Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Koppai[d] by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business during the 1960s and acquiring legal status as a public company, Nintendo distributed its first console, the Color TV-Game, in 1977. It gained international recognition with the release of Donkey Kong in 1981 and the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Mario Bros. in 1985.
Since the early 1980s, Nintendo has produced some of the most successful consoles in the video game industry including the Game Boy, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Nintendo DS, the Wii, and the Nintendo Switch. It has created or published numerous major franchises, including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Pokémon, and Nintendo's mascot, Mario, is internationally recognized, as well as other characters like Donkey Kong, Luigi, Samus Aran, Link, Kirby, and Pikachu. In total, over 836 million Nintendo game consoles have been sold worldwide by March 2023, for which more than 5.592 billion games have been sold.
Nintendo has multiple subsidiaries in Japan and abroad, in addition to business partners such as HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, Game Freak, and The Pokémon Company. Nintendo and its staff have received numerous awards including Emmy Awards for Technology & Engineering, Game Awards, Game Developers Choice Awards, and British Academy Games Awards. It is one of the wealthiest and most valuable companies in the Japanese market.