Nintendo Company, Ltd.

Nintendo Company, Ltd. was created in 1889, as a producer of playing cards. In the 20th century, they became a video game company, and their first big console was the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. It became a huge success in Japan and the USA, and was later released all over the world. With their well known games featuring the characters Mario, Link from The Legend of Zelda and Samus Aran of Metroid fame, Nintendo became a household name, and the biggest video game company of its age. Another game that was first released on the NES was the original Final Fantasy game, by a little company known as Squaresoft which became another success. In the early 1990's, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES, was released, and on it, with several new Mario and Legend of Zelda games, were the new installments in the Final Fantasy series; Final Fantasy IV (Final Fantasy II in the US), Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI (Final Fantasy III in the US), as well as the Squaresoft productions Chrono Trigger and the Nintendo/Square 'crossover', Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, which all made Squaresoft one of the biggest names in RPGs at the time. Squaresoft left Nintendo for Sony later, and did not reconcile with Nintendo until the release of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. Today, Squaresoft, now Square Enix works together with Nintendo, and although no new installments in the main series has been released, a lot of releases, especially of the Super Nintendo Final Fantasies, have been released on the Game Boy Advance, as well as the sequels to Crystal Chronicles.