In the early 1070's Nintendo was facing some tough choices. With the playing card industry starting to decline the company hit hard times. This all changed when a maintenance engineer caught the attention of company President Yamauchi and changed Nintendo’s history forever. Gunpei Yokoi, the maintenance engineer, had a hobby of creating children’s toys and his first toy; the Ultra Hand extendable claw would save the Nintendo Company as the toy became a hit in Japan. Yokoi was moved into the Nintendo research and development department, where he mentored a young employee named Shigeru Miyamoto, who is no doubt familiar to gamers worldwide.

With Gunpei Yokoi hard at work in Nintendo’s Research and Development department, the company started to produce the portable LCD Game and Watch series, which were a huge success in Japan. After landing a deal to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey in Japan, the company was starting to make a name for itself in the rising videogame market. After the success of Atari’s Pong (which even Nintendo copied, making the Nintendo Color TV Game System series) the company looked at the success of the Atari 2600 which featured ports of the top arcade games and turned its attention to making video games.

Nintendo’s first arcade game was invented and developed by Gunpei Yokoi’s prodigy Shigeru Miyamoto, who created a little game called Donkey Kong. An instant hit, Donkey Kong was a key player in launching Nintendo to their current success. Nintendo then went on to create its own home video game console, the Famicom and saved the video game market after the great video game crash of 1983. The rest as they say, is history.

One of many Hanafuda card games, Koi-Koi is a two player game that is played with the 48 card deck. The Club Nintendo Hanafuda cards measure just over two inches tall and 1 1/4 inches wide, making them fairly small cards. According to Nintendo the game, “requires a sharp mind, strategic thinking, and risk-taking in the sprit of friendlily competition. It is truly a classic brain training game.” The basic game of Koi-Koi is simply about making the best hands with the cards available to you very quickly and scoring the most points with those hands. Unlike poker, whoever makes a set first can win the game, as some hands are very strong. A full session is 12 games and the player with the most points after 12 games is the winner. Different hands have different amounts of cards in them with some hands having as little as three cards and others five or more.

The Hanafuda cards are very small, as seen here with the Pink Gorilla card from the PG Dev Kit.

The game starts by each player choosing one card randomly from the deck and the player with the earliest month card becomes the dealer. The dealer is often called ‘oya’ meaning parent and the dealer takes their turn first to start the game. The dealer then deals two cards at a time to the player, play field, and dealer until the player, dealer and field each have eight cards. The player and dealer cards are dealt face down while the cards in the play field are dealt face up between the two players who face each other. The remaining cards are placed face down to the side of the play field. After both players have a chance to look at their cards, the game begins with the dealer taking one card from their hand and placing it face up on the play field. If the card matches the month of any of the cards on the field, the dealer takes the pair. If there are no matching cards on the field, the card remains on the play field face up. The player then takes a card from the top of the remaining deck, and if there is a matching month card in the play field the player takes the pair and their turn ends. The players then alternate turns until one of them makes a set, which ends the round. Tally the score for the set and start a new round with the winner as the dealer. If either player is unable to make a set and their cards run out, the game is a draw and the other player becomes the dealer in the next game.

After a player makes a set the game can end or the game can continue if the player thinks they can get another set, they can yell “Koi-Koi” to try and get another. Be careful, because if the other player makes a set before the player that called Koi-Koi does, then that player gets double points. Koi-Koi can only be called once per game by only one player. The players can also earn multipliers by scoring 7 points in a single round, where their points are then doubled, making the strategy of forming big scoring hands a very good one. After 12 rounds are played, the game is over and the player with the most points wins. These are the basic rules of the game and the card sets are detailed on the back of the instructions that come with the Club Nintendo Hanafuda cards. Take a look at some of the great Nintendo character art that is on the cards as seen above.

Stay tuned for more on the history of Nintendo and the great prizes from Club Nintendo here on the PG Blog!