Nintendo was born in 1889 making playing cards

We associate Nintendo with Mario, the console and pixels. It's hard to imagine that the company is older than cinema, radio and the modern Olympic Games.

Nintendo was founded on 23 September 1889 in Kyoto, when Japan was still living through the Meiji era. Its product wasn't machines but hanafuda: traditional playing cards, hand-painted, which its founder, Fusajiro Yamauchi, made and sold. For decades, that was the whole business.

Nearly a century passed before the company touched a video game. First it tried its luck with taxis, love hotels, instant rice and vacuum cleaners, almost all with mediocre results, until in the 1970s it struck gold in electronic entertainment. The brand that dominates consoles today started with paper, ink and painted flowers.