Today in 1889, Nintendo was founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi as a Hanafuda-style playing card company. Beginning in 1963, Nintendo began experimenting with several other business ventures, including a taxi service, instant rice distributor, and a foray into “love hotels.” All of these ventures eventually failed and it wasn’t until the mid 1970’s that Nintendo started to find what would become it’s most lucrative endeavor: video games. From the Game & Watch system in 1980 all the way to today’s Switch, Nintendo has continually shown they are ahead of the gaming curve. Nintendo’s Pokémon series is the highest-grossing media franchise in the world (not just in video games), out-selling franchises that are decades older such as Star Wars and even Disney’s Mickey Mouse.