Pocket Monsters
Pocket Monsters, the mega hit in Japan, has sold twice as much as the newest Final Fantasy game Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation and was more popular than Zelda 4 Links Awakening and was the reason why the Game Boy outsold the N64 in Japan last year (1997)! Pocket Monsters 2 was shown on Space World in 1997. On the same exhibition the hugely awaited new Zelda game Zelda: the Ocarina of Time was also previewed, but Pocket Monsters 2 was the main attraction for the Japanese reporters! For all of you who have missed it (there must be someone....) The plot of the game is to catch and train small baby monsters and watch them grow up to be big scary monsters that beats the crap out of all the other monsters. The great thing with Pocket Monsters is that you can link up two Game Boys and let your Monster battle your mates.
 
Two Pocket Monster games will be released in Japan for the N64. Pocket Monsters Arena where you can import your monsters and let them do battles with other monsters on your N64 and Pocket Monsters Snap where you can take photos of the monsters when they are out playing in a landscape. Pocket Monsters is more than just a Game Boy game, it´s a whole industry with posters, stickers, trading cards, TV series and so on. New figures states that the Pokémon sales has been measured to 40 billion, and now 3 years after the release of the first game the pokémon phenomenon isn't showing any signs of fading in popularity.  
Pikachu, which is the name of the most popular of all the Pocket Monsters, has got an N64 game of his own; Pikachu Ganki De Chu is a bizarre game where you can communicate with Pikachu by using a special headset. Those Japanese people are crazy!!
 
Star Fox - Just a testing program
Star Fox, or Star Wing as we Europeans know it, was just an testing program to test the FX-chip capabilities, but the designers continued working on it and finally Nintendo released it and it became a big success.
 
Metroid - not that good?
All the Metroid games has been huge bestsellers in the US and Europe, but they have never been to excited about them in Japan. Metroid wasn´t popular at all in Japan but Nintendo tried to market it in the US and it became a real smash hit!
 
R.O.B. = shit?
Before the NES was about to be released in the US, Minoru Arakawa (the NOA president at that time), showed of the ROB (A strange robot for the NES) for the buyers at the CES exhibit but they didn´t like it so Minoru decided to do a "test" to prove that the kids would love the ROB. From behind a one-way mirror he watched a selection of kids play with the ROB utility and heard how the kids said things like "This is shit" and "It sucks"! But Minoru was stubborn and released it anyway and as you might guess it wasn´t any success at all!
 
SNES Launch problem
When Nintendo was to distribute the SNES they did it with ships late at night to avoid a gang of mobsters who planned to steal all the Super Famicoms and sell it on the black market!
 
SNES Lottery
The Japanese launch of the Super Famicom was filled with all sorts of problems. Some of the shops got so many orders that they ran lotteries to see which would be the happy ones to get a Super Famicom!
 
The Nintendo 64, preferred by many
Some burglars broke into a Radio and TV store and stole all their Nintendo 64s, but they didn´t even touch the PlayStations! At least the burglars had good taste!!
 
Man tries to steal Star Fox 2
When Nintendo on the WCES exhibition in 1995 previewed their new SFX 2 game Star Fox 2, a man named Mr. Shawn J. Freeman from Arizona tried to steal a pre-release copy of the game but didn´t succeed and was arrested!
 
Power Loppi
Available now in Japan, is a game vending machine called "Nintendo Power Loppi", where you can buy old and new Super Famicom games direct or even pre-purchased in the form of a flash ROM cartridge.
 
Good lord it's the bible but what´s it doing in my Game Boy?
The company All Wisdom Tree has released the whole Bible in King James´ version plus two extra word games on one Game Boy cart!
 
Quotes
"Who knows how Mario will look in the future. Maybe he'll wear metallic clothes!"

-Shigeru Miyamoto, c1991
(and, as we all know, in SM64 he did!)
 
Super Mario 64 a Super FX game?
Did you know that Nintendo planned to release a 3D Mario game for the SNES using their S-FX chip, but it didn't work out so the advent of a 3D Mario game had to wait yet a couple of years?!
 
The birth of Jumpman the carpenter (Mario)
In 1981 Shigeru Miyamoto guided by Gunpei Yokoi made the first game for Nintendo starring our dear Mario. It was the arcade game Donkey Kong. By then Mario didn´t even had a proper name! He was just called "Jumpman" and was a carpenter (When Donkey Kong came to the US and Europe Jumpman had been renamed to Mario)! Yes its true, Mario was first a carpenter before he became a plumber! Shigeru once described his character in Donkey Kong as "a funny hang-loose king of guy" and designed his character to be goofy and awkward! He also starred in the sequel to Donkey Kong: Donkey Kong Jr. In Dk jr. Mario had gotten his real name: Mario (read more about how below.). Then Mario Bros came out and his brother Luigi was born.
Read more about the birth of Mario here.
 
