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Which came first, Monopoly or Nintendo?

Which came first, Monopoly or Nintendo?
Nintendo
1889 — 15 years before Monopoly

Nintendo came first, by 15 years. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

Side by side

Monopoly Nintendo
Year 1904 1889
Date 1904-01-05 1889-09-23
Category media company
What happened Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

Monopoly

Parker Brothers published Monopoly in 1935 and told the story of Charles Darrow, an unemployed man who invented it at his kitchen table. The truth is that Elizabeth Magie patented The Landlord's Game in 1904 — a nearly identical board designed to demonstrate how land monopolies impoverish tenants, which is precisely the opposite of the message the commercial version carries. Parker Brothers bought her patent for $500.

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, Monopoly or Nintendo?
Nintendo, by 15 years — 1889 against 1904.
When did Monopoly start?
1904. Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game.
When did Nintendo start?
1889. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked