When Nintendo started expanding their product catalogue from cards to other games in the first half of the 1960s, they initially focussed primarily on traditional parlor games (like go, shogi, chess and checkers) and other board games.

Although Nintendo soon also started releasing all sorts of toys (including the Coaster Games, the Ultra Hand and the Ultra Machine), board games remained an important part of Nintendo's product offering until around the mid 1970s.

Nintendo UltraQ game (ca 1966)

In this period of about ten years, spanning from 1965 to 1975, Nintendo produced at least fifty different board games. Many of these featured licensed characters, in particular from the Disney Studios and the Japanese figures popular at the time.


Today we will start an exploration of all Nintendo's board games with four games based on Japanese manga/anime/tv series that were popular around 1966.

Nintendo Sheriff is a western themed arcade game from 1979, which owes more to Space Invaders than you might think after a casual glance.

Nintendo Sheriff (1979)

The Wild West is a longtime arcade favorite, starting with Taito's famous 1975 Gun Fight (called Western Gun in Japan) - the first video game to feature cowboys.

In the 1960s and early 70s, Nintendo produced a number of novelty games, like the Miracle Box (ミラクルボックス), Miracle Trump (ミラクルトランプ) and Rising Trump (ライジングトランプ). These all offered simple card-based tricks, and were a natural extension of Nintendo's cards dominated heritage.

Nintendo Mister Magician Coin & Stick (1975)

A more sophisticated little magic set was created by Nintendo in 1975. It was called Mister Magician (ミスターマジシャン) Coin & Stick.

When Nintendo entered the home video game market in Japan in 1977, they did so with two Pong based TV tennis games, co-developed with Mitsubishi: the Color TV-Game 6 and its bigger brother (sister?) Color TV-Game 15.

Advertisement for TV-Game 6 and TV-Game 15

The circuitry inside TV-Game 6 and TV-Game 15 was very simliar (their main chip was actually identical), but the latter came with detached controllers and provided more game options: fifteen to be precise (obviously).


Nintendo released two versions of TV-Game 15 (again, just like TV-Game 6). The first release had an orange colored box and orange housing with a black base. It had product code CTG-15S.