Alan Stone, Co-Founder of Nintendo of America Dies at 71

Nintendo of America's co-founder Alan Stone has passed away at 71. Stone and his partner Ron Judy formed Far East Video in 1979 to help Nintendo bring its coin-operated arcade games to the United States. It was effectively the work of these two men that brought Japanese video games to the United States.

In 1981, Nintendo opened an American subsidiary of their company where Stone was co-founder and vice-president. Their first notable success was Donkey Kong with over 60,000 units sold in the US.

Alan Stone stayed with Nintendo of America until 1994, then became the CEO and president of Sega Entertainment. After this, he moved around to become an executive or board member of various companies such as Gplay, Platinum Studios and Raging River Corp. While Nintendo and Sega were intense rivals at the time he changed positions the first time, Stone was undeniably good at problem-solving and the industry as a whole is better for it.

He finished his venture in the video game industry with his position as the COO of NanoTech Entertainment where he actually gave the interview below.