(Upbeat music)
♪ Love tester ♪
♪ love tester ♪
- [Narrator] By the 1960s,
Nintendo had solidified
itself as a significant player
in the toy market.
The early seventies came rolling in,
and with it the idea of a video game
was being conceptualized.
- Around that time in the early seventies,
video games were
becoming a really big thing.
"Pong" had come out in 1972
and suddenly video games were cool.
- [Narrator] Atari became
the first in the race,
releasing "pong" in 1972.
It was inspired by a game
developed by physicist William Higinbotham.
Atari leap towards mainstream distribution,
giving the public a
groundbreaking discovery,
which took America by storm.
Nintendo had to react fast.
Hiroshi hired employees
from sharp electronics
to develop a new system
that could compete with the
emerging video game consoles.
Soon in cooperation
with Mitsubishi electric,
the TV color 6 was made
and distributed in June, 1977.
(Video reel rasping)
- So after Nintendo had been
going for quite a long time,
they really started to branch out
into the burgeoning gaming world.
So at the time,
Arcade machines were
hugely popular around the world.
Atari had already been
producing them for quite a while.
Classics like "pong" had been around
for a little bit of time,
but they were really
starting to take off in Japan,
in America, and in Europe.
So Nintendo decided that
they would try and get in on this
really expanding market as well.
And when they did,
they really worked on how
they were going to make a game
that would stand out.
- But it wasn't actually meant
to be Nintendo's console.
Mitsubishi had created it for
another company that went bust
and decided to give Nintendo a call,
see if they'd put it out instead.
And that's how Nintendo
got into video games.
- So Nintendo's very first console,
games console was
actually the "color TV-game".
It was a very, very simple
device, but it paved the way.
I think Shigeru Miyamoto,
who would go on to make
some of Nintendo's most important games,
did actually work on the "color TV-game".
I think he designed like the outer casing
or something really random like that.
So it paved the way for
one Shigeru Miyamoto
to then go on to design "donkey Kong".
(Upbeat music)
- [Narrator] In response,
Atari returned with the 2600,
popularizing microprocessor
based hardware and games
stored on swappable rom cartridges.
It was the most popular
second generation console
by a large margin
during the time of release.
Nintendo would follow
with four more iterations of the TV color,
and soon both Atari and
Nintendo were being recognized
as big fish in a huge pond.
And competitiveness was on the rise.
(Speaking in a foreign language)
(Computer beeping)
- [Narrator] In response to
America’s growing Arcade market,
hiroshi expanded Nintendo into the us,
releasing new titles such as "radar scope",
"space fever", and "sheriff".
Though effective in the Japanese market,
the games weren't financially
successful in America.
To counter this, hiroshi
turned to Shigeru Miyamoto.
And upon deliberation,
"donkey Kong" was made,
becoming a smash hit in both countries.
(Playful music)
- The Arcade machine that they came out
with was "donkey Kong",
which is obviously one of
their most famous franchises,
and starred the main character of Jumpman,
who was originally actually a carpenter.
But he would eventually become
our most beloved Nintendo character, Mario,
who's actually a plumber now.
But the idea was that
as he was a carpenter,
the level was based
around kind of like a workman
sort of environment,
where he's dodging
barrels from a big gorilla
also called donkey Kong.
And this just took off across the world.
It was a really fantastic Arcade machine,
and kids loved to play it.
And that was really the start
of how Nintendo managed to
dominate the gaming market
at that time.
(Playful music)
(Upbeat music)
- So Shigeru Miyamoto
is probably one of the most
important video game designers
there's ever been.
He is a producer, a creative director,
a game developer, a game designer,
and he created much of
Nintendo's early output.
So he created "Mario",
he created "donkey Kong",
he created "the legend of Zelda".
So his contribution to the games industry
really can't be understated.
- He's kind of like the
Michelangelo of video games,
if you like.
He joined Nintendo out of art school
and really bought kind of, you know,
the whole Nintendo style as we know it,
really kind of emerged
from him and what he did.
And he always wanted to make
games that appeal to everyone,
you know, they were never aimed at kids,
they were never aimed purely adults.