How did Mario get his name?
As you can read in the fact above Mario wasn't named Mario from the beginning, but "Jumpman". How did Mario get his real name then? Well, when Minoru Arakawa, the president of Nintendo of America in New York, first saw "Jumpman" he thought "Hey! He looks just like the landlord of our office!" and the landlord´s name was Mario Segali and he came from Italy, so that´s it!!!
Read more about the birth of Mario here.
 
My name is Mario... Mario, Mario!
Have you ever wondered what Mario's surname is?
Both Mario and Luigi have the surname Mario.
Therefore their full names are Mario Mario and Luigi Mario.
Read more about the birth of Mario here.
 
He didn't become the president of Nintendo for nothing...
When Hiroshi Yamauchi (the Nintendo president) was in military school during the second world war he came up with a rather brilliant idea to get away from the school on the afternoons...
During the war food was scarce and people often had to eat potatoes, but Hiroshi got a lunch box full of rise every day from his grandmother Tei. Hiroshi cleverly took advantage of this to get away from much of the work at the military school. One day when he was eating he noticed how his supervisor was looking at his rice and he asked the supervisor to share it with him and in reward Hiroshi got the afternoon off. From that day on Hiroshi always carried 2 boxes of rice to work and every day he got the afternoon off!
 
Hiroshi Yamauchi (the Nintendo president) = The Motherbrain?
Click the heading to read about why one Nintendo employee went so far that he compared Hiroshi with the big evil boss the Motherbrain from Metroid and called Hiroshi's office for "the realm of the Motherbrain"!
 
Project Atlantis = Game Boy Advance
Because of the failure of the Virtual Boy, it was rumored in 95 that Nintendo started work on another handheld. It was called Project Atlantis and it was to be a 32-bit handheld with a color screen, and be backwards compatible with Game Boy games. Now Nintendo has announced that such a console is on it's way, and the new name is; Game Boy Advance. It will feature a 32 bit CPU but that's about all that they've told...
 
Zelda: Ocarina of Time breaks new records and outsells Hollywood blockbuster movie A bug's life!
Zelda : Ocarina of Time is the fastest selling video game of all time.
During it's first month of release it earned $150 million dollars with 2.5 million units sold.
The game also generated more retail revenue during the last six weeks of 1998 than any Hollywood movie did during the same period of time. The top grossing movie during that time period was A Bug's Life, but that movie didn't earn more than $114 million. The new Zelda game also became the most sold videogame of all in 1998, despite the fact that the game only was available the last 39 days of the year.

New wacky Zelda ad campaign from Nintendo!


Click the picture for a picture of the full ad.

In January '99, this portrait of of a group of people with pointy ears (just like the people of Hyrule) appeared in several Japanese newspapers... The Japanese text in white says "Zelda population 6,000,000" meaning that Zelda . Ocarina of Time has been shipped in 6,000,000 copies worldwide.

Final Fantasy fact: Biggs and Wedges

The two characters Biggs and Wedges, sometimes rendered "Vicks and Wedge" by Translators, have appeared in many Final Fantasy games (FF VI-VIII to be exact). What few people know is that their names is taken from two of the wingmen in Luke Skywalker's Red Squadron from Star Wars.
 
Final Fantasy fact: Cid
In all Final Fantasy games except for Final Fantasy 1 the mysterious character Cid has appeared doing small cameo-roles, sidekicks. The Producer of the Final Fantasy games, Hironobu Sakaguchi, once described this mysterious character as "the Yoda of the Final Fantasy series". One interesting fact to note is that almost always Cid is an engineer or mechanic.
 
Excalibur and Masamune
Found in: Final Fantasy I-VIII  
Have you noticed that in all the Final Fantasy games the best and the second best swords are named Excalibur and Masamune.
You may recognize the name Excalibur from the classical King Arthur story and the Masamune is named after an ancient Japanese wordsmith. Those of you that have played Chrono Trigger may also recognize the Masamune sword. The Excalibur is nowhere to be seen in that game, though.

 
A 3D Final Fantasy for the Nintendo 64?
 
Locke, Terra and Shadow ready to fight!
 
After Final Fantasy VII for the SNES was complete Square began experimenting with using 3D characters and in 1995 they proudly introduced to the press, a CGI demo featuring: Locke, Terra and Shadow battling some kind of a stone enemy.
This little playable demo that could be controlled using a mousepointer, was assumed by everyone to prove that Square's next Final Fantasy game would be for the Nintendo 64.
Unfortunately that wasn't the case.


                       Doesn't this just look awesome?


Nintendo deliberately programmed SNES games to crash when used with a Game Genie!
When Nintendo lost their trial against Galoob and Galoob was free to distribute their Game Genie freely, Nintendo started programming their games and SNES systems with a chip that made the games screw up if the Game Genie was present. That's why there is about 3 or 4 versions or Final Fantasy 3 and Chrono Trigger...
You want to read more about the History of Nintendo?
Special thanks to Unycs A.K.A. "CrashOverride", and Jordan for this rumor.

