Nintendo was founded in 1889, producing and selling Hanafuda cards to the masses as an alternative to American playing cards which was banned in Japan. After over 135 years of business nearly destroyed by wars, collaboration with Disney, ventures with toys and arcade cabinets, and one after major victory in a court case, Nintendo would make their mark in the video game industry with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System here in America and help bring back the love a gaming after a year of economic depression and stigma due to the Video Game Crash of 1983. Since then Nintendo is easily noticeable and seen as one of the best gaming industries with little to no faults at all, which is why they would like you to forget some of the issues they have had along the way to get here. These are the Top 10 Things Nintendo would like you to forget.
With the latest release of the Switch 2, Nintendo has offered up a lot of promises that surely will be kept to their audiences. That is after all their motif, as with every newer generation console release, Nintendo usually knocks it out of the park, selling at least 20 million to keep up with rival companies like Sony and Microsoft. That is until the Nintendo Wii U, which not only fell short of expectations, both in the eyes of fans and critics, but in terms of sales as well, selling about 13.5 million, one of the worst consoles Nintendo has ever put out. Despite the fact that Nintendo did have such great games like Smash Bros Ultimate, Mario Kart, the debut of Splatoon, and Bayonetta 2, the latter of which is a Wii U exclusive title, it didn’t help that very few 3rd party games were compatible for the Wii U and that some games, you use the screen on the controller to navigate which irritates some players. It was taken off the shelves 5 years after its debut but it felt very unnoticeable, given how PS4 and Xbox X series dominated the console marketing and the rise of mobile app games.
Nintendo, by many, have been viewed as a gaming company, and Nintendo has rolled with the figment for over 40 years, even showing a history to how they first started with a card game called Hanafuda. How one business decision helped change the trajectory of Nintendo and the gambling risk of creating a hardware console and gaming products as well as a well known lawsuit against Universal Studios would bloom into becoming one of the most well known gaming companies in the world. But what they would like to omit at times was the other business adventures that Nintendo took aside from being known for a video game company. Among those adventures was having a Taxi Service in Japan, an instant rice company, but chief among those business practices was actually owning a love hotel business aka a place where you can have intercourse with your partner. It’s heavily odd that Nintendo would go as far as being a part of the adult entertainment business given the family friendly notion Nintendo has today. All were failures, all were swept under the rug, so really, Nintendo would like you to take some time to wipe your memories away and remember the good times with Mario, Link, and Pikachu, but seriously, after mentioning this, you wouldn’t now would you?
Today we live in a free society, for the most part, in terms of gaming. Sure there are tales of stress and unfair policies on certain markets in gaming, but in today's generation, almost anybody can make a game and even make for profit so long they follow the proper procedures in developing a game and marketing it. That’s why we have sites such as Itch_io, Steam, and Kickstarter to help showcase indie game developers today in hopes of being a part of a larger scale of gaming or showcase their talent to be a part of a company today. That wasn’t the case in the late 80’s and the early 90’s, as Nintendo seemingly had a strangle hold of the gaming market following the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo strict guidelines for third party companies to follow, which includes but not limited to buying cartridges and chips through Nintendo’s factory, only releasing a limited amount of games per publisher, and must pass a rigorous checklist for approval in order to be released on the NES. As you might have guessed it, developers and publishers call BS on Nintendo antics, but Nintendo state it was a way to avoid another video game crash and to ensure that the quality is under control over the quantity, despite Nintendo having full fledged on what is and what isn’t allowed. It wasn’t until the release of the Sega Genesis that Nintendo would ease up on their policies but had the Sega not been as aggressive as it was in the early 90’s, Nintendo would supposedly continue with their policies.
What is it about E3 that can cause such memorable moments in such a negative way? Sony has done it with their PS3 presentation. Microsoft would do the same years later with the Xbox One. Yet Nintendo has mostly stayed consistent, especially with Reggie on their side, except for these two terrible moments. In 2010, Nintendo presented motion controls for the latest Legend of Zelda game, Skyward Sword, which was good on paper and executed terribly in practice, especially during the E3 presentation when Shigeru Miyamoto couldn’t even salvage the game’s demo while playing it. Buggy controls and poor responses pretty much opted fans to return to original controlling, but hey, at least it’s a minor misstep towards a game development, not this one. In 2008, they presented Wii Music! A game that allows players to play instruments with their Wii Motes and boy was it very very cringe. Seeing it live on stay was horrendous, but watching a live performance of developers botching their way through the Super Mario Bros. theme was painful to watch. Surprisingly it received mixed reviews so there was something in it, but not this I assume.