It was about games for everyone to enjoy,
and games that were very
much about joy, you know,
and happiness, it was
kind of a very kind of bright,
optimistic kind of style, he brought.
- [Narrator] Hiroshi instituted
three separate innovation
and development facilities
under the Nintendo banner.
This unique method would
allow each department
to outplay the other within the company,
constantly guaranteeing
new innovative results.
In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi conceived the idea
of a handheld video game,
while sitting on the bullet
train on a business trip.
- So around 1979,
the story goes that Gunpei was commuting
and he saw on the train
Japanese businessmen
playing with lcd calculators.
- At that time you have to remember,
there's not much entertainment
you can carry with you.
You can have a newspaper,
a magazine, a book.
If you don't have any of those,
you can stare out the window.
So there's not much choice of what to do.
And he notices further down the carriage,
there's this guy with a pocket calculator,
which is, you know, pretty
high tech for the late seventies,
and he's just playing
around with the calculator
to pass the time.
And so Gunpei kind of thinks, hang on,
what if I took technology
of the pocket calculator,
turned it into a game?
That would be something people could take,
and it could kind of help commuters
on their boring journeys
have something fun to do.
- And that's who created the game & watch.
- Nintendo first entered the
kind of handheld gaming world
with the game & watch,
which was kind of an led games console,
not even what we would
consider a console today really.
Each of them was only
preloaded with one game,
so you couldn't put multiple
games into that console.
But it was still really popular.
People liked having a
handheld gaming device
to take with them.
(Arcade games beeping)
- [Narrator] The seventies
would become known as the
golden age of Arcade games.
People crowded around machines,
placing coins on the
screen to reserve their turn.
The eighties came rolling in,
and with it a massive
advancement in gaming technology.
But with it came many
more consoles manufactured
to capitalize on the rise of gaming
from "pong" clones to home computers,
most of which weren't
functioning as promised.
Before long the market was
saturated in off-brand consoles
and choosing one which work
as intended became a minefield.
This climate would be known
as the video game crash,
aka the Atari shock.
- In the eighties,
video games felt like they
were just reaching new heights
and just getting more and more popular.
But then actually there was something
that's known as the video game crash.
What had happened was a lot of companies
were just churning out
kind of lower quality games
really quickly to try and hit that market,
and make money out of it basically.
So this led to a crash
where people didn't really
have faith in video games
for a little while.
Nintendo introduced a
thing called the seal of quality,
which just meant that
they were gonna guarantee
that the games they were producing
were gonna reach a
really high quality level
and meant that people could have faith
in the games they were buying again.
(Upbeat music)
- [Narrator] The year is
1983, summer in Japan.
The video game recession is at its height
with companies going bankrupt
and global video game
stock depleting by almost 97%.
After years of work,
Nintendo released a product
which would change the
video game climate forever.
It is called the Famicom,
known to the west as the
Nintendo entertainment system.
(Static rasping)
(Lively music)
- [TV speaker] Nintendo, a
quick loading cartridge system
with over 60 of the hottest titles ever.
Games like "Batman",
a life and death struggle
to end the evil jokers reign of
terror and save Gotham city.
Games like "super Mario brothers",
a battle to rescue the mushroom Princess
from the evil koopa turtles.
Go for the joystick for extra control
or go to infrared for remote control.
The hottest games are on Nintendo,
the world's number one games system.
(Game beeping)
- Nintendo had developed the
Famicom, the family computer,
and this was a video game system
that had more than just one game on it.
You could actually swap out the cartridges
and play lots of different games on it.
So Japan was protected
from this international
video game market crash
because Nintendo was
doing really well in Japan
with the Famicom from 1983 to 1985.
- The Famicom console was
released in Japan originally
and was called the Famicom.
But it then came out
in the us and in Europe
as the Nintendo entertainment
system, or the NES,
that was their first really
popular at home console.
It became the thing to
have across the world,
especially for kids.
- But at that time,
the industry was very
skeptical of video games.
This enormous market crash
had damaged the reputation of video games.