Why was Star Fox 2 never released?
A rumor says that the main reason that StarFox 2 (SNES) never came out, was that it was delayed. After a while Miyamoto's team started to work on StarFox64 for the N64 as well. When they were done with StarFox2, they thought it would make a bad impact on StarFox64, so they didn't sell it. Nintendo even sent our billboards and stuff saying that StarFox 2 was coming out, before they canceled it.
Special thanks to Unycs A.K.A. "CrashOverride", and Jordan for this rumor.
 
10 million Super Mario 64
The most sold 32 and 64 bit game today is Super Mario 64. It has sold in over 10 million copies. This may sound much but if you compare it with Super Mario Bros 1 that has sold in 40 million copies, and Super Mario Bros 3 that has sold in 18 million copies, it fades in comparison. The second most sold game for the 32 and 64 bit consoles is no other than Mario Kart 64, sold in 8 million copies. On third place we find Zelda : Ocarina of Time.
 
Pokémon amusement park
Pokémon is still very popular in Japan so Nintendo is planning to open a new amusement park purely based on the Pokémon games.
 
Sega makes Game Boy games
I never thought that I would say this, but Sega is planning on developing several titles for a Nintendo console, more precisely for the Game Boy. Several popular Sega titles is to be released including one Sonic game. This must be a historical event. Never before have Sega, Nintendo or Sony developed any game for a competitor's machine. (Sony made some games for the SNES and Sega CD, but it was before they had entered the console scene...)
 
Mario gets his own street.
In Sweden a street has been given the name "Marios gata" which is Swedish for Mario's street. It is "Bergsala"; the distributor of Nintendo games in Sweden that has renamed the street outside their office.
 
The "Mario award"
On this year's E3 (1999) Nintendo handed out a special "Mario award" to companies that has sold most Nintendo products or helped Nintendo in any other way.
 
Too much for Pikachu.
On E3 1999 Nintendo had hired a person to walk around in a big Pikachu suit all day long. It looked like the big fluffy animal was going to faint several times and when a couple of visitors tried to hug him he lost his foothold and fell

Link voice acting.
The person who did the voice acting for adult link was a Japanese guy named Nobuyuki Hiyama who also did the voice acting for Link in Super Smash Bros. What few people know is that Fujiko Takimoto ho did the voice acting for Link as child is a woman! That explains Link's extremely light voice.
Thanks to BlueYoshi for this piece of info.
 
Metroid translation mistake.
On the box and the manual of the original Metroid, it states that the game takes place on the planet Zebes. However, the text inside the game itself calls the planet *Zebeth*. This is because there is no basic 's' sound in Japanese--words that end in 'th' are sometimes translated as 's'. The 'Zebes' spelling is the one that caught on, and is used in every subsequent title..
Thanks to Chris Stevenson for this piece of info.
 
Concerned parents
A bunch of "concerned parents" complained to Nintendo and tried to form a lawsuit against them for "painful blisters" on the children's thumbs who play the system... to me that's just a wee bit stupid! Considering anyone who plays any Nintendo game for too long is bound to get the beloved "Nintendo Blisters" It's just part of the fun of Nintendo... I'm sure any fellow Nintendo Enthusiast will agree with me that the parents have something a little loose upstairs...
Thanks to Zerb for this piece of info.
 
Concerned parents
A bunch of "concerned parents" complained to Nintendo and tried to form a lawsuit against them for "painful blisters" on the children's thumbs who play the system... to me that's just a wee bit stupid! Considering anyone who plays any Nintendo game for too long is bound to get the beloved "Nintendo Blisters" It's just part of the fun of Nintendo... I'm sure any fellow Nintendo Enthusiast will agree with me that the parents have something a little loose upstairs...
Thanks to Zerb for this piece of info.
 
The origin of Zelda
Miyamomto has openly admitted that "The Legend of Zelda" game series was based on both the fantasy of young children to explore those woods out beyond your house (ala Narnia), and the movie "Legend". The movie "Legend" was released just before "The Legend of Zelda" was made, back in 1986. "Legend" was directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Bladerunner, Gladiator), and starred Tom Cruise. I encourage all Zelda fans to watch the movie. Besides the title being similar, the story is also: Young scrawny elf like boy is sent out by various dwarves and pixies to delve into the dark dungeons and rescue the princess captured by the evil Gannon like demon. In his way are many smaller demons and the such. It also has the exact same mythological and medival fantasy feel to it. But, don't get all upset, it's not like he copied it. Let's just call it "inspiration". Kind of how "Alice in Wonderland" was an inspiration for Super Mario Bros. (and the movie, along with combining already existing characters and themes). The best is inspired by the best.
Thanks to Ed "ible" Price for this piece of info.
 
Signs in Mario Kart 64
In Mario Kart 64 in the Japanese version lots of the signs are take offs of brands, the only one apparent in the western version is the Koopa Air (Nike Air), but one interesting one is a sign that says MarioBro which was changed to Mario Bros. This of course was originally a takeoff of Marlboro cigarettes.