20 Nintendo Facts That Go Against What Most Fans Assume

Nintendo is one of the most recognizable names in the entire gaming industry, but the deeper you go into the company's history, the stranger some of the details get. These are 20 facts about Nintendo that there's a chance not everyone knows, starting with the company's origins and working all the way down to why the GameCube isn't technically shaped the way everyone thinks it is.

It's fun to look back in retrospect at the history of video games, and that's really what this whole list is about.

20. Nintendo started as a playing card company, not a video game company

Despite being known worldwide for video games, Nintendo is actually well over a hundred years old. It started out as a playing card manufacturer in the late 1800s before eventually moving into board games and then various toys. The company was over 70 years old by the time it made its first video game.

19. Mario's original name was Jumpman, not Mario

Mario's first appearance was in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, but his name only showed up in the instructions of the English version. The original Japanese version left him completely unnamed. In the English version he was called Jumpman, then he was officially changed to Little Mario in the Donkey Kong sales brochure, briefly called Mr. Video after that, and only later permanently renamed Mario once the team realized the character was here to stay.

18. Nintendo's own engineers hated the Game Boy

After the success of the NES, Nintendo wanted to branch into handheld gaming. According to numerous development reports, many of the engineers at the time thought the Game Boy was terrible, and some Nintendo employees reportedly nicknamed it using Japanese slang meaning useless or hopeless. It ended up being a huge success and proved the doubters wrong, and those original doubters were Nintendo's own engineers.

17. The iconic Mario power up sound was a recording accident

The sound Mario makes when he picks up a mushroom was never planned. The game's composer made a mistake while recording the soundtrack, and the team loved the result so much they built it directly into the gameplay. It's now considered one of the most recognizable sounds in gaming history.

16. The NES was the bestselling console of its era and still ranks 13th all time

The Nintendo Entertainment System is largely credited with ending the gaming crash of the 1980s. As of 2023 it had sold over 61 million units, and the only release that even came close was the Nintendo Game and Watch, which launched three years earlier and sold about 43 million units. The NES still ranks as the 13th bestselling gaming console of all time, ahead of later Nintendo systems like the GameCube, the Wii U, and even the N64.

15. The GameCube was originally announced under the code name Dolphin

That is why the most popular GameCube emulator is called Dolphin. The system was announced in 1999 under that code name, and several hardware pieces had their own animal themed code names too, including the CPU, code named Gecko, and the graphics processor, code named Flipper. In August 2000 Nintendo reannounced the console as the GameCube to match its cube shaped design, but the original name stuck around in the retro gaming community.

14. Nintendo once owned a majority stake in the Seattle Mariners

During the early 1990s the Seattle Mariners were in serious financial trouble and needed a big investor to avoid a buyout. A few days before Christmas 1991, Nintendo struck a deal, reportedly as a way of thanking the state of Washington for helping the company find its footing in America. Nintendo paid $100 million for the team and another $25 million toward reorganizing it, ending up with a 60 percent stake.

The deal was facilitated by Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's owner at the time, who reportedly had zero interest in baseball but wanted to help the team and the Washington State economy as a favor. In 2016, Nintendo sold most of its interest in the Mariners, though it still retains a 10 percent stake in the team to this day.

13. The N64 was originally planned to use discs instead of cartridges

The PlayStation moved the industry toward disc based media, which offered far more storage and smaller hardware, but Nintendo ultimately chose cartridges for the N64 due to uncertainty around the newer disc technology. The N64 still became a huge success and was technically an impressive machine, but sticking with cartridges instead of discs pushed some third party publishers away during that console generation.

12. Mario was originally supposed to be a licensed Popeye game

Before Mario existed, the Donkey Kong arcade game was going to be a licensed title based on Popeye the Sailor Man. Mario would have been Popeye, Donkey Kong would have been Bluto, and the goal of the game would have been to rescue Olive Oyl. When Nintendo was denied permission to use the Popeye characters, the team created an original cast instead, meaning the Super Mario franchise likely never would have existed if that licensing deal had gone through.

