10 Things You Should Know About Nintendo
Drop this trivia into your next fanboy argument.
by Levi Buchanan

March 30, 2009 - Think you know everything there is to know about Nintendo? Doubtful. The gaming giant has a history spanning 100 years, back to its early days as a playing card company. That kind of longevity brings with it a lot of baggage, but not all of it is bad. In fact, few companies have such an exciting history as Nintendo, thanks to the leadership of former CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi and the twin genius of Gunpei Yokoi and Shigeru Miyamoto.

Let IGN Retro shine a light on a series of cool, fun factoids about Nintendo that you can drop at your next gamer get-together. For example, did you know that before going into videogames, Nintendo tried its hand at running a "love hotel," a by-the-hour romance sanctuary? Bust that out when somebody tells you Nintendo is some "kiddie company."

10. Nintendo Caused the PlayStation
There might be no PlayStation today without the public implosion of a partnership between Sony and Nintendo at CES in 1991. The two fierce competitors were once partners on a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES, but the deal fell apart when Nintendo undercut Sony's CES announcement only a day later and said they were going with Philips for the attachment. The humiliation was the genesis of the PlayStation. The rest is history.

9. Game Genie Shenanigans
This is not exactly a secret: Nintendo likes to control the ecosystems of its various consoles. However, during the 8- and 16-bit generations, Nintendo went so far as to put code in its games to disable the functionality of the popular Game Genie cheat devices.

8. StarCube?
Nintendo of Japan originally wanted to call the GameCube the StarCube. It even went so far as to trademark the name. Fortunately Nintendo of America was having nothing to do with that and so a compromise was made: GameCube. Can you imagine carrying a little purple box by a plastic handle and having to tell people you were holding a StarCube? Thankfully, NOA was looking out for us.

7. Centaur Mario
Mario has slipped into a number of costumes during his many adventures, such as Bee Mario and Frog Mario. One of his discarded duds was a special centaur suit in Super Mario Bros. 3. However, the suit never made it out of the design phase and was eventually transformed into the famous raccoon suit. Can you imagine Mario's head on a horse's body? Weird.

6. The Mii Genesis
Remember Talent Maker for the Nintendo 64DD? You could take a photo of yourself via the Game Boy camera and slap it on a little character to be used in games. That project turned into Stage Debut for the GameCube, but then that too was cancelled. The idea of customizable little dudes finally came to light at the Mii Channel for the Wii, though. Nintendo never trashes an idea, does it?

5. Nintendo Was Online Early
Everybody complains about how slow Nintendo was to online. They need some history. The Famicom, the Japanese version of the NES, had a special modem that let players go online and watch stocks, get news, and check weather. The SNES used the Satellaview add-on to offer downloadable content like enhanced NES games and original games. For example, players could grab 9 new dungeons for the Legend of Zelda on Satellaview.

4. Before It Made Vids...
Everybody knows Nintendo started out as a playing card company. However, what did it make between cards and Donkey Kong arcade machines? Nintendo tried a number of different ventures, such as instant rice and a taxi company before moving into the toy category thanks to the clever designs of Gunpei Yokoi, the father of the Game Boy. Nintendo's first console was the 1977 Color TV Game 6, which was a Pong clone.

3. The AES?
Let's add this to a long list of Atari screw-ups: declining to manufacture and distribute the NES in America. By 1984, a severely burned Atari was moving out of videogames to get into personal computers. Plus, Atari CEO Ray Kassar was irked when he spotted Donkey Kong on the Coleco ADAM computer, believing it broke Atari's deal with Nintendo for PC versions of DK. The deal never recovered, especially when Kassar was booted for suspicion of insider trading.

2. Iwata's Got Your Back
Current Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata is a gamer at heart. When he was in school, he created games for the calculator. His first job out of college was at HAL Laboratory, where he pitched in on Kirby and EarthBound. Iwata also worked on a number of Nintendo games, too, including Super Smash Bros. He fully joined Nintendo in 2000 and succeeded Hiroshi Yamauchi as president in 2002. It's nice to know the guy at the top loves games, right?

1. The Wii Was Born in 2001
Nintendo knew it had to change the game as far back as 2001. That's when Nintendo really started focusing on coming up with new ways to play games. The Nintendo DS was the first realization of this new philosophy, but the Wii is the ultimate incarnation of Nintendo's new approach to gaming. Strange to see that Nintendo knew the GameCube was not going to be the company's future just as it was launching worldwide. It's almost surprising that Nintendo, which has zero qualms about pulling products, didn't just yank the GameCube since it understood it would be third place.

10, 5, 3, 2. I think I forgot about 9. I knew some stuff mentioned in 4, but not the Pong clone part.

As for 1, I don't know why IGN would be surprised. Look at the profit the Gamecube made. Plus it's a lot harder to cold-start a console than if you're simply releasing a successor (especially a BC one).

I knew all of them except for 7 and 8. They're right, people used to bitch about nintendo's slow intro to online gaming, sateliteview say's hello. On the other hand nobody knew about anything that was going on in NOJ so who could blame them. I wonder how much they charged for a room or how far they transport back then?

only new 7 of those.

I knew about 5 of them.

I knew 5 of those things.

all except the cenatur mario o_O

^^Me too, everything except #7.

I knew all of them.

I would have added the shooting ranges, that were built on bowling alleys bought from Sega, arcade games such as Computer Othello, Sheriff and Radarscope (that were turned into Donkey Kong arcade machines) and Game&Watch, to the "what Nintendo did before Donkey Kong".

The Miis should have been mentioned that the original consept was made for Famicom Disc System.

Wii had its origin before 2001, GC:s GPU was reduced in clockcycles in the late stage of developement (showing that Nintendo chose the route of non-competition, especially when the prior console was pushed in terms of power) and prior to GC release, there were rumours about "Dolphin" having a motion controller (this doesn't mean it had been similar to Wii Remote, but Nintendo still skipped what could have been "hot" back then and introduced redesigned Virtual Boy controller instead).
Pulling the plug for GC would have been stupid thing to do, since Nintendo had to keep themselves in the business up until Wii and build relations with 3rd parties for the future (and, GC made money, that's more important than being in 1st, 2nd or 3rd place).

I don't know if I believe number 1. I'd be saying the same thing if I was one of the companeis.