The Answer:

Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, dreamed up and built the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1983.

The company was started in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, great-grandfather of the present president. He manufactured "Hanafuda," which are Japanese playing cards. The company started producing games in the 1960s and starting dabbling in electronics in the 1970s. It began selling handheld "Game and Watch" LCD games in the U.S. in 1980, and had an arcade hit with "Donkey Kong" in 1981.

The NES first appeared in America in 1985. Since then the company has added the Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS, Nintendo GameCube, and so on. Its Super Mario Brothers video game became a worldwide favorite.

For more information, see our video games timeline and Nintendo's history timeline.

—The Editors