144 Fun Facts About Nintendo

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make which traditional game?

Hanafuda, or 'flower cards', were hand-made by founder Fusajiro Yamauchi; Nintendo never dropped the line and was still selling hanafuda decks in the 2020s.

What was the first video game system Nintendo ever made, a series of dedicated consoles sold only in Japan from 1977?

Color TV-Game began in 1977 with a machine playing six Pong variations, licensed from Magnavox and built with Mitsubishi, which supplied the manufacturing know-how.

The character later known as Mario first appeared, as 'Jumpman', in which 1981 arcade game?

Donkey Kong cast Mario, then called Jumpman, as a carpenter on a building site; he only became a plumber in 1983's Mario Bros., set among underground pipes.

Which Nintendo designer co-created The Legend of Zelda series alongside Shigeru Miyamoto?

Takashi Tezuka helped Miyamoto design the 1986 original, then directed Link's Awakening, asking for its villagers to be 'suspicious types' like the cast of Twin Peaks.

Which Nintendo handheld launched in 2001 with a 32-bit ARM processor?

The Game Boy Advance's unlit screen was hard to see in dim rooms, a shortcoming Nintendo fixed in 2003 with the front-lit, folding Game Boy Advance SP.

In what year did the Famicom, Nintendo's first cartridge-based home console, launch in Japan?

The Famicom launched in Japan on July 15, 1983 at ¥14,800 with three launch games, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye, all ports of Nintendo arcade hits.

Which Nintendo console was announced in 1999 under the codename "Dolphin"?

The GameCube was announced in May 1999 as Project Dolphin and went on sale in 2001; the codename survives in its model number, DOL-001.

Nintendo long displayed a scorched, still-working Game Boy from which conflict?

Gulf War: the Game Boy was badly burned while with US serviceman Stephan Scoggins in 1991 yet still switched on, so Nintendo replaced his and put the survivor on show.

In which Japanese city was Nintendo originally founded?

Kyoto: Nintendo never moved away, and the headquarters it used from 1933 to 1959 reopened in 2022 as a hotel called Marufukuro.

Switch game cards taste bitter to discourage what?

Children swallowing them: the tiny cards carry denatonium benzoate, a harmless bittering agent, which players confirmed at launch in 2017 by licking them.

Before its October 2016 reveal, the Switch was known publicly by which two-letter codename?

NX was named by Satoru Iwata in March 2015, on the day Nintendo announced its move into smartphone games, as proof it was not giving up on dedicated consoles.

Which 2018 Switch fighting game carried the slogan 'Everyone is here!'?

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launched December 7, 2018 with every fighter from the series' history, more than 70 at launch, under the tagline 'Everyone is here!'

What does Nintendo call the Switch play mode where the console is propped on its kickstand?

Tabletop mode stands the screen on its kickstand so friends can share it away from a TV; the 2021 OLED Model replaced the original's narrow strip with a wide, adjustable stand.

The Switch's system-on-chip comes from which chipmaker's Tegra family?

Nvidia's Tegra X1 powers the Switch, and a flaw in the chip's start-up code, which no software update could patch, let hackers run their own programs on early consoles from 2018.

What was the US launch price of the Nintendo Switch?

$299.99 was the US launch price; the box held the console, dock, two detachable controllers and a grip but no pack-in game.

What nickname did players give the fault that makes an untouched Joy-Con stick register movement?

Drift: after a class action was filed in 2019, Nintendo began repairing drifting Joy-Con free of charge, and its president apologised in 2020.

What did Nintendo call the Wii U's screen-equipped main controller?

The Wii U GamePad could show games on its own touchscreen, but only near the console; that limit, Nintendo said, pushed it to design a home console players could carry anywhere.

As of 2026, what is the best-selling Nintendo Switch game, at more than 71 million copies?

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a port of a Wii U game that sold 8.46 million; on the Switch it has sold more than eight times as many, 71.53 million by mid-2026.

Roughly how many million copies did Animal Crossing: New Horizons sell in its first 12 days?

