It all started with a Monkey and a Plumber, or did it?

As I was scrambling to get my last-minute shopping done, I was thinking about one of the most popular brands in the game world: Nintendo, and thinking back to my favorite arcade game of all time, Donkey Kong.

Yes, Donkey Kong.

I thought that Nintendo started its current run of success in the early 80s when DK was released. Boy was I wrong. By about 120 years.

Nintendo Koppai was founded in 1889

You see, Nintendo opened for business in 1889. It started as a “Hanafuda” playing card company and didn’t really get into the toy market until 1970s -10 years before the mega-hot Donkey Kong was released.

So other than the Hanafuda playing cards pictured above, here are just a couple of little inventions/innovative products that you may remember fondly.

These products have kept the Nintendo brand in the forefront of gaming since 1981. Even when the entire electronic/arcade/console game industry imploded in the 80s, Nintendo kept on going. Kept innovating. And stayed a household brand.

Now for a brief list of my favorite Nintendo product highlights.

Donkey Kong
The cursed monkey changed the face of computer gaming forever. And I, like so many others, dropped many a quarter into that game.

Handheld Donkey Kong game
A very innovative system at the time (early 1980s). Just check out the similarities to the current Nintendo DS:

Game & Watch

Nintendo DS

GameBoy
The handheld Donkey Kong system set the stage for the must-have handheld, GameBoy - a pocket gaming console with interchangeable game cartridges.

Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) and Super NES
An insanely popular console that continued where the monkey left off.

Fast forward to today’s Nintendo

The Nintendo game products like the DS and the gamecube seem to blend together for me. But maybe I am blinded by the brilliance of the Wii.

Nintendo, a brand success story from 1889 to today and still counting.