Nintendo
In 1975, Nintendo moved into the video arcade game industry with "EVR Race", designed by their first game designer, Genyo Takeda, and several more games followed. Nintendo had some small success with this venture, but the release of "Donkey Kong" in 1981, designed by Miyamoto, changed Nintendo's fortunes dramatically. The success of the game and many licensing opportunities (such as ports on the Atari 2600, Intellivision and ColecoVision) gave Nintendo a huge boost in profit and in addition, the game also introduced an early iteration of Mario, then known in Japan as Jumpman, the eventual company mascot.
History of Nintendo
In 1949, Hiroshi Yamauchi was attending Waseda University in Tokyo, however, after his grandfather died he left to take office as the president of Nintendo. In 1951, he renamed "Marufuku Co. Ltd." to "Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd." In 1953, Nintendo became the first company in Japan to produce playing cards from plastic.