And so they went to great lengths
to distinguish their new system
from all of the video game
consoles that had gone before.
At that time, 1985, vhs and
betamax videos were cool.
And so they made the
Nintendo entertainment system
look like a vhs, with cassettes
that went in sideways.
(Upbeat music) (Speaking
a foreign language)
- [Narrator] The NES became a staple
for the development of video
games and their longevity
in an otherwise uncertain climate.
The system was affordable and reliable,
being marketed with the
Nintendo seal of quality,
countering concerns for potential faults.
(Playful music)
With the release of "the legend of Zelda"
and "super metroid"
Nintendo became synonymous
with its characters and iconography.
It also provided the
public with the zapper,
the first widely distributed
light gun designed for games
such as "duck hunt" and "hogan's alley".
However, nothing would prepare Nintendo
for what might have been its
most significant decision yet.
(Video game beeping)
"Super Mario brothers".
(Playful music)
- And really, I don't think you can mention
all of those early Nintendo games
without mentioning the soundtracks to them.
Koji Kondo the composer to all
of those early Nintendo games
is just a master, I think
at creating those sounds
and effects and melodies
that just get stuck in your head forever.
(Playful music)
- Nintendo's first big
success was "donkey Kong".
It was a coin operated Arcade game,
and that really made its name worldwide.
It just became huge.
It was one of the first
sort of platform games.
Introduced the world to Mario
or everybody knew him
as Jumpman at the time.
And it was a big hit
everywhere in the world.
It was big in Japan, it
was big in North America,
big in Europe.
So that really established Nintendo
as a force in video games.
And then a few years later,
it brings out the Nintendo
entertainment system.
It's first proper home video game console.
And that has "super Mario
bros", which is, you know,
a wonderful game even
now, huge at the time.
And that really established Nintendo
as the leader of the video game market.
(Gentle music)
- I mean, Nintendo became
so popular around the world
because of how initially simple,
but how gorgeously complex
and gorgeously well designed its games are,
I mean, you look at things like,
let's take "super Mario",
you know, the level 1-1
for example, I actually spoke
years ago to Shigeru Miyamoto
about how he went about creating this.
In level 1-1 a player will
encounter absolutely everything
that they possibly need to
understand how the game works.
And so in subsequent
levels, it's what they know,
what the game can assume
that they already know about it
is challenged, so the very first, you know,
little bit that Mario runs
along and he jumps up
and he hits the box and
the mushroom comes out,
it's actually very hard for a
player to avoid that mushroom
because the game wants you to run into it
and discover Mario can make himself bigger.
And that's one core mechanic
of the game right there
that you've discovered
without, you know, any tutorials
without being told, you've
just found it out for yourself.
And that's the beauty of a Nintendo game,
they want, I think at the core
of every good Nintendo game
is the joy of discovery,
the joy of curiosity.
And that is,
I think that's inherently
Shigeru Miyamoto thing.
You know, that's "legend of Zelda" to a T,
it's all about discovery,
it's all about going out into the world
and seeing what you can find,
and seeing what you can uncover.
- In the late eighties, I
was living in America.
I didn't have a Nintendo console myself,
but after school I was so
excited to walk to Danny's house
and played "duck hunt" with the light gun
on his Nintendo entertainment system.
There was nothing more exciting.
And "super Mario brothers" blew my mind.
- There's just so many fascinating elements
to early Nintendo design,
I mean, Mario, right?
Take for example, Mario,
Mario's got his blue overalls,
he's got his red hat,
he's got his mustache,
he's got a big nose.
All of those things that make Mario, Mario,
were done just because it
made him easier to animate.
It was just cutting corners essentially.
And he was blue and red
so that he would stand out on
the background, number one,
he had a hat so that they
wouldn't have to animate any hair.
He had a mustache so that
you didn't have to see his mouth
and he wouldn't have to talk or, you know,
make signs or do anything like that.
Every little thing about that
it's just very clever design.
And that was, again, that was Miyamoto,
that was early Nintendo to a T.