11.8 million copies (11.77 million) sold between its March 20, 2020 launch and March 31, as the first COVID-19 lockdowns began.

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, who sells players the deserted-island getaway package?

Tom Nook, the tanuki who runs Nook Inc., sells the getaway package and then hands you the house loan, as he has since the 2001 original.

Which Zelda game launched alongside the Switch and won The Game Awards' Game of the Year?

Breath of the Wild was first planned for the Wii U in 2015; after delays it launched on both consoles on the same day, as Nintendo's last game for the older machine.

Which Switch launch title is a collection of face-to-face mini-games like Quick Draw and Milk?

1-2-Switch launched alongside the console and asked players to look at each other rather than the screen in mini-games such as Quick Draw, Milk and Samurai Training.

Nintendo claimed the Joy-Con's 'HD Rumble' haptics could simulate the feel of what?

Ice cubes in a glass: at the 2017 reveal, producer Yoshiaki Koizumi held up a controller and said he could feel each extra cube drop in, then the water rising around them.

Nintendo Labo, announced in January 2018, combined Switch games with kits made from what material?

Cardboard: players folded flat sheets into a piano, fishing rod or robot suit, and a sensor in the right-hand controller read each cardboard piano key as it was pressed.

Nintendo Switch Online's pricier tier, added in 2021, brought Nintendo 64 games and titles from which rival's console?

Sega Genesis games arrived in October 2021, three decades after Sega's adverts boasted that 'Genesis does what Nintendon't'.

In July 2024 the Switch passed which home console as Nintendo's longest-running without a successor?

The NES had gone about seven years; the Switch 2 finally arrived on 5 June 2025.

Pressing the Switch 2's new C button opens which feature?

GameChat lets friends talk and share their screens and webcams; it grew out of Nintendo's developers sharing game screens over video calls while working remotely in 2020.

How do the Switch 2's Joy-Con 2 controllers attach to the console?

Magnetically: Joy-Con 2 snap onto the console with magnets and release with a button, replacing the original's rails; they can also be slid on a surface as a mouse.

Which racing game was the Switch 2's headline launch title in June 2025?

Mario Kart World swapped the series' separate circuits for one open world, letting its 24 racers, twice the previous field, drive from one course to the next.

Which 1980 Nintendo arcade flop had its unsold cabinets converted into a 1981 hit?

Radar Scope shipped about 3,000 cabinets to the US in 1980 and most went unsold, so Nintendo had Shigeru Miyamoto design a replacement game to recycle them.

Gunpei Yokoi built Nintendo's Game & Watch handhelds in 1980 on technology borrowed from what?

Portable calculators: Yokoi watched a bored commuter poke at an LCD calculator on a bullet train and built Game & Watch around the same cheap display technology.

Which 1995 Nintendo console, with headache-inducing red stereoscopic graphics, sold poorly and was quietly dropped?

The Virtual Boy, a 1995 headset on a stand with red LED displays, sold under 800,000 units and was dropped within a year; designer Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo in 1996.

Mario was named after Mario Segale, who was what to Nintendo?

The landlord of its Washington offices: Segale rented Nintendo of America its Tukwila warehouse in 1981, and staff are said to have named their hero after a heated visit from him.

Kirby was named partly in honour of John Kirby, who did what for the company?

Won the Universal v. Nintendo lawsuit: John Kirby beat the studio's claim that Nintendo's ape infringed King Kong, and the company thanked him with a $30,000 sailboat.

Pokémon debuted in Japan in 1996 as two Game Boy games, Red and which other version, swapped for Blue abroad?

Green was Red's partner in Japan; a revised Blue edition followed there months later, and the games reached the West in 1998 as Red and Blue.

Which Nintendo handheld sold so slowly after its 2011 launch that its US price was cut by $80 within six months?

The Nintendo 3DS fell from $249.99 to $169.99 in August 2011, and Nintendo gave early buyers 20 free classic games to make amends.

Which puzzle game was bundled with the Game Boy in North America and Europe?

