Hiroshi Yamauchi: Nintendo chief's video games legacy

Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's former president, has died aged 85.

Under his leadership, the Japanese firm was transformed, between 1949 and 2002, from being a playing card company to one of the titans of the video games industry.

The BBC invited two historians to discuss his achievements and legacy:

For many gamers, the history of video games is paralleled by key gaming moments provided by Nintendo.

The company is responsible for multiple video-gaming firsts and continues to influence the game players, designers and developers of the future.

Today, Nintendo is one of the major video games companies challenging Sony and Microsoft over the handheld and console markets.

Yet it often surprises gamers to learn that the company started as a playing card manufacturer in 1889.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, who has passed away aged 85, led that company as president for more than half a century.

Much of what will be written today will deservedly credit Yamauchi as transforming Nintendo into a world-leading, innovative and quality-driven video games company.

His influence is far more wide-reaching than that.

Yamauchi led the company through multiple other transitions from playing cards through tabletop games, toys through to arcade and electronic games.

A shrewd and occasionally ruthless businessman he looked at multiple ways of increasing revenue streams, many that are far removed from the family-friendly entertainment company that we now associate with Nintendo.

In his early years as president he smashed a strike by factory employees, diversified the business by setting up as a taxi company and established a chain of "love hotels".

In the 1960s he moved the company into toy manufacturing creating many famous products such as the Love Tester and Custom Gunman.

The Love Tester was Nintendo's first electronic product designed "for young ladies and men" to determine how much two people love each other.

Custom Gunman gave the player a toy gun to shoot a target in the shape of a rival gunman.

At a time when video games get blamed for some of society's ills it is worth remembering that toys have always encouraged imaginary play.

The designer for both of these was Gunpei Yokoi, the creator of other more famous Nintendo hardware including the Game & Watch and the Game Boy - and the not so successful Virtual Boy.

On a personal level, my introduction to video games was with the Prinztronic Video Sport 800 but it was at school and in the playground that my interest developed as we played Game & Watch games - Parachute, Snoopy Tennis, Donkey Kong etc.

I know from playing what influence Nintendo had on my interest and passion, and with each further year at Abertay that I teach I see the influence they have had on other generations.

From the influence of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) and Gamecube we see the students inspired to follow careers in the games industry.

All that without considering the massive success and broadened appeal created by the Wii.

Without Nintendo we arguably wouldn't have the industry, the innovation and the availability to study video games.

Without people like Yamauchi, gaming would never have become the broad field we now know it to be, and we wouldn't be discussing the positive and negative influences it continues to have on society, culture and education.

Hiroshi Yamauchi's time as boss of Nintendo is packed full of moments that changed the course of video game history.

Under his leadership, Nintendo introduced the world to a cast of loveable game heroes from Mario and Donkey Kong to Princess Peach and Kirby.

It popularised gaming-on-the-go long before the days of smartphones with the handheld game console Game Boy.

Yamauchi also gave his game-developers the freedom they needed to create the very best games they could, such as when he delayed the launch of the company's late-1990s console the Nintendo 64 so that game designer Shigeru Miyamoto could perfect Mario 64.

He oversaw the global phenomenon that was Pokemon, a game series that not only captured the imagination of a generation of children but helped ignite the popularity of Japanese animation and comics in the West.

But, for me, the most significant decision he ever made, the one that really transformed video gaming, was to ignore the analysts, the retail chains and the advice of consumer focus groups who told him that no-one in the USA wanted to buy games consoles anymore.

It was 1984 and Yamauchi was hoping to replicate the success that Nintendo's Famicom console had been enjoying in Japan in the USA.

But the year before, the video game boom, driven by the Atari VCS console and Space Invaders, burst. The US games industry imploded, companies crashed, retailers were left with unsold stock and consumers lost interest.

By the time Nintendo started touting its games console, rebranded as the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES for the US and European markets, everyone had consigned game consoles to the dustbin of history as little more than a brief fad.

But despite the naysayers, Yamauchi insisted on pushing ahead with the launch of the console, convinced that if game players in Japan loved it, Americans would too.

History proved Yamauchi right.

By 1989 the NES had become such a success in the USA that Nintendo products accounted for 23% of all toy sales in the country and the company had overtaken Honda and Toyota to become Japan's most profitable business.

The NES's dominance also shaped the types of games we got to play.

Nintendo controlled who could and could not release games on its console and also imposed rules on what content could appear in games on a Nintendo console.

These rules barred graphic depictions of death, nudity, swearing and criticism of religion - rules that would have made a game with themes similar to Grand Theft Auto impossible at the time.

Some will say that's a good thing but equally Nintendo's insistence on family friendly games coupled with its dominance at the time helped cement the video games' image as a kids' plaything rather than entertainment for all.

Regardless, Nintendo saved the games console. Without Yamauchi's willingness to trust his gut instinct the games console as we know it would probably not exist.