Nintendo Napoleon playing cards

In Nintendo's early playing card manufacturing days, they carried a number of different brand names and trade marks. It's a familiar marketing tactic used to gain market share.

A key brand was Napoleon, named after the French 19th century emperor Napoléon Bonaparte.

Other brand names used at the time by Nintendo were Standard and Victor.

In the first decades of the company, Nintendo took inspiration from more established playing card manufacturers abroad, in particular from the United States. This included copying card designs, absorbing expertise, as well as re-using existing brand names.

It is not known if this happened with the full consent of the other companies, as part of business deals or partnerships, or if this was an act of creative 'borrowing' or straight-up plagiarism. Fact is that a manufacturer named The Standard Playing Cards company existed in the United Stats already before Nintendo was established, and it appears that American companies also used the Napoleon name, possibly referring to the card game with the same name.

An interesting article, in Japanese, on this somewhat hazy part in Nintendo's history can be found here.

Nintendo company guide 2019

In 2019 Nintendo released another instalment in their (almost) yearly series of booklets created for prospective employees of Nintendo of Japan, sent out to people who applied for a job during the yearly hiring cycle in Spring.

After the unusual shape of the 2018 company guide, Nintendo returned to a more standard format for the 2019 guide, with some small surprises.

The booklet measures 25 by 17 centimeters. It has 64 pages. The front and back appear to be a very bland monochromatic white.

On closer inspection, and at the right angle, a Nintendo logo can be seen, printed in clear varnish. A little red bit is peeking out in the bottom corner.

This little corner is inviting you to peel off the white cover, and this reveals the actual front (and back) that shows a splurge of (some very familiar) faces. For a peek at the back, see the bottom of this post.

With some imagination, the design of this 'peel-off' cover can be seen to represent the Nintendo company and the Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto: calm, solid, but also distant and somewhat non-descriptive on the outside, and brimming with energy and excitement on the inside.

Nintendo company guides overview 1999-2020

Over the last twenty years, Nintendo has released a new company guide (almost) every year. These are well designed booklets about what goes on inside the Nintendo headquarters in Japan, with a lot of information and many pictures, most of which are exclusively shared in these guides. They provide an unique insight into what it is like to work at Nintendo.

In the past, I have covered a few of these company guides on this blog, and I intent to share the others as well. This overview page functions as an easy place to access these posts.

Company profiles 1993 and 1998

These two company profiles are sort of precursors of the company guides. Aimed at investors rather than employees, the are somewhat simliar in content to the company guides below, although they showcase mostly released products rather than behind the scenes stuff.

A detailed post about the 1993 company profile can be found here, and 1998 will follow later.

Company guide 1999

The first of the (known) company guides created for prospective employees was released in 1999.

More details coming (hopefully) later. If you have one of these for sale, I would love to hear from you.

Company guide 2000

More details coming (hopefully) later. If you have one of these for sale, I would love to hear from you.

Company guide 2003

After a hiatus of two years, in which no comopny guides were released, a new one appeared in 2003.

More details coming (hopefully) later. If you have one of these for sale, I would love to hear from you.

Company guide 2004

More details coming.

First mention of Nintendo in USA newspaper (1931)

The image below is the first known appearance of the Nintendo company name in a USA newspaper, maybe even the first mention of it outside of Japan.

We see a set of Hanafuda (花札), a type of Japanese playing cards, produced by Nintendo. The company name is written in Japanese kanji characters (任天堂), in right-to-left reading direction, as was common at the time.

At the time of this publication, Hanafuda were Nintendo's bread and butter, and Nintendo was one of the most well-known playing cards manufacturers in Japan.

The newspaper in question is The Daily Notes of Friday December 4 1931, published in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.

Nintendo playing cards from the 1960s

Some time ago, I posted about a Nintendo playing cards sample book, which showcased the range of playing cards sold by Nintendo in the late 1960s.

The book contains a single card for each of the sets on offer.

Today I thought it would be fun to share some of the actual sets alongside with the sample book.