Tetris got the slot after Henk Rogers told Nintendo of America's Minoru Arakawa that a Mario game would sell the Game Boy to young boys, but a puzzle game would sell it to everyone.

What is the best-selling Nintendo 64 game, with nearly 12 million copies sold?

Super Mario 64 sold about 11.9 million copies, more than any other game on the console; its analog-stick movement and player-controlled camera became the template for 3D platformers.

Which studio originally developed the 2016 mobile hit Pokémon Go with Nintendo?

Niantic, spun out of Google in 2015, built Pokémon Go on the location data of its earlier game Ingress; Scopely bought Niantic's games business in 2025.

Which 1986 NES game revealed in its endings that its armoured hero Samus Aran was a woman?

Metroid (1986) has five endings keyed to completion time; only the faster ones show Samus with her helmet off or out of the suit, revealing a woman.

In which year did the Super Famicom, known abroad as the SNES, launch in Japan?

The Super Famicom launched in Japan on November 21, 1990; North America waited until August 1991, and the frenzied Japanese launch reportedly prompted a government request to release future consoles on weekends.

Under what codename was the Wii developed before its name was announced in 2006?

Revolution was the codename from its E3 2004 announcement until the name Wii was revealed in April 2006; Nintendo said 'Wii', pronounced 'we', was easy to say in any language.

Nintendo of America built its headquarters in which Washington State city?

Redmond, Washington: Minoru Arakawa built up the company there on the profits of Nintendo's first big arcade hit, a few years before Microsoft moved to the same suburb in 1986.

Which British studio made GoldenEye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie for the Nintendo 64?

Rare was 49 percent owned by Nintendo until 2002, when rival Microsoft bought the studio outright for $375 million.

Which unusual side business did Nintendo run in 1960?

A taxi company called Daiya was one of Hiroshi Yamauchi's attempts to grow beyond playing cards; Nintendo sold it after disputes with the drivers' unions made it hard to manage.

Hiroshi Yamauchi became principal owner of which MLB team in 1992?

The Seattle Mariners: Yamauchi put up $75 million in 1992 when the club's owner was proposing a move to Florida, then never attended a single game.

Before becoming Nintendo's president in 2002, Satoru Iwata was a programmer at which studio, the makers of Kirby?

HAL Laboratory took Iwata on part-time in 1980 while he was a student; in 1993, with the studio close to bankruptcy, he became its president and turned it around.

Who succeeded Tatsumi Kimishima as Nintendo's sixth president in June 2018?

Shuntaro Furukawa, then 46, took over from 68-year-old Kimishima, who had stepped in when Satoru Iwata died in office in 2015.

After leaving Nintendo, Gunpei Yokoi led development of which Bandai handheld?

The WonderSwan, designed by Yokoi's company Koto Laboratory, reached Japan in March 1999 after his death in a 1997 road accident; its launch puzzle game Gunpey carries his name.

Which extendable grabber toy did Gunpei Yokoi create for Nintendo in 1966?

The Ultra Hand (1966) used scissor-like handles to extend a lattice arm and grab ball-shaped objects; it sold over a million units and launched Yokoi's career as a toy designer.

Shigeru Miyamoto got his Nintendo job in 1977 after impressing Yamauchi with what?

His toy designs: Miyamoto showed Hiroshi Yamauchi prototypes such as animal-shaped coat hangers and was hired as Nintendo's first staff artist in the planning department.

Which of Shigeru Miyamoto's hobbies inspired the Pikmin games?

Gardening: Miyamoto's own garden inspired Pikmin (2001), much as his boyhood cave exploring fed The Legend of Zelda; he also plays guitar, mandolin and banjo.

Which composer wrote the themes of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda?

Koji Kondo wrote his first Super Mario Bros. theme for an early prototype, then scrapped it because it did not suit the game and composed the famous one.

Which Californian workstation maker, whose computers created 1990s Hollywood effects, co-designed the Nintendo 64's chips?

Silicon Graphics first pitched its console design to a rival, whose engineers turned it down, before Nintendo signed up in 1993 under the banner Project Reality.