I always remember
you described goombas
as suspicious mushrooms,
'cause you have the
mushrooms that you know,
let you power up and
you've got one extra life,
and then the goombas are suspicious
'cause they're a little
bit shady and you know,
I always find that very
funny 'cause it's like,
"hmm, suspicious mushrooms.
Okay, how does one go
about making one of those?"
(Funky music)
(Video game beeping)
- [Narrator] In 1989,
Gunpei Yokoi revealed his latest invention,
the game boy released in
Japan alongside "Tetris",
the game boy would birth
the now $90 billion pokemon franchise.
(Playful music)
This revolutionary console was a smash hit
and began developing more
complex handheld consoles.
- There were handheld video game consoles
that allowed you to play
lots of different games
by swapping cartridges,
like the Atari lynx,
and the game gear and
of course, the game boy.
The game boy was
different to its competitors.
Its competitors had color screens.
- So the game boy was,
even for 1989, quite primitive.
It was black and white,
its rivals were in color.
You know, it seemed
quite retro even in 1989.
But because it was a
handheld and it was primitive,
it could use less batteries.
And that meant it was far
more portable and reliable.
So basically, Nintendo beat
much more advanced competition
by having something that
was much more practical.
- Gunpei Yokoi's design philosophy
was lateral thinking
with withered technology.
And what that meant is
that he didn't want to design
a cutting edge video game system.
He wanted to use technology
that was already well used
and already cheap.
And that has been
Nintendo's most successful
design philosophy ever since.
- [Narrator] "Super Mario"
became loved by millions
and slowly but surely sealed
itself as the brand mascot
for the company.
When Nintendo was dominating the market,
a new competitor joined the scene, Sega,
with the release of the sg-1000.
- It's quite expensive though,
and it's better then watching TV I think.
- I'm addicted to it, "street fighter".
- I like fighting and adventure.
- Sega's got more better games,
but Nintendos more sort off fantasy games.
- [TV reporter] British market alone
is worth over £500 million a year.
Video games outsell music cds,
and so far there seems to be room
for more than one Victor Ludorum.
- In the nineties,
Nintendo were right at
the top of their popularity.
The game boy was out,
the Nintendo entertainment system was out,
but Sega were also hot at their heels
trying to really recapture
some of that market.
So while Nintendo had Mario,
the friendly Italian plumber,
Sega had Sonic the hedgehog,
a cool blue hedgehog.
And the contrast was that Mario games
were often kind of seen
as more family friendly,
more kind of cuddly in a way.
And they were quite slow
paced compared to Sonic,
which really sold itself on speed.
So the Sonic games
really positioned themselves
as quite edgy, and that really
spoke to a lot of teenagers
and kids at the time,
which meant that Nintendo and Sega
ended up kind of battling
it out with their mascots
for console supremacy.
- [TV narrator] Danita
Stokes, president of H.A.G.
- It's bad enough
that Sega Genesis has
the most 16-bit games,
but this new "Sonic the hedgehog",
oh, he really dusts my doilies.
They say he's incredibly fast.
Well, what's the hurry, Mr? Hmm?
And about his attitude, smarty pants.
Why can't he be more
like that nice boy Mario?
(Lips sputtering) Oh.
(Wind whooshing) Little brat.
- [TV speaker] Now get "Sonic" free
when you buy a Sega Genesis system
at its new price of 149.99.
- The rivalry between Sega
and Nintendo was aggressive.
They really were going for it at that time.
Like they just wanted to corner the market.
So Sega had a slogan on their advertising
that was pretty pointed.
It was, "Sega does what nintendon't."
- It is what we call eyeballing the kid
and actually going up to
him saying, "this is Nintendo,
this is what it does.
Go on, have a go, what do you think?"
And of course, added to that,
there's the imagery of
Nintendo, which is very important,
which the kids also find important.
It's a kind of a badge brand
because there's a
playground battle out there,
Nintendo v Sega.
And it's important to us that
most kids in the playgrounds
are talking about Nintendo.
(Static rasping)
- Really what we have here is a format war,
just like vhs and beta in video.
And of course every Nintendo
sold from our point of view
is one person out there
not buying Sega software.
