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The History of Nintendo: 1889-1980 by Florent Gorges and Isao Yamazaki; Pix'n Love Publishing, £24.99 The first Nintendo shop opened in the Ohashi area of Kyoto on 23rd September 1889, its founder and sole member of staff a gifted craftsman and card-player called Fujisaro Yamauchi. Nintendo is by a distance the oldest company involved in video gaming and over half of its life has been spent making playing cards, most famously the Hanafuda variety, alongside countless variants on a deck. In 1950, Fujisaro's grandson Hiroshi Yamauchi became Nintendo's third managing director and, with misadventures along the way, transformed this sizeable but unambitious card manufacturer into a global titan - a name that for many means no less than video gaming's greatest joys. The History of Nintendo: 1889-1980 doesn't quite explain how this happened, but it does a great job of illustrating the journey.
The History of Nintendo is a recently translated and unofficial production from the French publisher Pix'n Love, and depends throughout on the outstanding Nintendo collection of one Isao Yamazaki, co-credited alongside author Florent Gorges. Yamazaki has copies of almost everything Nintendo has made, in truly impressive condition, and the photography does it justice - though there's sadly a more slapdash approach to presenting things. The History of Nintendo is full of dodgy spacing and busy pages, making it look like a fanzine at times, and many wonderful pictures are reproduced in a miniature form that leaves you squinting.
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