Which Nintendo 64 add-on, required to play Majora's Mask, slotted into a hatch on top of the console?

The Expansion Pak doubled the console's memory from 4 MB to 8 MB, taking the place of a blank 'Jumper Pak' that every Nintendo 64 shipped with.

At CES in June 1994, Nintendo announced its upcoming 64-bit console under what name?

Ultra 64 was the name on show in 1994, and the arcade hit Killer Instinct promised a home version 'in 1995 only on Nintendo Ultra 64'; the console arrived in 1996, renamed.

Nintendo's 2001 home console used 8 cm game discs based on which optical format?

MiniDVD: Nintendo chose the small 1.46 GB discs to deter copying and keep costs down, which is why most consoles could not play films or music CDs.

Nintendo's 2001 home console had which unusual feature moulded into its back?

A carrying handle let owners take the small cube-shaped console to a friend's house, where four built-in controller ports were ready for multiplayer.

Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi secretly designed which part of the Super NES?

The sound chip was a secret side project: his Sony bosses were furious when they found out, but chief executive Norio Ohga backed him, and Kutaragi went on to father the PlayStation.

What does the Wii's 'Sensor Bar' actually send to the Remote?

Infrared light from LEDs at each end gives the Remote's camera two fixed points to aim by, which is why a pair of candles can stand in for the bar.

Which Wii U social network, known for hand-drawn posts, did Nintendo close in 2017?

Miiverse let players post drawings and messages to each game's community; volunteers saved about 133 million of the posts in an archive they called Archiverse.

The Wii U was the first Nintendo home console to support what?

HD graphics: the Wii stopped at 480p while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 went high-definition, so Nintendo's first 1080p console arrived a full generation late.

What does the "DS" in Nintendo DS stand for?

Dual Screen: Nintendo launched it as an experimental 'third pillar' beside its existing handheld and home console, not as a successor to the Game Boy line it soon replaced.

In Star Fox 64, which veteran wingman tells Fox to 'do a barrel roll'?

Peppy Hare's advice became an internet catchphrase; since November 2011, typing 'do a barrel roll' into Google has sent the whole results page spinning.

The clamshell Game Boy Advance SP dropped which feature found on every earlier Game Boy?

The headphone jack was gone: headphones needed an adapter that plugged into the charging port, so with Nintendo's own adapter you could not charge and listen at once.

Where was the NES test-marketed when it first went on sale in the US in October 1985?

New York City was the test market on October 18, 1985 because retailers burned by the 1983 crash were wary of consoles; Los Angeles followed in February 1986 and the rest of the country that September.

Which US magazine, launched by Nintendo in 1988, ended in 2012?

Nintendo Power replaced a free Fun Club newsletter that had grown too costly to mail; millions of copies of the first issue were printed, and every club member was sent one free.

The NES robot R.O.B. worked with only two games: Stack-Up and which other?

Gyromite: R.O.B. pressed the A and B buttons of a second controller to move pipes in Gyromite and stacked blocks in Stack-Up; the robot let Nintendo pitch the NES as a toy to wary retailers.

What do the letters in the NES accessory R.O.B. stand for?

Robotic Operating Buddy: the toy reached Japan in July 1985 as the Family Computer Robot and was dropped within a few years, but has kept returning as a cameo or playable character in later Nintendo games.

In World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros., overhead blocks make which first power-up hard to dodge?

Super Mushroom: it rolls away, rebounds off a pipe and comes back under a low row of blocks, so players who mistake it for an enemy and jump still bump into it and learn it helps.

Why was Yoshi, planned for the NES Mario games, held back until Super Mario World?

Hardware limitations: Miyamoto wanted Mario riding a dinosaur from the first Super Mario Bros., but the NES could not draw it; Shigefumi Hino drew the final Yoshi for the Super NES's dinosaur-themed world.

In Super Mario Odyssey, what is the name of Mario's sentient hat companion?

Cappy, a ghost-like Bonneter from the Cap Kingdom, lets Mario capture enemies and objects when thrown, including a Bullet Bill, a Tyrannosaurus and a tank called a Sherm.

