Thanks to the rising fortunes of the company he led for more than 50 years, Hiroshi Yamauchi is now the richest man in Japan. According to a Forbes ranking of Japan’s Richest, Yamauchi is worth $7.8 billion, with $3 billion of that coming just in the last year thanks to soaring Nintendo stock values.

Yamauchi served as president of Nintendo for more than half a century. He ascended to the position in 1949 when Nintendo was in the Hanafuda card manufacturing business, and stepped down from presidency in 2002 after having transformed the company into a major player in the worldwide video game industry. He was succeeded by current Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata, the first president of Nintendo not to come from the founding Yamauchi family. Yamauchi continued on as Chairman of Nintendo’s board of directors until finally relinquishing that role as well in 2005.

Other game industry tycoons also made it onto Forbes’ list: Kagemasa Kozuki, founder and CEO of Konami; Hajime Satomi, who runs Sega; Yasuhiro Fukushima, who founded RPG icon Enix (now Square Enix); and Keiko and Yoichi Erikawa, the couple who founded and run game maker Koei.