beforemario: Ever heard of the Nippon Game company?

Some time ago, I posted a story about the various logos used by Nintendo over its long history.

I failed to mentioned one interesting piece of information, though. When Nintendo branched out from playing cards to board games, they decided to do this under the name Nippon Game. This name was only used for a brief time, but if it had stuck we would be waiting for the Nippon Game Wii U right now!

A logo that Nintendo frequently used from the mid 1960s up to the early 70s, was the 'NG' mark: the letters 'N' and G' enclosed by a circle.
This logo was featured on a wide range of toys, from board games to the Ultra Machine and the Kousenjuu SP light-beam toys.
The 'NG' stands for Nintendo Game.

At least, that is what it is most commonly known as.

But initially the 'NG' actually was short for Nippon Game.
In the early sixties, Nintendo started releasing board games in Japan that were based on licenses from US companies. These were the first games Nintendo released besides playing cards, and they mark the start of Nintendo as a toy maker.

Most of these board games were using Disney figures, but other characters were used as well. Like the Huckleberry Hound Game (?????? ???) shown here, produced under license from US cartoon company Hanna-Barbera.

The game itself is a colorful, be it straightforward, snakes and ladders like game.
The interesting part is the branding on the box. It is one of the earliest uses of the 'NG' mark, and the manufacturer listed is Nippon Game Co. Ltd.
Nippon, of course, is Japanese for 'Japan', so with this name Nintendo were positioning themselves as a game company as well as a player that mattered in Japan.
The back of the game board shows the brand name in Japanse: ?????.
Nippon Game company is not a bad name, and it has been suggested (in The History of Nintendo vol 1, by Florent Gorges), that Nintendo choose this name to increase its standing in the international business world, necessary to make these sort of licensing deals.
Another example is this Nintendo Kateiban game.
A Kateiban (???) - which literal meaning is 'home board' - is a set of board games. Nintendo created quite a few of these, in varying sizes and with different numbers of games.

This is one of the smaller versions, measuring 25 by 30 centimeters.

It contains three double-sided boards and an assortment of playing pieces, offering a total of six games, most of which feature Disney characters:

• Rocket Game (???????)
• Donald & Mickey Game (???????????)
• Baseball Game (?????)
• Seven Dwarfs Game (????????)
• Diamond Game (??????)
• Frontier-land Game (??????)

This earliest version of Nintendo Kateiban also was released under the Nippon Game name. Later versions simply replaced the name for Nintendo, leaving all other box art unchanged.
The full name for the Nippon Game company was Nippon Game Manufacturing Company Ltd (????? ??????), as listed on the manual that came with this Kateiban.
I find it strange, that Nintendo did not use their original name for these games, as they were an already established brand in their home market. Nintendo must have realized this as well, because after only a short period of time, they dropped the Nippon Game name, and rebranded all games under the original company name.

So only a handful of games saw the light of day under the Nippon Game brand, and these are quite rare today.

The previous post with the full story of Nintendo's logos can be found here.

Source: http://blog.beforemario.com/2012/11/ever-heard-of-nippon-game-company.html

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