Yamauchi was a pimp??

[OB1]

According to a GAF member who's reading the book Game Over:

Yamauchi dropped the word karuta from the company name, which now became NCL - Nintendo Company, Ltd.- as the young president planned to branch out into new businesses.

The first product launched by the new company was a line of individuall portioned rice. Add water and - Presto! It was a dismal failure. Yamauchi then opened a "love hotel," with rooms rented by the hour. The business was, for Yamauchi, a personal passion; it was said that he was one of his own best customers (his infidelities were well known-- even by his own wife, who ignored them.)

Holy crap, I thought that pimp stuff was just funny talk!

I certainly look at this picture differently now...

[OB1]

More craziness:

In his late thirties, Yamauchi was suavely handsome, a cigarette always dangling from the corner of his mouth. Even after he sold his love hotel, he was a familiar face among the Kyoto demimonde, Michiko said nothing, but the children resented him bitterly.

In 1970, on her twentieth birthday, Yamauchi shocked Yoko when he announced that she was going out on the town with him. She dressed up and accompanied him to a cabaret, a sikikake, where five geishas attended them, serving drinks. The women obviously knew him very well. Hiroshi toasted Yoko's coming of age, but when it got late, he sent her home in a taxi. He didn't come home until dawn.

Hot DAMN.

[OB1]

Michiko had Yoko invite Minoru to dinner at the Yamauchi home. Because of the terrifying portrait Yoko had painted of her father, Arakawa felt as if he were preparing to visit Don Corleone.

Dressed in a conservative suit, he arrived at the Yamauchis'. After the introductions were made, he joined the family at the low dining table, where Michiko and Yoko served the meal. Hiroshi sat back in his chair and studied his daughter's suitor.

The evening wore on and Yamauchi fired questions at Minoru as if he were conducting a job interview. He had to be convinced that Minoru was not a heavy drinker or a playboy.

"You went to Harvard, eh?" Yamauchi asked. "That is a good school."

Mino politely explained that he had gone to MIT.

"I have never heard of it," Yamauchi said.

Yoko and Mino had to convince him that MIT was okay too.

After the meal, the family withdrew to the living room for tea. There, Yamauchi looked at Arakawa and said, without emotion, "If you are going to marry my daughter, you should marry quickly."

Yoko and Minoru exchanged glances, and the young man nodded politely. "Yes, sir," he said.

Hiroshi ribbed Arakawa, saying he was a good choice because a woman shouldn't marry a man who was too good-looking. "If you have a nice-looking man, the girls won't leave him alone," he told his daughter.

[A Black Falcon]

Is that really in that book? Heh...

[Great Rumbler]

Yamauchi: Pimp, playboy, senile crazy guy, and savior of the videogame world.

Huh.