26 Nostalgic Pictures From The History Of Nintendo
Nintendo started as a small Japanese trading card company in 1889 and would pivot into electronic entertainment nearly 100 years later, growing into the quintessential video game company we know today.
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Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario and other characters and video games for Nintendo, holds a Nintendo Game Boy containing the Super Mario Land video game in 1992.
Nintendo’s first headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, 1889.
People try out Nintendo's new Color TV Game 6 on Oct. 8, 1977, in Tokyo.
Children look at the new 16-bit Nintendo video game machine on display at Toys ‘R’ Us in 1991.
Left: Video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto points to the controller of the new Nintendo 64 at the Los Angeles Electronic Entertainment Expo on May 15, 1996. Right: Nintendo's Mika Maeda shows off a new digital Pocket Camera at the Nintendo Space World ’97 exhibit in Tokyo, 1996. The Pocket Camera is installed atop a portable Game Boy and can store 30 images, which can then be printed on a pocket printer, sold separately.
Workers in North Bend, Washington, unload boxes of Nintendo’s new 64-bit video game system Oct. 24, 1996.
A US soldier plays his Nintendo Game Boy while deployed in Orašje, Bosnia, on Oct. 15, 1996.
Actor Mark Hamill plays Nintendo 64 with patient Erica Davis, 10, at the Mattel Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles on Dec. 9, 1998.
Tsunekazu Ishihara, co-creator of Pokémon universe, poses with Pikachu at the Los Angeles Convention Center on May 9, 2000.
Nintendo employee Toru Kusakabe displays the game-maker's newly launched Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver games at Nintendo’s Tokyo office on Nov. 24, 1999.
Tsubasa Araki, 7, gazes at a GameCube on display in Chiba, Japan, on Aug. 24, 2000.
Lil’ Kim plays GameCube with Cole and Dylan Sprouse at the console’s launch event on Nov. 17, 2001.
Nintendo presents the GameCube console at the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg, Germany, on Jan. 30, 2002.
A woman looks over new Game Boy devices in the Nintendo exhibit area of the E3 Expo on May 14, 2003, in Los Angeles.
Shigeru Miyamoto (left), legendary video game designer for Nintendo, plays Wii tennis with Steven Spielberg while attending the E3 Expo in Los Angeles on May 12, 2006.
A person in costume is one of the first to purchase a Wii console in Tokyo, Dec. 2, 2006.
Mario “floats” in zero gravity with astronaut Buzz Aldrin during a promotional shoot for Super Mario Galaxy for Wii on Nov. 3, 2007, in Las Vegas.
Prince William plays a game on the Nintendo Wii during a visit to the Valleys Kids Project in Dinas, England, on May 8, 2008.
An orchestra plays music from Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda during a presentation at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles on June 7, 2011.
Guinness World Records unveils the world’s largest video game controller at the Liverpool Street Station in London, 2012.
Cosplayers dressed as Mario celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Super Mario Bros. video games in Cologne, Germany, on Aug. 6, 2015.
Chen San-yuan, 70, known as “Pokémon grandpa,” talks on his mobile phone as he plays Pokémon Go in New Taipei City, Taiwan, on Nov. 12, 2018.
Japanese gamers line up to buy the new Nintendo Switch console in Tokyo on March 3, 2017.
The screen of a Nintendo Switch console displays instructions for building the company’s Labo VR Kit headset in Tokyo on April 12, 2019.
Attendees visit the Nintendo display during the E3 Expo in Los Angeles on June 12, 2019.
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Gabriel H. Sanchez is the Senior Photo Essay Editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York City.
Contact Gabriel H. Sanchez at gabriel.sanchez@buzzfeed.com.
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