The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros.

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Miyamoto and R&D 4 start churning out an existing library of just amazing games. Super Mario Bros. for a long time was the top selling video game in history. Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros., which is the first Mario game like we know it today. That takes Miyamoto and a small team somewhere between six months in a year to make these games.

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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