Nintendo

Nintendo's signature red logo used from 1975 to 2004, and used inconsistently from 2004 to 2006. Their current 2016 logo highly resembles it, albeit with its coloration reversed.

Nintendo is a Japanese video games manufacturer which develops and releases its own line of video games and consoles. They have created many popular series such as the Super Mario, Legend of zelda, kart, and Splatoon,all of whitch long-running and highly successful. Prior to Microsoft's buyout, they owned a high percentage of Rare Ltd.. Under Nintendo, Rare Ltd. developed many titles for their consoles, including Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie for the Nintendo 64. Even after being bought, however, Rare Ltd. Microsoft still allowed them to produce games for Nitendos handhelds. A few games for Nintendo's handheld devices were released, such as Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge and Banjo-Pilot for the Game Boy Advance which were published by THQ.

History

Nintendo was founded in 1889 in order to develop and distribute playing cards. Their biggest success were Hanafuda cards, which Nintendo still produces to this day, albeit Mario themed. Around the mid 1950's, Nintendo changed course and distanced themselves from the playing card industry, with the reason why often theorized to the rise in illegal gambling. Nintendo would spend the next several decades trying (and mostly failing) at many other industries. From 1963 to 1968, Nintendo founded and discontinued a taxi company, a love hotel chain, a TV network, a food company, and the Chiritori vacuum cleaner. Nintendo would eventually settle into and find a footing in the toy industry. While in debt and struggling to stay afloat with many forgettable and underperforming products, there were some success stories like the Ultra Hand and the start of a long relationship with the Walt Disney Company. In being sued by Lego over their deceivingly similar N&B blocks, though they ended up wining. Nintendo would officially enter the video game industry in 1973 with the arcade game Laser Clay Shooting System. While having modest success in the arcades, Nintendo would enter the home console market in 1977 with the Color TV Game. While it was a run of the mill Pong clone, during its run, it was very successful. later, Nintendo entered the handheld market with the and Game & Watch line of consoles. There true break came in 1981 where Nintendo tasked Shigeru Miyamoto with creating a game to use the unsold copies of Radar Scope, which despite being successful in Japan, failed miserably in the west. that game would later become Donkey Kong, which would change the course of gaming history and put Nintendo on the map.

Nintendo would shake the industry again a few years later with the launch of the Family computer (Famicom), known as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) outside of Japan. Though initially not anything special, with the release of Super Mario Bros, Nintendo was telling their biggest success story since Donkey Kong 4 years earlier. This is also when the NES was released in North America, which was when their relationship with Rare Ltd. would begin. Tim and Chris Stamper of Ultimate Play the Game presented to Nintendo how they reverse engineered the NES, something Nintendo claimed was impossible to do, and showed them their tech demos they made from their discoveries. Impressed with what they were shown, Nintendo granted then them an unlimited budget on whatever titles they wanted to make. A string of successful NES titles came from this partnership, including R.C. Pro-Am, Snake Rattle 'n' Roll, and Battletoads. The Rare division would later be spun off into their own company, selling Ultimate play the game to U.S. Gold in the process. After the launch of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Rare showed Nintendo a boxing game tech demo made using high end SGI computers. Nintendo was so impressed with their work that they bought a 49% stake in Rare, making them a second party developer. Nintendo would entrust Rare with modernizing the Donkey Kong franchise. They would later make the Donkey Kong Country series on Super Nintendo and the Donkey Kong Land series on the Nintendo Gameboy. During the Nintendo 64's lifespan, Rare would continue to work on the Donkey Kong franchise with Diddy Kong Racing and Donkey Kong 64 a kart racer and collectathon, respectively. They would also develop the Banjo-Kazooie series, which took inspiration from Nintendo's own Super Mario 64. Other title Rare developed during this era include Blast Corps, Goldeneye 007, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. Several other titles for Nintendo 64 and the upcoming GameCube were in various stages of development, but were canceled because Rare was in talks to being bought out in full, as Nintendo refused to buy them for some reason. Nintendo requested Rare to turn the previously canceled Dinosaur Planet into a Star Fox game for GameCube. This project eventually became Star Fox Adventures, which was released on September 23, 2002. One day later, Rare was fully purchased by Microsoft, making Star Fox Adventures the final game released during Rare's peak . Nintendo would still collaborate with Rare after this with the GBA remakes of the DKC trilogy, and the two Banjo-Kazooie games for Gameboy Advance, along with a Nintendo DS remake of the origanl Diddy Kong racing titled Diddy Kong Racing DS. Nintendo would also credit Rare for their indirect contributions to future projects like the Super Smash Bros. and the Mario Kart series.

After Nintendo and Rare split, Nintendo would continue to develop both hardware and software, such as the Wii, the Nintendo 3DS, the Wii U, and the Nintendo Switch. While these consoles faced varying degrees of success, it didn't change the fact that they were an important part of the gaming industry, and history as a whole. This is most apparent in their Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games, where icons of gaming come together to fight it out. In 2019, Banjo & Kazooie officially joined those gaming icons as a DLC fighter, making the first time both had appeared on a Nintendo console in 14 years, and the first time since Diddy Kong Racing DS 12 years earlier that Rare and Nintendo have directly cooperated.