Categories: Retro

Ancient Nintendo Advertisement From Meiji Era Uncovered

Have you ever seen a Nintendo advertisement from the 20th century? If you have not, today is probably the day!

Back in the Meiji era, Nintendo was a well known Japanese company for making high quality Hanafuda cards (Japanese playing cards). Besides Hanafuda cards, Nintendo dipped their toes into Karuta, a similar type of Japanese playing cards.

The advertisement below promotes Karuta cards manufactured by Yamauchi Nintendo. Fusajiro Yamauchi was Nintendo’s founder. It’s unclear when the advertisement was exactly published, but since it was printed in the Meiji era, it could be anytime between 1868 to 1912. That’s before both World War I and World War II.

Although Nintendo is known for making high quality video games today, the company is still producing Hanafuda cards for the Japanese market.

Iggy

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