And this market is all about
razors and razor blades,
if you like, in other words,
we make the money on the software
rather than on the hardware.
So it's important that we get
as big a user base out there
as possible.
(Upbeat funky music)
- So Sega during the eighties
was always the number
two console manufacturer,
and by number two, it
had 10% at the market,
Nintendo had 90%, so
you know, it is not even,
it's number two, but the gap is enormous.
So as the nineties began,
Sega gets ready it's new console,
the mega drive or the Sega Genesis,
and decides it's gonna
fight again and try and win.
And it launches a couple of years ahead
of the super Nintendo.
And basically markets
itself at older teenagers,
and with the helper
Sonic, it breaks through,
it sells a few million
before Nintendo has even
released its own console.
So certainly it's gone from
this kind of distant number two
to an actual serious force.
And so the early nineties
were this kind of power struggle
between Nintendo and Sega.
Sega kind of aiming for
a slightly older audience.
Nintendo aiming for a
slightly younger audience.
In the end, Nintendo won out.
Nintendo eventually
managed to outsell Sega.
But you know, it was close
run for a good couple of years.
(Lively music) (Video game chattering)
- [Narrator] The nineties began
with the release of the super
Nintendo entertainment system
and super Famicom
transcending from 8-bit game play
to 16-bit.
The new console found
great success across seas
and competed with Sega’s
new console, the Genesis.
It was here that both Nintendo and Sega
were considered at war
with Sega releasing the new
hit, "Sonic the hedgehog".
- Gotta go.
Hey guy, you're the first serious gamer
I've seen all morning.
Check this out, brand
new 16-bit super Nintendo
with "super Mario world", wow.
- [Customer] What's this one?
- Oh, this is "Sonic the
hedgehog" from Sega Genesis.
Hey, look at these radical colors, huh?
- [Customer] Wow, Sonic's fast too.
- No, overhear.
- [Customer] I like Genesis
and it costs a lot less.
- But kid, that game there...
- [Customer] I'll take Sonic and Genesis.
(Person chuckling) - I knew that.
- [TV speaker] "Sonic the
hedgehog", more action,
more speeds, Sega Genesis,
it's a whole lot more for less.
(Lively music)
- [Narrator] With "super
Mario 64", "golden eye",
and "the legend of
Zelda: The ocarina of time"
the Nintendo 64 saw the
threshold made by the SNES
and hiroshi looked to surpass
it in a grandiose fashion.
It was a statement for 3D gameplay
and character maneuverability.
However, though Atari had beaten Nintendo
in the race for dynamic 3D
gameplay, Nintendo discovered
how to flawlessly execute
the newfound dimensions
and utilize vector models
to enhance the gameplay experience.
- When I was a kid,
I didn't really even know that
the job of game Dev existed,
but I've always been someone
who loved to play games.
When I was younger,
we actually at home weren't
allowed to have a Nintendo 64
or the PlayStation 1,
which were the massive
consoles at the time.
But I had friends who
did have those consoles
and I would constantly go
over to their houses to play them.
We also had a PC at home
where I could play really chuggy games
on our not very good computer.
- In the mid nineties,
gunpei Yokoi was still working for Nintendo
and he wanted to develop
a virtual reality system.
This was way ahead of its time.
He developed what eventually
became the virtual boy,
but it didn't go as planned.
Nintendo didn't give
him enough time to finish
the development,
and the final product he
wasn't happy with it at all.
In the end, instead of
being a portable headset
like gunpei Yokoi had envisaged,
it was actually table mounted,
and you played it by
kind of leaning forward
and looking into this lens.
And you could see these 3D graphics,
it was only one color, everything was red.
Playing the virtual boy gave
you massive headaches,
the games were awful, it was a total flop.
Gunpei Yokoi was really upset about this
because this was not the
system he had imagined.
And as a kind of apology,
he developed the game boy pocket
before leaving Nintendo to go off
and start his own product
development company.
- [Narrator] In march, 1997,
the Nintendo 64 launched in Europe
and sold 2.3 million
units in the first year.
