Nintendo

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (任天堂株式会社) is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto. Its international branches, Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe, are respectively headquartered in Redmond, Washington, and Frankfurt, Germany. Nintendo is one of the world's largest video game companies by market capitalization, creating some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises of all-time, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Pokémon.

Nintendo was founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi on 23 September 1889 and originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as cab services and love hotels, without major success. Abandoning previous ventures in favor of toys in the 1960s, Nintendo developed into a video game company in the 1970s. Supplemented since the 1980s by its regional branches Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe, it ultimately became one of the most influential in the video game industry and one of Japan's most-valuable companies, with a market value of over US$37 billion by 2018.