Nintendo playing cards

[Magasaki]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=231&v=MeAttf-uyG4

a cheeky glimpse at some history!

[Don Boyer]

Hysterical!
Good stuff.

[Rob Wright]

How cool was that. Can you imagine what those cards a worth. I didn't know that Nintendo was origanaly a playing card company.
I wonder if there is anybody here that lives in Japan near there. That could be a really cool story for Card Culture.

[Magasaki]

They won't let you in or pretty much talk about they're playing card history. It's all a bit weird! Nintendo are a famously opaque company - even to the gaming community.

[Worst Bower]

Nintendo still makes cards, including karuta like hanafuda decks. They also produce traditional board games and mahjong sets. There's the story that the head of Nintendo visiting USPC's headquarters in the 1950s. He was shocked that the world's largest card maker had such a small office that he realized he won't expand with just cards. Nintendo then diversified into toys and eventually video games. Their biggest competitor in the card market is Angel Playing Cards.

Current decks: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n09/index.html

Decks that they've produced: http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/WWPCM/japan/nintendo.htm

[Don Boyer]

I could be wrong on this, but many Japanese companies with a history that extends into or earlier than World War II appear to be loathe to talk about their history that far back.

[Worst Bower]

I could be wrong on this, but many Japanese companies with a history that extends into or earlier than World War II appear to be loathe to talk about their history that far back.

I think that only applies to the former monopolies, the notorious zaibatsus that dominated the economy before the war.

Most of the world's oldest companies are Japanese and they're mostly family owned, small to mid-size businesses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

[Don Boyer]

I could be wrong on this, but many Japanese companies with a history that extends into or earlier than World War II appear to be loathe to talk about their history that far back.

I think that only applies to the former monopolies, the notorious zaibatsus that dominated the economy before the war.

Most of the world's oldest companies are Japanese and they're mostly family owned, small to mid-size businesses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

Ancient history is fine - but they tend to be reticent if they aren't as ancient and a fair percentage of their history was in the war effort early-mid 20th century.