Nintendo It has now become one of the largest companies in the history of video games and digital entertainment.
However, true lovers of the house that gave birth to Super Mario Bros. know perfectly well that the company was not really born as a business specialized in consoles.
On the contrary, the history of Nintendo is one of the most curious, not only in the industry, but in all of Japan. Since it constitutes a curious example of how a good idea can give rise to a dynasty.
The business of this family business has always been fun and games. But in its early days, the firm actually specialized in conventional formats that were far removed from electronics.
Card and card games were Nintendo’s great specialty in the years after World War II.
But the company itself has origins that date back to September 1889, when they printed their first series of business cards. Hanafuda.
By the 1950s in the 20th century, the business began to look to the Western world and it was in this period that the key piece of this sad story emerged.
The worst unboxing in history thanks to Nintendo
There is a Twitter account on the network that is essential for all Nintendo lovers: @BeforeMariowhich is, broadly speaking, a blog dedicated to exploring and lovingly collecting all possible Nintendo history memorabilia before the start of its era as a video game company.
With such a degree of passion, the owner of the blog that has fed the site throughout all this time, Erik Voskuil, did not hesitate for a moment to present his new acquisition: a pair of decks from the 50s.
These are my favorite items I added to the Before Mario collection recently; Nintendo souvenir playing cards from their hometown Kyoto, dating from the 1950s, when global tourism was still in its infancy. More on these in an upcoming blog post. pic.twitter.com/NhR8jv2jsW
— Beforemario (@beforemario) August 6, 2022
By that time Nintendo had already begun to look west, combining its traditional set of regional card games with more conventional decks for this side of the planet.
In both cases, each card was illustrated with images of very interesting Japanese art. Back then they were objects of admiration and now much more.
There was an obvious uncertainty factor when purchasing his new product: not to touch them to increase their collection value or to open the packages to see how they had been preserved.
Voskuil leaned towards the second alternative and this was the sad surprise he encountered in his impromptu unboxing:
As we can see in the photos, the cards were stacked until they formed a single block of cardboard. The ink, package compression, and exposure to 70 years of humidity ended up doing the job.
Even so, many of us still consider it a true collector’s item.