Nintendo America

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Yamauchi actually brings a lot of these innovations from Nintendo America back to Japan. They alter the terms of the licensing agreements with third parties. Instead of five games in the US, they add the exclusivity clause. It's so Disney like. And then finally in 1988, Nintendo America still has their retail strategy, shall we say, but it blows through the roof.

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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