Draft:Nintendo of America

Nintendo of America Inc. (NoA) is the North American subsidiary of Nintendo headquartered in Redmond, Washington. The company was founded in 1980 and was first headquartered in Manhattan.

History
Nintendo founded its North American subsidiary in 1980 as Nintendo of America (NoA). Hiroshi Yamauchi appointed his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa as president, who in turn hired his own wife and Yamauchi's daughter Yoko Yamauchi as the first employee. The Arakawa family moved from Vancouver, British Columbia to select an office in Manhattan, New York, due to its central status in American commerce. Both from extremely affluent families, their goals were set more by prestige than money. The seed capital and product inventory were supplied by the parent corporation in Japan, with a launch goal of entering the existing $8 billion-per-year coin-op arcade video game market and the largest entertainment industry in the US, which had already outclassed movies and television combined. During the couple's arcade research excursions, NoA hired gamer youths to work in the filthy, hot, ratty warehouse in New Jersey in order to receive and service game hardware from Japan.

In late 1980, NoA contracted the Seattle-based arcade sales and distribution company Far East Video, consisting solely of experienced arcade salespeople Ron Judy and Al Stone. The two had already built a decent reputation and a distribution network, founded specifically for the independent import and sales of games from Nintendo because the Japanese company had for years been the under-represented maverick in America. Now as direct associates to the new NoA, they told Arakawa they could always clear all Nintendo inventory if Nintendo produced better games. Far East Video took NoA's contract for a fixed per-unit commission on the exclusive American distributorship of Nintendo games, to be settled by their Seattle-based lawyer, Howard Lincoln.