Nintendo's Origins

You may think you know the Nintendo story: a plumber named Mario,
a princess named Zelda… and didn’t they buy the Seattle Mariners
at some point? We thought we knew it too. And then we started
researching and were blown away.


The lovable Disney-like Nintendo that we know today is a 130
year-old a playing card company (i.e. gambling), forged in the
shadowy world of the Yakuza and shaped by a four-generation cycle
of bitter family betrayal. And its unlikely transformation into a
global multi-billion dollar media monopoly was led by an
iron-fisted patriarch who — amazingly — never played a video game
in his life! Get ready for one of our favorite stories Acquired
has ever told — we couldn’t make this one up if we tried!





Links:


Our Atari episode with Nolan Bushnell

Video of id Software’s legendary PC “port” of Super Mario
Brothers 3

Episode sources






Carve Outs:


Everything Everywhere All At Once

Michael Lewis on Tim Ferriss and on CSPAN



Sponsors:


WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25

Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25






More Acquired!


Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups
from recent episodes

Join the Slack

Subscribe to ACQ2

Merch Store!



Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC