A Space Invaders Knock Off

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In 1978, 1979 in America, what is selling is space invaders. That's made by a Japanese arcade company, Taito. Why don't you get the guys back in Japan to make something like space invaders and send it over to us? So minoroo calls up Yamauchi, he directs the R&D three team to come up with a space invaders knock off. They start producing them in Japan. Unfortunately to make the games from scratch, build them in Japan and then ship them over to New York takes four months during this time. The American space invaders mania peaks and starts to die off.

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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