---
title: "Which came first, McDonald's or Nintendo?"
description: "McDonald's vs Nintendo: Nintendo came first, by 51 years — 1889 against 1940. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/mcdonalds-vs-nintendo/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, McDonald's or Nintendo?

**Which came first, McDonald's or Nintendo?: Nintendo**

1889 — 51 years before McDonald's

Nintendo came first, by 51 years. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

## Side by side

|  | McDonald's | Nintendo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1940 | 1889 |
| Date | — | 1889-09-23 |
| Category | company | company |
| What happened | Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a restaurant in San Bernardino. | Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto. |

## McDonald's

The brothers opened in 1940 as a barbecue drive-in and reinvented it in 1948 with the Speedee Service System — a tiny menu, no waiters, food assembled on a production line. The company itself dates its founding to 15 April 1955, when Ray Kroc opened his franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. Both dates are defensible and the corporate one is not the restaurant one.

## Nintendo

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make handmade hanafuda cards, and it was a playing-card company for about eighty years. It is older than the Ford Motor Company (1903), older than the aeroplane, older than the Eiffel Tower by five months, and older than the modern Olympic Games. Before settling on video games in the 1970s it tried taxis, instant rice and a chain of love hotels.

## Common questions

### Which came first, McDonald's or Nintendo?

Nintendo, by 51 years — 1889 against 1940.

### When did McDonald's start?

1940. Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a restaurant in San Bernardino.

### When did Nintendo start?

1889. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

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## Sources

- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place (/about/)
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]