Nintendo prides itself on being family first. Although they cater their games to everyone, especially when the ESRB rating system helps Nintendo bring in more Mature games, most of their games focus on family entertainment no matter which console it is. Even their commercials do show that…for the most part. Aside from the Pokémon Commercial and Yoshi’s Island commercial, their commercial of the Micro Game Boy which depicted a mouse going through a maze to get the Micro Game Boy, only the hump it loads over the Game Boy Micro. This displays how bad their motto is of family friendly entertainment. There are plenty of bad Nintendo ads but this made it to our screens and internet folks. And it’s a mouse doing love making...with a handheld console. A handheld console you once held in your hands. Disgusting.
So the mouse commercial was a misstep, describing that Nintendo's newest handheld console can be so addictive that you want to whip it out and stick it up the handheld device till you are satisfied! But lo and behold, there is more terrible advertising that Nintendo has done. Including the terrible “You can’t beat us” commercial of terrifying 3D model characters in distorted voices. But it goes far and beyond bizarre and bad when Nintendo try to advertise on gaming magazines such as the colored tones sticking out of someone’s skin, calling Earthbound the most stinkiest game in their advertisement, and telling gamers to “Be One” with a large photo of a Hot Dog while displaying game images under it. “Be One?” Be a…Hot Dog? And the Mental Health Institute with Wario Ware asking “Who are you?” But hey, Nintendo do like to get raunchy with their advertisement of the Game Boy Pocket of someone gaming while ignoring a woman tied to the bed in lingerie, or having a ferret going for someone's dick. Nintendo, why do you have to be so weird?
It has happened to anyone, as many third party publishers and developers would have iconic characters in their companies, with the likes of Ryu in Street Fighter, Lara Croft in Core Dynamics now Square Enix, or a Moogle in Final Fantasy. However, this is a major consistency with Nintendo as they are not only able to have licensing rights to publish some third party games, but would easily lose them to competitors over the years. Games like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear were Nintendo exclusive until Sony picked them up due to the limitation the N64 had compared to the PS1 and didn’t have a major fighting game in their arsenal aside from Mortal Kombat so they had to create Smash Bros instead. Banjo Kazooie, Conker, and Perfect Dark were among the top best games Nintendo had at that time but would eventually be bought out by Microsoft when they acquired Rare. Although Nintendo still had their iconic characters, like Mario, Link, and Pikachu, it feels very troubling that at one point Nintendo was the must have console to play some of the best series any companies have and suddenly wipe away in an instant.
The Nintendo Switch was not a bad console at all. The idea of taking a video game console with you wherever you go was their goal, and you could argue Nintendo was trying to do that with the Nintendo Wii U. Being able to enjoy gaming on a portable device and even having extra controllers was a great choice and we the fans bought in on what Nintendo had to offer. However, there were some missteps that sadly hurt the Switch’s reputation. Reports of Joy-con’s performance really caused tension as controllers would automatically move without player’s participation and prices for replacing new joy-cons is absurd. Even better quality joy-cons would get struck by Nintendo’s lawsuit department because Nintendo felt it’s capitalizing on their product rather than allowing others to provide something that can help the experience. The biggest coupe de gras was the Switch console itself as a lack of outlet means that you need the charging port with you at all times if you need to recharge the Switch and poor graphics and memory makes various third party games feel like they belong in the Fifth or Sixth Generation of Consoles rather than modern. Nintendo has promised a lot with their latest Switch 2 console but only time would tell if it can keep up with the demands today.
Why can’t Nintendo allow fans to create videos of their games or content? It’s somewhat free, you don’t necessarily need them to be under contract, and in a way could make those want to buy the game as well with just a few minutes of gameplay content. Well Nintendo has a habit of going against those who they deemed a hinder to their products, with their lawsuit against Blockbuster for renting out games instead of selling them, third party companies for creating functional controls that’s not under their brand, and in this case Content Creators for creating videos using the likeness of Nintendo games or characters without their consent. The reason for said lawsuits center around the fear that if people would watch platforms like YouTube or Twitch that people would not be buying games at all and instead can watch it for free instead which is mind bobbling given how ridiculous it is that content creators were supposed to encourage gamers to go out and play the game instead.