Nintendo introduced the rumble pack,
which enabled players to
feel the realistic vibrations
contained in the game.
In the early 2000s,
Nintendo began its expansion,
establishing offices all around the globe.
The following years saw
the release of the game cube,
building upon the technical
prowess displayed by the N64.
The game boy would
continue to undergo upgrades,
and soon there would be six
more iterations of the console,
each possessing unique qualities.
- So after the game boy
had been so successful,
they released the game boy color,
which was kind of a step up.
It was smaller, it allowed
you to play games in color,
which was obviously really exciting.
And then after that,
they also released the game boy advance.
So they'd been kind of
on the game boy model
for quite a while,
and they really knew what they were doing
with handheld consoles.
- [Narrator] Not long following
the release of the game cube
hiroshi yamauchi stepped
down as president of Nintendo.
After an incredibly successful run,
instigating the company as a household name
for tech development,
hiroshi would be replaced by Satoru Iwata.
Iwata's succession would mean the end
of the yamauchi family's
long-running ownership.
- In the early 2000s, Satoru
Iwata made some changes
to the way that Nintendo was run.
Hiroshi yamauchi had always created
a very competitive atmosphere,
but Satoru iwata's approach
was completely different.
He created a very collaborative atmosphere.
Satoru iwata's business style
was very influenced by
the blue ocean strategy.
He didn't want to compete
with all of these video game consoles
that were at the cutting
edge of graphic technology.
He wanted to create a new market,
he wanted to do things differently.
(Gentle music)
- [Narrator] In 2013, hiroshi passed away.
His legacy, however, would live on.
Retaining a similar presentation
to the original game & watch,
2004 brought the release
of Nintendo's highest selling console ever.
The Nintendo DS.
- When the Nintendo DS came out,
it had two screens and kind of flipped.
And this meant that you were
able to use the bottom screen
as kind of a touch screen
and the top screen could show
something completely different.
So you had the same kind of controls
that you did on the game boy,
but you were able to do a lot more.
Game designers were able to make games
that really utilized this new tech
and that was incredibly popular.
A lot of shops sold out of the Nintendo DS
when it first came out.
And around the same console generation,
the Nintendo Wii came out.
- So the Wii was really like,
I don't know if anyone expected it
to be as successful as it was.
The funny thing about the Wii
was it wasn't the franchises
that Nintendo was known for,
that were the reason for its success.
I think the real reason for the Wii success
was things like Wii sports.
It was the games that
your granny could play,
you know, the people that
had no gaming knowledge
or vocabulary whatsoever,
they saw this really fun, silly thing.
You know, waggling the
Wiimotes and stuff like that,
like instantly, you know,
you don't have to have
any gaming language at all
to know how to play that.
And so it opened up gaming
to a whole new audience.
You know, it didn't last long
because the Wii U was
horribly marketed and you know,
it couldn't really get that
lightning in a bottle effect
that the Wii had.
But for a moment, yeah, the Wii was huge.
Everyone wanted to
play it, literally everyone.
- If the Nintendo DS was popular,
the Nintendo Wii was
wildly popular at launch.
I actually worked in a
game shop around that time
and we were constantly
sold out of Nintendo Wiis,
they really managed to corner
the market on family gaming,
which is something
Nintendo's always been good at.
But they released a lot of titles
that were aimed at the
whole family and not just kids.
So they had things like
Wii fit and Wii sports,
which had a really low barrier to entry
and adults were often a
little bit more interested in
than the classic Nintendo games.
And I think that meant
that a lot of families saw it
as a real great investment
and something that
they could get for the kids,
but which the adults would play as well.
- [Narrator] The DS Rose to
the top of the gaming world
as the most popular portable console,
thanks to games suitable for everyone.
Players all over Europe made
"animal crossing: Wild world",
"new super Mario brothers",
and "metroid prime hunters" bestsellers.
Including "nintendogs" also boosted sales
as it allowed experimentation
with the new voice recognition software.
Games like "Wario ware:
Smooth moves", "endless ocean",
and "big brain academy:
Wii degree" for the Wii
invited everyone to dive into the fun
regardless of previous experience.
