Today is the birthday of everyone's favorite video game company from the 1800's, Nintendo. Nintendo started off a playing card company, mostly making hanafuda cards. Hanafuda cards are different from standard 4 suit cards in that they don't have any numbers or text, just a series of images. The thing is the cards are sets of images, 12 sets of 4, each set representing a season.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: It's also worth noting that the rise of Hanafuda is a direct result of a 17th century Japanese embargo on Western culture, including a ban on our playing cards. As such, Hanafuda decks don't just prioritize artwork to look pretty, but to obfuscate their purpose. We're not selling those dreadful European trading cards, these are… postcards! Pieces of collectable artwork! And if you can play games with them, that's your business.]
Then they decided to expand into a lot of different markets, most relevantly today, toys. Nintendo really only got into video games from being a toy company, but the video games took a life of their own. I could list off the smash bros roster to show how many games I know in this part of the article but I'll keep it brief and just let you all know that Kirby is my favorite Nintendo game series. He's a little guy.
[EDITOR'S NOTE 2: I also want to mention the time that someone tried to convince me of some sinister Super Mario 64 conspiracy theory by claiming the company started out making "taroot" cards.
Dude.]
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