This Saved Nintendo...?

Believe it or not, the company we all know as Nintendo didn't always make video games. In fact, they had tried so many different products, they almost went broke as a company. Here from Listverse is their story, or part of it.

The Ultra Hand

Photo credit: beforemario.com

The Ultra Hand might not sound like much, but it was a big deal for Nintendo. It was one of those extendable toy claws you can use to grab things, sort of like that stick you use to reach things at Walmart when you don’t feel like getting off your scooter. And believe it or not, it saved the company in the late 1960s.

Nintendo sold more than a million of these things, right at a point when their stocks were dive-bombing straight into bankruptcy. It was the invention that put the company back in the black and that, in time, would lead Nintendo to make video games.

The inventor, Gunpei Yokoi, who started off as the company’s janitor, made the Ultra Hand for fun in his spare time. After he brought it to the CEO, the company made so much money that they made it a policy to green-light any idea Yokoi proposed. That was a huge moment for the company—because that former janitor would end up pitching the Game & Watch system, Nintendo’s first video game system. He would also create the Nintendo Game Boy.

That was the turning point in the company’s history: an extending claw that let you grab things from high shelves. And if Nintendo hadn’t sold it, they never would have made a single video game.

Sometimes the best ideas come from the most unlikely sources, right? Just show it pays to listen to all input, just in case.

Coffee out on the patio this morning!