Nintendo has been around for an incredibly long time, including long before video games were even a thought or a concept in people’s minds. The Big has done everything from making card games to shooting galleries to taxis and so on. They’ve had many “mindsets” over the years, but one of the more endearing ones is that the company is rather humble. It tells the truth about sales numbers and such, but it rarely acts petty. Or, as one former designer of theirs noted, they don’t always like to “toot their own horn,” even when it’s deserved.
Takaya Imamura was one of the key designers for Star Fox and F-Zero, and he was with The Big N for a long time. That included back in 1989 when the company celebrated its 100th anniversary. Yet, “celebrated” is a bit of a lie because, according to him in an interview with 4Gamer, they didn’t really celebrate it at all:
“I joined the company in the year of Nintendo’s 100th anniversary. At that time, society as a whole was in a bubble, so companies would take students who had secured employment on trips and throw parties to keep them from losing out, but Nintendo did nothing (laughs). We didn’t even celebrate our 100th anniversary, and it was a company that never got carried away.”
Why did they feel that way? That would be because of its former President, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who was the man who turned it into the gaming giant it was, but also struggled to get it to that point, throwing things against the wall in terms of idea concepts to “make things stick.”
For him, he knew it could all go away in a heartbeat. Thus, it was just another day at the company when it turned 100. Go figure.