Wario's name blends "Mario" with which Japanese word?

warui ('bad'): the name is a pun on Mario, with the W also reading as an upside-down M; Wario debuted as the final boss of Super Mario Land 2 (1992), designed by Hiroji Kiyotake.

Waluigi, created to give Wario a partner, made his debut in which Nintendo 64 game from 2000?

Mario Tennis needed a doubles partner for Wario, so Camelot's Fumihide Aoki designed Waluigi; Charles Martinet voiced him from the start.

Star Fox (1993) drew its polygons using which chip built into the cartridge?

Super FX was designed by Britain's Argonaut, Star Fox's co-developer, and sits inside the cartridge to draw polygons the console could not manage alone; in PAL regions the game is Starwing.

Super Mario Bros. 3 was plugged in the climax of which 1989 film?

The Wizard, a Fred Savage road movie, ends at a tournament whose surprise final game is Super Mario Bros. 3, then unreleased in the United States, so the film gave audiences their first look at it.

Splatoon's squid-derived playable characters are known as what?

Inklings, squid-humanoids who swim through their own ink, are Splatoon's playable species on a far-future Earth; their octopus counterparts, Octolings, became playable in Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion (2018).

Pikmin's Captain Olimar comes from which planet?

Hocotate is Olimar's home planet; he works for Hocotate Freight and crash-lands on PNF-404, the Pikmin planet, in his rocket the S.S. Dolphin.

How do Super Smash Bros. players defeat an opponent?

Knocking them offstage gets easier as a fighter's damage percentage climbs; the idea began in 1997 as 'Dragon King', a prototype with unnamed placeholder fighters and no Nintendo stars.

Which game designer created Kirby at just 19?

Masahiro Sakurai's round blob began as a placeholder for an unfinished hero, but the team grew fond of it and made the stand-in the star of Kirby's Dream Land.

Which childhood hobby of Satoshi Tajiri inspired Pokémon?

Insect collecting: Tajiri caught bugs in the Tokyo suburbs as a boy, and seeing two Game Boys joined by a link cable gave him the idea of trading creatures the way he once swapped bugs.

Super Nintendo World opened first at which theme park, in March 2021?

Universal Studios Japan in Osaka opened Super Nintendo World on March 18, 2021 after a pandemic delay; Universal Studios Hollywood followed in February 2023 and Epic Universe in Orlando in May 2025.

Ocarina of Time introduced which lock-on system for focusing on enemies?

Z-targeting, named after the N64 controller's Z trigger, locked the camera onto one enemy; the fairy Navi's hovering cursor was built to show players what they were targeting.

Before Nintendo, Reggie Fils-Aimé launched the Bigfoot and Big New Yorker at which chain?

Pizza Hut's Bigfoot and Big New Yorker were his launches as a marketing director; he later opened Nintendo's E3 2004 show by declaring he was about 'takin' names' and 'makin' games'.

Who replaced Reggie Fils-Aimé as president of Nintendo of America in 2019?

Doug Bowser, who by coincidence shares a name with Mario's arch-enemy, joined from Electronic Arts in 2015 and retired at the end of 2025, handing over to Devon Pritchard.

What are Nintendo's online showcases, begun in 2011, called?

Nintendo Direct began in October 2011 with president Satoru Iwata addressing fans himself; from 2013 Nintendo dropped its big E3 stage show in favour of the videos.

Wii Sports bundled tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and which fifth sport?

Boxing, controlled with the Remote and Nunchuk, was the fifth sport; Wii Sports came free with the console everywhere except Japan and South Korea and sold 82.9 million copies.

Which Wii game came packaged with the Balance Board?

Wii Fit used the board to weigh players; its balance sensing was inspired by sumo wrestlers, so heavy that they are weighed standing on two scales side by side.

The 64DD peripheral connected to the internet through which dedicated service?

Randnet, a joint venture with Recruit, was the 64DD's dial-up service; only ten disks were released and about 15,000 subscribers remained when it shut in February 2001, never having left Japan.

