Playing Cards, Fun Games

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Ten cards and card games had originally entered Japan from the West in the 1500s. But then they'd been banned for hundreds of years when Japan's rulers followed a strict isolationist policy. By the late 1880s after the Meiji Restoration, the government had finally removed the official ban on playing cards. And so that's why Yamaguchi starts Nintendo. So successful, in fact, that they become the largest playing card manufacturer in Japan.

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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