
However, Nintendo has done much to paper over some of the less glorious chapters in its history, which include a number of somewhat seedy missteps, rip-offs of other, more successful, products, and near financial ruin.
As we are all aware, the real history of Nintendo begins in 1981. Here's everything you need to know about the century or so before that...
When the Japanese government eventually allowed the sale of hafanuda (or "flower") cards - which featured pictures, rather than numbers (thus making gambling tricky) - Yamaguchi formed his own company to sell them.
This continued to be Nintendo's main business until the 1960s - getting a boost in the late 1950s when it secured a lucrative license to sell cards featuring images of Disney characters, such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Buntu Baboon and Oy-Oy-Oy-Oyster.
However, when sales wobbled, Nintendo reflected the wobbliness in the most literal way imaginable: by selling cards featuring partially-nuddy ladies with their boobie-woobies out.
Following the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Nintendo's stock plummeted to its lowest ever level, and the company quite literally relieved itself in its trousers.
History does not recall whether the hotel was called The Mushroom Kingdom, Star Road, Vanilla Dome, Chocolate Island, Bean Valley, or Princess Peach's Castle.
The Ultra Hand, an extendable grabber which could be utilised to snatch wallets or tweak buttocks - was created by Nintendo's Gunpei Yokoi. Of course, Yokoi would go on to be known as the genius behind Game & Watch and the Game Boy.
Yokoi would later describe his philosophy as "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" or something - finding radical ways to use technology that was cheap and easily understood.
Unfortunately, the 1973 oil crisis impacted on sales of the system - and Nintendo found almost all of its orders cancelled, severely damaging Nintendo's profits. Nintendo was so heavily in debt as a result, it would take them seven years to pay back what it owed.
A smaller version of the technology was targeted at arcades, and was sufficiently successful that it gave Nintendo a new direction that no longer needed to include love hotels, lewd card games or buttock-grabbers.
Full motion video of cowboys would be projected onto a screen, and players would have to draw their shooter when their opponent's eyes flashed - just like in the Old West!
Nintendo later released a version of Wild Gunman for the NES/Famicom, which also featured in an iconic moment in the movie Back to the Future Part II.
"That's like a baby's toy!"
"No - you're like a baby's toy!"
Though it featured a built-in steering wheel and gearstick, two players could compete against one another using the smaller, detachable controllers. These replaced the steering wheel with what we shall describe as a "nubbin".
"Or goodbye" as the popular wits of the day would call it.
Its Color TV-Game Block Breaker was a clone of the Atari smash, and is notable for being the first project worked on by Shigeru Miyamoto. The Nintendo legend designed the system's orange casing; just peel it open to get at the sweet fruit inside.
This was achieved by simply including the arcade game's main circuit board, and an original copy of William Shakespeare's Othello manuscript. Unfortunately, this meant that Computer TV-Game was big, heavy and expensive - and consequently sold poorly.
Its next home system would be the Famicom/NES.
Success in the game would treat players to the appearance of a dancing girl in a grass skirt, and featured sound by Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka who would later create scores for Tetris, Super Mario Land, Metroid, and other Nintendo classics.
It's an unremarkable arcade game save for the fact it's the final Nintendo arcade release before everything changed with Donkey Kong and the Game & Watch series. Within a year, Nintendo would itself be treated to a special performance from "The Dancer of the Isles"...