What was Nintendo's first smartphone app, released in March 2016?

Miitomo, launched in Japan on March 17, 2016, had users answer pre-made questions as Mii avatars; Nintendo shut it down on May 9, 2018 as the user base dwindled.

In Mario Kart, which item flies to the front of the pack and blows up the racer in first place?

The Blue Shell, officially the Spiny Shell, arrived in Mario Kart 64; director Hideki Konno said the team wanted 'a race where everyone was in it until the end'.

Brain Age's on-screen guide is a caricature of which real Japanese neuroscientist?

Ryuta Kawashima's name is on the game in Europe, where it sold as Dr Kawashima's Brain Training; he reportedly turned down the royalties and kept living on his university salary.

By what name was Peach known in the original Super Mario Bros. manual in English?

Princess Toadstool was her English name from the 1985 manual; the first Western use of 'Peach' came in Yoshi's Safari (1993), and in Super Mario 64 she signs her letter with both names.

Before being redesigned as a turtle-like Koopa, Bowser was first conceived as what animal?

Miyamoto based the early design on the Ox-King from the Toei film Alakazam the Great until a colleague pointed out it looked more like a turtle.

Nintendo dropped Sony in 1991 for a CD deal with which rival, leading Sony to build the PlayStation?

Philips was unveiled as Nintendo's new partner at a 1991 trade show, one day after Sony had shown off its own Nintendo-compatible PlayStation there.

Why does Nintendo coat every Switch game card with a harmless but intensely bitter chemical?

To stop kids swallowing them, Nintendo coats each card in denatonium benzoate, a non-toxic bittering agent, because the cards are small enough to fit in a young child's mouth.

Shigeru Miyamoto named Princess Zelda after the wife of which Jazz Age American novelist?

F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda was a novelist, dancer and socialite in her own right. Miyamoto said he simply "really liked the name" when he was choosing a title.

Shigeru Miyamoto's breakthrough arcade game was first built around which comic-strip character?

Popeye was meant to rescue Olive Oyl from Bluto, but the trio proved too hard to draw on the arcade board, so Nintendo invented a cast of its own instead.

Which now-standard controller part did Nintendo debut on a folding Game & Watch handheld in 1982?

The directional pad, or D-pad, replaced a joystick that was impractical on a pocket-sized device. The design later won a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award.

Which real heavyweight champion was the final opponent in Nintendo's 1987 hit Punch-Out!!?

Mike Tyson was swapped for the fictional Mr. Dream in later copies, after Nintendo's licence to use his likeness expired in 1990.

Which comedian named his daughter after Nintendo's Princess Zelda, then joined her in a 2011 advert?

Robin Williams and his daughter, the actress and director Zelda Williams, appeared together in commercials for Ocarina of Time 3D.

Nintendo's 1985 Western console hid cartridges behind a flap to resemble which household device?

A video recorder's front-loading slot was copied because US shops doubted any games machine could sell so soon after the industry's 1983 crash.

The name Nintendo is commonly said to mean 'leave luck to' what, though no records confirm it?

Heaven completes the popular translation, but even descendants of the founding Yamauchi family do not know what the name was really meant to say.

Which 1984 Nintendo light-gun game features a dog that smugly laughs when the player misses?

Duck Hunt sold more than 28 million copies, and its dog was made impossible to shoot on consoles to keep the game family-friendly.

Which rival ran adverts boasting that its new 16-bit console 'does what Nintendon't'?

Sega used the slogan to sell its Genesis as the more arcade-like machine, part of a campaign built to challenge Nintendo head-on in America.

In the late 1950s, Nintendo licensed which American studio's characters to win over children?

Walt Disney characters opened up the children's market for Nintendo and boosted its sales, though the firm was left dependent on young customers when the craze faded.

Which toys-to-life figures, launched in 2014, tap onto Nintendo controllers to unlock game extras?

Amiibo figures use near-field communication to pass data in and out of games, so a single figure can carry its saved progress from one console to another.

What did Nintendo call the Wii Remote add-on, held in the other hand, that added an analog stick?

