Video Game Warehouse Space in Tequilla, New Jersey

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Nintendo was working on a Popeye license with King Features. They moved the company to Seattle, they lease a warehouse space in Tequilla. Yoko can hang out with all our old friends back there. This will be great. And then the ROMs show up with the replacement game for radar scope with Donkey Kong. What is this? We're screwed.

You may think you know the Nintendo story: a plumber named Mario, a princess named Zelda… and didn’t they buy the Seattle Mariners at some point? We thought we knew it too. And then we started researching and were blown away.

The lovable Disney-like Nintendo that we know today is a 130 year-old a playing card company (i.e. gambling), forged in the shadowy world of the Yakuza and shaped by a four-generation cycle of bitter family betrayal. And its unlikely transformation into a global multi-billion dollar media monopoly was led by an iron-fisted patriarch who — amazingly — never played a video game in his life! Get ready for one of our favorite stories Acquired has ever told — we couldn’t make this one up if we tried!

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