The first office of the legendary Nintendo

Behind the facade of Nintendo's first office in Kyoto lay not a future video game empire, but a modest workshop producing hanafuda playing cards. For nine decades, the company honed its craft in card games, finding its niche in toys and even taxi services. It wasn't until the late 1970s, thanks to the visionary Shigeru Miyamoto, that these cherished principles of simplicity, fun, and quality made a quantum leap – from card decks to electronic screens, giving the world Mario, Donkey Kong, and Link. The journey from painted cardboard to the pixels of 8-bit legends was long but ingenious.