Today marks the 125th anniversary for Nintendo. That might surprise you, considering Nintendo is known for its video game empire started in the 1970s, but Nintendo has been around much longer as a company not dedicated to electronic entertainment. The company has been headquartered in Kyoto, Japan since its founding in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. The first product of the company was hand-made playing cards, but the company experimented with other endeavors, including a cab service and love hotels.
Despite all its early attempts at business ventures, Nintendo found success in the 1970s as a maker of video games, eventually going on to create an empire worth $85 billion. Nintendo roughly translated means “leave luck to heaven” and as of March of 2014, the company has sold 670 million hardware and 4.23 billion software units. Not too bad for the first 125 years!