11. The Switch was known only by the code name NX for years

Following the failure of the Wii U, Nintendo needed a new console fast, and rumors of a system called the NX spread widely online. The console was publicly announced in 2015 under that code name, and it wasn't until late 2016 that the name Switch was ever said publicly. The code name came from the fact that it was Nintendo's tenth home console, since X is used to represent the number ten.

10. The NES and the Famicom were technically two different consoles

Nintendo released the console in Japan in July 1983 as the Family Computer, commonly known as the Famicom. After its success there, the company redesigned the hardware to look more like a toy and released it in North America in 1985 as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Releasing in North America was a big risk given the industry crash just a couple of years earlier, but the NES succeeded and is one of the main reasons the Western games industry exists today.

9. Kirby's original name was Popopo, and the franchise was almost called Twinkle Popo

The first Kirby game, Kirby's Dream Land for Game Boy in 1992, was originally going to star a pink puffball named Popopo, with the series called Twinkle Popo. According to the stories around its development, programming issues led to Popopo being given a placeholder sprite referred to as Kirby. Nobody on the original team seems to know why that name stuck, and to this day it isn't clear why the placeholder Kirby sprite ended up permanently replacing the original one.

8. The Wii started development under the name Revolution

The GameCube is one of Nintendo's most iconic consoles, but it didn't sell particularly well, and the company struggled through that console generation. The Wii started production under the name Revolution, partly to hype up a return to dominance and partly as a reference to it being the first video game console built primarily around motion controls.

7. Nearly everyone in the industry expected the Wii to flop

Ahead of its 2006 release, there were many accounts from people working on the PS3 and Xbox 360 saying nobody took Nintendo seriously, since it was the era of HD gaming and both Microsoft and Sony were chasing hardcore gamers. When Nintendo revealed a motion controlled system aimed at families and casual players, it was written off by the industry. The Wii ended up outselling the PS3 and 360, selling over 100 million units and restoring Nintendo's reputation as the top name in gaming.

6. The Game Boy Advance SP was the first rechargeable Nintendo console

The original Game Boy required four AA batteries, and the Game Boy Color cut that down to two. It wasn't until the Game Boy Advance SP that Nintendo built a rechargeable battery directly into the hardware, which helped push the system further into the mainstream since players no longer had to keep burning through disposable batteries.

5. Pokemon was originally called Pocket Monsters

Pokemon isn't technically a Nintendo owned property, but since Nintendo publishes the games it made the list. The franchise began with the games Pocket Monsters Red Version and Green Version, and the tagline was shortened to just Pokemon before the games were re-released as Red and Blue. Dropping the word Monster from the box likely helped avoid pushing away parents shopping for their kids back in the 1990s.

4. The GameCube was the first home console with a built in carrying handle

Nintendo was banking on people wanting to take the console to a friend's house, and its compact design made that easy. The GameCube became the first ever home video game console with a carrying handle built into it, which I think was a genuinely smart move given how portable the system already was.

3. The NES Zapper was originally going to be called the Beam Gun

The name Beam Gun was considered boring and also included the word gun, which risked upsetting parents buying a family friendly console. The name was changed to the Zapper, and the accessory became a bestseller.

2. The Nintendo DS was originally designed with two Game Boy cartridge slots

The final DS had one slot for DS games and one for Game Boy games, but the original plan called for two Game Boy Advance slots. Functionally that wouldn't have let players run two games at once, though it might have made carrying cartridges more convenient. The second slot was eventually dropped due to technical limitations and a lack of real usefulness, and the system launched with just the one GBA slot it needed.

1. The GameCube isn't actually shaped like a cube

Despite the name, the GameCube is closer to a rectangular prism, with dimensions of roughly 5.9 inches by 6.3 inches by 4.3 inches. If it were a true cube, all three of those measurements would be identical. Nintendo got close with the design, but the name ultimately misleads everybody about the console's actual shape.

How many of these did you already know, and which one surprised you the most?