Happy birthday, Nintendo! 125 years young today.

September 23, 1889.

Yep, you read that right. The beloved creator of Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, and Pokémon was born 125 years ago today, bringing with it quite an impressive legacy that any company would be hard pressed to rival. In fact, the gaming conglomerate is a contemporary of Coca-Cola, The Wall Street Journal, and, believe it or not, the Eiffel Tower.

American journalist Walter Lippmann was born, and British author Wilkie Collins died. Queen Victoria sat on the British throne, and the United States of America totaled just 38 states.

Obviously, Nintendo didn’t start in the 80s with its iconic gray and black box, the NES; instead, young Japanese entrepreneur Fusajiro Yamauchi founded a moderately-sized playing card company and marketed Hanafuda cards. These painted cards, translated literally to mean “flower cards,” were used to play a number of different games. It remained a relatively small outfit until the 1950’s when Fusajiro’s grandson, the late Hiroshi Yamauchi, was looking to expand the company into different markets and sell their products abroad.

Computer technology was still in its relative infancy around this time, and so Nintendo experimented with products that ranged from a taxi service, instant rice, and even dabbling in running a Japanese love hotel. Ahem.

It wasn’t until the 1970’s that the company began looking more closely at electronic entertainment, when Yamauchi began collaborating with the late Gunpei Yokei (inventor of the original Game Boy) and Shigeru Miyamoto (does he need an introduction?) that the company moved into the realm of electronic toys and, eventually, our beloved Famicom/ Nintendo Entertainment System.

After that came the Game Boy, the SNES, the N64, Gamecube, and the Wii, among many others.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing, however. The Virtual Boy is widely regarded as one of the most disastrous gaming systems ever to have had the misfortune to be released, and the 64DD add-on for the N64 sank before it even left Japan after years of delays. And, of course, the company’s current home system - the Wii U - has had something of a turbulent time so far. Still, a century and a quarter later, the company is still soldiering on.

Happy Birthday, Nintendo. Let’s see what the next 125 years has in store.

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Jenna Fraser

A New England born, Boston native, Jenna says "wicked" with reckless abandon. She loves video games almost as much as she loves words and to say that she has an obsession with Queen would be the biggest understatement of all time.