Tribute to a Legend

This is a sad day for gamer everywhere...

Hiroshi Yamauchi, the man who transformed Nintendo from a maker of playing cards and board games into a global videogame giant, has died at the age of 85.

“The entire Nintendo group will carry on the spirit of Mr. Yamauchi by honoring, in our approach to entertainment, the sense of value he has taught us — that there is merit in doing what is different — and at the same time, by changing Nintendo in accordance with changing times,” said Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in a statement.

Yamauchi took over the company in 1949, when he was just 22 years old. Nintendo was founded in 1889 by his grandfather Fusajiro Yamauchi as a maker of hanafuda, traditional Japanese playing cards with images of flowers on their faces. Yamauchi dropped out of Waseda University to lead Nintendo.

In Game Over, a book about the rise of Nintendo, writer David Sheff reported that Nintendo’s employees “resented youth and inexperience,” and in response, Yamauchi fired “every manager… left over from his grandfather’s reign.”

One of Yamauchi's greatest feats was to take the US arcade market from a slow, underground movement, into the mainstream scene by introducing Donkey Kong in 1981. This game became an immediate hit, prompting new high scores, contests, and the loss of countless quarters. With Donkey Kong we also saw the first real competitive gaming; today a million dollar industry.

Under his leadership, the company developed the Famicom (or Nintendo Entertainment System as it was know to westerners), as well as the Game Boy; two consoles that helped to usher in the era of home game machines. It is fair to say that Yamauchi contributed massively to forming the gaming scene, changing the industry forever ...