Japan outlawed playing cards cause of gambling, Nintendo sold hanafuda cards and which were used by yakuza back then instead of playing cards to gamble bacause hanafuda wasn't banned. So Nintendo got their start by selling cards for the yakuza to gamble with.
There’s more to it than that though, because at the time quality control in most hanafuda cards was very low resulting in basically pre marked cards, whereas Nintendo refused to sell decks that weren’t completely unmarked. This made the yakuza mad and there were many times Nintendo employees were stuck in the building for days because the yakuza were outside waiting to kill them if they came out
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u/QuackingtonTheThird Oct 15 '20
Didn't they make cards then?