While the arrival of "super Mario galaxy"
and "metroid prime 3: Corruption"
brought cherished Nintendo
franchises back into being,
with the addition of new
features only possible on the Wii.
With the new consoles in place,
the time was right to fall back
from inventing new products
and refining what was already made.
The DS had many upgraded
versions such as the DSi
and eventually the Nintendo
3ds released in 2011.
- The next console that Nintendo
came up with was the Wii U,
a much more powerful console
with high definition graphics.
Nintendo couldn't compete
with these other systems
that had phenomenal graphics.
Also the name Wii U,
people just thought it was
an extension of the Wii,
they didn't realize it was
an entirely new beast.
So the Wii U did not sell well.
- Yeah, the Wii U was
Nintendo's worst selling console.
It was pretty much a disaster financially.
It came off the back of the Wii,
but people didn't really
understand it was a new console.
The idea was to kind of
combine an iPad like tablet
with a games console.
And when they were developing it, you know,
that idea was ahead of its time,
by the time they released
it, it was a bit dated.
It looked like a kind of
Fisher-price version of an iPad.
It never really quite gelled.
It didn't really know what it was.
And consumers looked at it went,
"I dunno what that is or what it's about."
So it was a handy step on
the way to Nintendo switch,
but as a console on its own
it just never quite clicked with anyone.
- [Narrator] Though the
new version of the Wii
underperformed in sales,
it provided a massive step
up in graphic capabilities.
An asset that went under the radar
as it didn't attract the
same broad audience
the original we had done previously.
The Wii U, however, was
the most powerful console
on the home market
before the release of the ps4
and Xbox One.
The game pad was a new idea,
which brought the handheld
advantages of the DS
to a home console and paved
the way for what was to come.
In 2017, we were introduced
to the Nintendo switch.
(Upbeat funky music)
- So the switch is huge.
I mean it was such a success for Nintendo
because Nintendo took
everything that it had learned
from the console market,
from handheld, you know,
from all its handheld expertise,
everything that it had
learned from the game boy,
from the DS, from the 3ds from everything.
And it was like, why
don't we take both of these
and make a console
that literally does both?
And that was just, I mean,
it's just a master move.
Like, and that's what
I love about Nintendo.
Nintendo doesn't really
see itself as a competitor
to PlayStation or Xbox.
All Nintendo is interested
in is interesting innovation,
experimentation and
making games that are fun.
- Nintendo is so known for
innovating with their hardware
and the switch was no different.
All of the big console companies
were coming out with innovations,
but none of them were quite
as different as the switch felt.
It felt like a bit of a natural
progression from the Wii
and the DS, but also
completely new at the same time.
So the thing about the switch
is it can both be a handheld console
or you can put the
handheld screen into a dock
that attaches to your TV
and then use the controllers on the side.
So it's like a home console
and a handheld at the same time.
And that came out with
fantastic games at launch as well.
- I'm a massive fan of Mario games.
I never really played Zelda
much when I was a kid,
but I have to say,
"Zelda: Breath of the wild" is
my favorite game of all time.
It's incredible and that
really helped to sell switches.
- Does the Nintendo switch hold up
in terms of graphical capability
when put alongside the
PlayStation 5 or the Xbox series x?
No, but is it unbelievably fun?
Do people love it?
You know, do people
take it everywhere they go?
Absolutely, it has a, you know,
it doesn't really suffer all that much
for the amount of games
that it has access to.
Nintendo's third party support
has actually never
been better, I don't think
than with the switch.
Traditionally, I don't think Nintendo
was a very friendly third
party development platform.
It was just a bit more difficult
to get games onto Nintendo consoles
than it was for PlayStation and Xbox.
But the switch is
just, it's just fantastic.
You know, you can slot it
into its port or to its dock.
You can pick up where you left off
seamlessly from where
you were out and about.
You can transition from being out,
playing your console
on the train, or wherever
to going indoors, slotting it in
and there it is exactly
where you were before.