The Nunchuk came bundled with every Wii and could sense motion too, and its cord hooked onto the Remote's wrist strap so a sudden tug would not yank it loose.

Which American actor voiced Mario in Nintendo games from the 1990s until stepping aside in 2023?

Charles Martinet won the role at a 1991 trade-show audition he almost missed, turning up as the casting directors were already packing away their equipment.

Which actor played Mario in the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. film, opposite John Leguizamo?

Bob Hoskins had to be talked into the part, which had been offered to Danny DeVito, in a film now counted among the worst ever made.

Which animation studio co-produced 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie with Nintendo?

Illumination's founder Chris Meledandri met Shigeru Miyamoto while Nintendo was planning its theme-park attractions, and Miyamoto found their creative methods alike.

Which currency do players of Nintendo's Animal Crossing earn by selling fish, fruit and fossils?

Bells pay for furniture, clothing and home expansions, and the loan that players take out for their house famously charges no interest.

Which series left Nintendo for the PlayStation in 1997 because cartridges held too little data?

Final Fantasy VII was first tested on the Nintendo 64, where the 2,000 polygons of a single monster were enough to drag the frame rate down.

Which fictional land, home of the Triforce, is the main setting of Nintendo's Legend of Zelda games?

Hyrule debuted in the 1986 original, whose plot has the villain Ganon steal the Triforce of Power while Link hunts for the scattered pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom.

Which Zelda game traps Link in a repeating three-day cycle as a moon falls towards Termina?

Majora's Mask needed the Nintendo 64's Expansion Pak add-on just to run, which let it draw farther into the distance and put more characters on screen than Ocarina of Time.

Which 2023 Zelda sequel added floating sky islands and a vast underground realm called the Depths?

Tears of the Kingdom's designers drew inspiration from Wii Sports Resort, Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption 2 while building its three-layered world.

The first Legend of Zelda cartridge, which held a battery for saving, came in which unusual colour?

Gold plastic showed through a hole cut into the box, packaging that Next Generation magazine later ranked among the five greatest of all time.

Captain Falcon races the Blue Falcon in which Nintendo series set mostly in the 26th century?

F-Zero machines hover instead of rolling on wheels, and the series is known for pushing each console to produce some of the fastest racing ever made.

Which quirky Super NES role-playing game, known in Japan as Mother 2, stars a boy named Ness?

EarthBound pits Ness against walking nooses and piles of vomit, a deliberately goofy tone its creator hoped would win over people who never played games.

Which Nintendo tactical role-playing series is known for killing off fallen characters permanently?

Fire Emblem reached the West only with its seventh game in 2003, after its heroes Marth and Roy had turned up as playable guests in a Nintendo fighting game.

What did Nintendo call the Wii download service that sold classic games from older machines?

Virtual Console games ran through software emulation, and they had been downloaded more than ten million times by early 2008, barely a year after the Wii went on sale.

Which Switch fitness game is played by squeezing a springy Pilates-style controller and wearing a leg strap?

Ring Fit Adventure is a turn-based role-playing game in which attacks are physical exercises, with a strain sensor measuring how hard the player bends the hoop.

Which Pokémon developer began as a self-published gaming magazine before becoming a studio in 1989?

Game Freak was also the pen name its founder Satoshi Tajiri wrote under, and illustrator Ken Sugimori joined after finding the magazine in a shop.

The Super NES port of which arcade fighting game swapped blood for sweat under Nintendo's family-friendly rules?

Mortal Kombat on the Super NES also swapped most Fatalities for milder finishing moves, even though it looked and sounded closer to the arcade than the Genesis version.

Nintendo lost a landmark 1992 copyright case trying to block which cheat cartridge sold by Galoob?

Game Genie was ruled legal because it never made a permanent altered copy of a game, which left Nintendo unable to stop the device being sold in the United States.

Which 1992 Super NES art and music program came packaged with its own mouse?

Mario Paint taught newcomers to handle the mouse through Gnat Attack, a minigame about swatting 100 insects, and the bundle sold over a million units by March 1993.

