First English-language mention of Nintendo?
It’s hard to believe but Nintendo’s doors have been open since September 23, 1889. They’ve been around for 120 years! That’s just mind-boggling. Of course, they haven’t always been making video games. Their main business was in playing cards (both the familiar poker-style cards and the Japanese hanafuda), which they still make today. They’ve also dabbled in love hotels, a taxi service, toys, and a number of other fields along the way.
This recently-unearthed newspaper clipping comes from the New York Times’ patent notice page on October 8th, 1955. The trademark notice is very likely to be the first English-language mention of the company. Not much to the clipping itself, but this is still a fascinating piece of trivia.
Click past the cut to see the full story.
source: NeoGAF
Gregory Gay - December 4th, 2009 - 
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Carl on December 5, 2009 at 12:23 am
Yeah, Nintendo in Japanese is ä»»å¤©å ‚. Hold on, let me see if this site lets you post Japanese.
Carl on December 5, 2009 at 12:34 am
OK, so the Nin is ä»», which is used in words like 責任 responsibility and 任務 duty/role. Ten 天 is heaven. å ‚ is a hall, or temple pavilion type place. The usual interpretation is that ä»»å¤©å ‚ is the hall where you trust your fate to heaven, ie. a gambling establishment.
Nick on December 5, 2009 at 11:40 am
Nintendo? I hate that company.
jordin on December 6, 2009 at 1:53 am
The most common one I’ve heard is “leave luck to heaven” — I guess that’d be something like “luck is heaven’s jurisdiction / belongs to heaven’s halls”
DK428 on December 6, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I love this post! Way 2 go Nintendo! “They’ve been around 4 120 years!”
karkashan on December 7, 2009 at 12:04 pm
@ NICK
That’s nice, nobody cares.
@ Topic
Nintendo is awesome, ’nuff said.