It's the perfect console I think,
for a lot of kids and adults alike
because if you don't have the time
or the inclination to
sit down in front of a PC
or a console in front
of a TV in the evening,
you want to just, I
don't know, get into bed
and play your switch, that's
absolutely a thing you can do.
- [Narrator] The switch was an amalgamation
of everything Nintendo
had achieved thus far,
merging the idea of a home
console with a handheld device.
The system was versatile, ergonomic,
and capable of handling the stories
the company wanted to tell.
(Upbeat music)
- Nintendo has always been
a pioneer in the gaming world.
One of the things that
they do that is fantastic
is they have a real focus on family gaming
and that's allowed them
to stand out from the crowd
sometimes when the other companies
are doing something a little bit different.
They're really invested in
making games that are fun
and creative and that everyone can play.
And the other thing they do
is that their consoles and their hardware
is always new and always interesting.
Sometimes it doesn't land
as well, but when it does,
it absolutely blows everything else away
when it comes to innovation.
- It was really satoru Iwata,
professionalized Nintendo's
merchandising arm
and expanded into other areas,
and created an Nintendo
theme park in Japan.
And there's now another one in America,
and of course the "super
Mario brothers" film,
which I'm very excited about.
(Playful music) (Photographers chattering)
One of the reasons I
really love Nintendo games
is that all of the games
on the other consoles
really focus on guns
and violence and crime.
And I mean, these games look fantastic,
I would love to play them,
but actually I don't want to get involved
in all of that violence.
I love that Nintendo don't do that.
- Nintendo was a pioneer of
video game quality in consoles.
I mean,
it essentially rewrote the video
game console business model
and saved the video
game industry by doing so.
It was a pioneer in game design.
It's attention to the feel
of video game mechanics
really kind of upped the quality bar.
You know, game designers
back in the eighties
were not that great.
You know, they would make
these punishing games that,
you know, would make
children cry they were so hard.
Whereas Nintendo is like,
no, a game should be fair.
And it seems very obvious to us now
that a game should be enjoyable,
not punishing, but you know,
that's not how people were
making games back then.
It was a pioneer in broadening
out the video game audience
with the Wii and the DS.
Nintendo created the
handheld, you know, game.
We play iPhone games and Android games now.
But you know, before
smartphones came along,
we were playing on Nintendo portables.
But it's a company that's
really defined video games
throughout its history.
It's had an enormous
shaping influence on it.
And it's still going strong today.
It's still setting the tone
for a lot of companies.
Valve steam deck is quite clearly modeled
on the Nintendo switch in lots of ways,
you know, there's no escaping it.
- I think Nintendo brings
up feelings of nostalgia
because, well, first of
all, I think it, you know,
it's been around longer
and when Nintendo was in its early days,
it was marketing games for children.
But even now, you know, kids,
their first console is very
often an Nintendo console.
I mean, my nephews, they
all have Nintendo switches,
so they, weirdly, their
nostalgia will extend to Mario
as you know, plenty of
older gamers does as well.
But I think it's because, again,
at the heart of every Nintendo game
is that childhood childlike
curiosity and wonder
at the world that's really
what makes their games sing.
- Well, particularly for people of my age,
we grew up with Nintendo.
I'm the perfect age to have been swept up
by Nintendo's ascendancy in the 1980s
and it's absolutely an
indelible part of my childhood.
- I think
because it's tied into that
feeling of childhood fun,
it really just evokes
a feeling of nostalgia
in a lot of people, and
especially people my age.
- Nintendo's most important legacy
is saving the video game console industry.
After Atari’s collapse,
it was possible that game
consoles would not come back.
It did look like home computers
would be where people played games on.
Nintendo changed that,
Nintendo said, no, there
is still room for consoles.
If Nintendo hadn't come
along when they did,
we'd probably all be
paying on pcs at this point.
(Upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Nintendo has
a remarkable philosophy
to put smiles on the faces
of everyone they touch.
To this remarkable company,
which started from humble beginnings,
making consoles isn't about
how much processing power they possess,
it is about the stories themselves.
It is about the characters
and open-mindedness of all who play.
To Nintendo it is all about fun.
Nothing more, nothing less.
(Upbeat music continues)