Which app preloaded on the Nintendo DS let sixteen nearby owners swap drawings and typed messages?

PictoChat only reached about ten metres, yet it won an Excellence Prize for Entertainment at the 2004 Japan Media Arts Festival.

Which Nintendo light-gun game does Marty McFly show off in Back to the Future Part II?

Wild Gunman began as a 1974 arcade machine that projected filmed footage of local extras, and the third film reveals the game made Marty a crack shot.

What is the fighter spacecraft flown by Fox McCloud's team in Nintendo's Star Fox series called?

The Arwing's first game was sold in Europe as Starwing, renamed because of concerns about a German company called StarVox.

Which Super NES visual trick rotated and scaled a flat background to fake 3D ground in Pilotwings?

Mode 7 was the last of the console's eight background modes, hence the number, and the only one whose single layer could be rotated and scaled.

The first Famicom's second controller replaced Start and Select with which unusual built-in feature?

A microphone was fitted so that players' voices could come out of the television speaker, but few games ever used it and a later redesign of the console left it out.

Which American toy giant made the Power Glove, the wearable Nintendo controller released in 1989?

Mattel adapted the patented VPL Dataglove into an affordable product, yet only two games were ever released with features made specifically for it.

Which 1984 Nintendo racing game, directed by Shigeru Miyamoto, let players design their own tracks?

Excitebike's smooth side-scrolling engine was later reused by Miyamoto's team to build Super Mario Bros.

The Nintendo Museum opened in October 2024 on a former factory site in which Japanese city?

Uji is home to the old Ogura Plant, where Nintendo once repaired customers' toys and consoles before the building was turned into the museum.

Which Atari Games label sold unlicensed Nintendo games after secretly bypassing the lockout chip?

Tengen's engineers built a chip they called Rabbit because the usual trick, zapping the lockout with a voltage spike, risked damaging consoles. Its cartridges were rounded and matte black.

Which son-in-law of Hiroshi Yamauchi set up Nintendo of America in 1980 as its first president?

Minoru Arakawa took the job even though his wife Yoko opposed it, having seen what running the company had done to her father's life.

Which Japan-only Super Famicom add-on downloaded games and magazines beamed from orbit by St.GIGA?

Satellaview owners had to buy or rent a separate tuner to receive the broadcasts, and the unit succeeded an earlier modem-style network service for the Famicom.

Nintendo's 1973 Laser Clay Shooting System was set up across Japan in which kind of deserted venue?

Bowling alleys that stood empty became laser shooting ranges, a hit until the 1973 oil crisis killed demand and left Nintendo about five billion yen in debt.

Which plug-and-play console, built on Nintendo 64 technology, was sold only in China from 2003?

The iQue Player squeezed the whole console inside its controller, which plugged straight into a television, and speedrunners now prize it for its faster loading times.

Which studio, bought by Nintendo from Namco Bandai in 2007, makes the Xenoblade Chronicles games?

Monolith Soft chose to leave its old parent for the creative freedom on offer, agreeing in exchange to make games only for Nintendo platforms.

Which elephant-branded Famicom clone ruled 1990s Russia, where the original was never released?

Dendy sold an estimated 1.5 to 6 million units, and its importer skipped the real thing partly because genuine Nintendo consoles cost three times as much as bootlegs.

Which Nintendo ghost-hunting series arms its hero with a vacuum cleaner called the Poltergust 3000?

Luigi's Mansion handed the lead to Mario's brother for once: he explores a haunted house to rescue Mario, using a vacuum supplied by Professor E. Gadd.

Which Japanese mobile firm partnered with Nintendo in 2015 to bring its characters to smartphones?

DeNA ran the service infrastructure behind Nintendo's phone games, and in 2022 the pair announced a joint venture, Nintendo Systems, to work on Nintendo accounts.

Which bazooka-shaped wireless light gun did Nintendo release for its 16-bit console in 1992?

The Super Scope rested on the shoulder and ran on six AA batteries, yet only twelve compatible games were ever released for it.