In 1964, while Tokyo celebrated the Olympics, Nintendo’s stock had collapsed to 60 yen because adults had abandoned card games for bowling alleys and pachinko, and the Disney-licensed children’s cards had saturated their market. This episode profiles Hiroshi Yamauchi, who took over the family Hanafuda business in 1950 at age 23 after his father abandoned the family and his grandfather suffered a stroke, and immediately fired the employees who tried to strike against him.

The hosts follow Yamauchi’s talent bets: promoting maintenance worker Gunpei Yokoi after spotting his extending arm toy, which became the 1.2-million-selling Ultra Hand and led to the solar-cell Beam Gun, and assigning staff artist Shigeru Miyamoto to salvage unsold Radar Scope cabinets, which produced Donkey Kong and a hero named after the warehouse landlord. They cover the 1973 oil crisis pivot away from plastic toys, the NES disguised as stereo equipment after the 1983 crash, the lockout chip and seal of quality that created the walled garden, the public betrayal of Sony that helped create the PlayStation, and the 2002 decision to hand the company to non-family successor Satoru Iwata.

• How adoption, abandonment and a stroke made a 23-year-old the head of Nintendo
• Why the Disney card deal became a golden handcuff that locked Nintendo into a fickle market
• Yokoi and Miyamoto: judging people on ideas rather than credentials
• The Trojan horse Entertainment System and the hardware bouncer that revived American gaming
• The Philips announcement that humiliated Sony and forged Nintendo’s greatest rival