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Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel.

Nintendo developed into a video game company, becoming one of the most influential in the industry and Japan's third most valuable listed company, with a market value of over US$85 billion. Besides video games, Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Major League Baseball team the Seattle Mariners.

According to Nintendo's Touch! Generations website, the name Nintendo translated from Japanese to English means "Leave luck to Heaven".
As of October 18, 2010, Nintendo has sold over 565 million hardware units and 3.4 billion software units.