In the 80’s, Nintendo slowly became a prominent name in the electronic business thanks to the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. They have been placed on a high pedestal like Sony. So when reports came in that Nintendo is looking to collaborate with Sony in creating a new gaming console, one that would hold the quality, entertainment, and strength that both Nintendo and Sony possess, the hype was on an all time high. The thought of Nintendo producing games with Sony’s technology was massive, especially when considering that discs were slowly becoming a big deal into the mid 90’s. Well unfortunately Nintendo has gotten cold feet and backed out of the deal. Reports suggest that Nintendo didn’t want to negotiate with Sony in terms of management and quality assurance, as well as financial issues, and instead decided to go with Samsung instead during a Consumer's Electronic Show event, which shocked the world and Sony in a wrong way. Sega made an effort to swoop in for the deal but nothing came of it between Sega and Sony, and it seemed that the mega console that many were anticipating would no longer exist. Instead of backing out of the gaming industry, Ken Kutaragi pushed forward with his project and managed to convince the executives at Sony to help create their own video game console with no restrictions from other companies and thus the Sony PlayStation was born. It took over as the best gaming console in the world over Nintendo and Sega, and sold 100,000 units on launch. If only Nintendo didn’t back out of the deal, we wouldn’t have Sony as the third major gaming company today. If only…
10. Nintendo Wii U Performance
With the latest release of the Switch 2, Nintendo has offered up a lot of promises that surely will be kept to their audiences. That is after all their motif, as with every newer generation console release, Nintendo usually knocks it out of the park, selling at least 20 million to keep up with rival companies like Sony and Microsoft. That is until the Nintendo Wii U, which not only fell short of expectations, both in the eyes of fans and critics, but in terms of sales as well, selling about 13.5 million, one of the worst consoles Nintendo has ever put out. Despite the fact that Nintendo did have such great games like Smash Bros Ultimate, Mario Kart, the debut of Splatoon, and Bayonetta 2, the latter of which is a Wii U exclusive title, it didn’t help that very few 3rd party games were compatible for the Wii U and that some games, you use the screen on the controller to navigate which irritates some players. It was taken off the shelves 5 years after its debut but it felt very unnoticeable, given how PS4 and Xbox X series dominated the console marketing and the rise of mobile app games.
9. Once ran a love hotel business
Nintendo, by many, have been viewed as a gaming company, and Nintendo has rolled with the figment for over 40 years, even showing a history to how they first started with a card game called Hanafuda. How one business decision helped change the trajectory of Nintendo and the gambling risk of creating a hardware console and gaming products as well as a well known lawsuit against Universal Studios would bloom into becoming one of the most well known gaming companies in the world. But what they would like to omit at times was the other business adventures that Nintendo took aside from being known for a video game company. Among those adventures was having a Taxi Service in Japan, an instant rice company, but chief among those business practices was actually owning a love hotel business aka a place where you can have intercourse with your partner. It’s heavily odd that Nintendo would go as far as being a part of the adult entertainment business given the family friendly notion Nintendo has today. All were failures, all were swept under the rug, so really, Nintendo would like you to take some time to wipe your memories away and remember the good times with Mario, Link, and Pikachu, but seriously, after mentioning this, you wouldn’t now would you?
8. Having a stranglehold of the market in the 80’s - 90’s
Today we live in a free society, for the most part, in terms of gaming. Sure there are tales of stress and unfair policies on certain markets in gaming, but in today's generation, almost anybody can make a game and even make for profit so long they follow the proper procedures in developing a game and marketing it. That’s why we have sites such as Itch_io, Steam, and Kickstarter to help showcase indie game developers today in hopes of being a part of a larger scale of gaming or showcase their talent to be a part of a company today. That wasn’t the case in the late 80’s and the early 90’s, as Nintendo seemingly had a strangle hold of the gaming market following the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo strict guidelines for third party companies to follow, which includes but not limited to buying cartridges and chips through Nintendo’s factory, only releasing a limited amount of games per publisher, and must pass a rigorous checklist for approval in order to be released on the NES. As you might have guessed it, developers and publishers call BS on Nintendo antics, but Nintendo state it was a way to avoid another video game crash and to ensure that the quality is under control over the quantity, despite Nintendo having full fledged on what is and what isn’t allowed. It wasn’t until the release of the Sega Genesis that Nintendo would ease up on their policies but had the Sega not been as aggressive as it was in the early 90’s, Nintendo would supposedly continue with their policies.
7. E3 Performance
What is it about E3 that can cause such memorable moments in such a negative way? Sony has done it with their PS3 presentation. Microsoft would do the same years later with the Xbox One. Yet Nintendo has mostly stayed consistent, especially with Reggie on their side, except for these two terrible moments. In 2010, Nintendo presented motion controls for the latest Legend of Zelda game, Skyward Sword, which was good on paper and executed terribly in practice, especially during the E3 presentation when Shigeru Miyamoto couldn’t even salvage the game’s demo while playing it. Buggy controls and poor responses pretty much opted fans to return to original controlling, but hey, at least it’s a minor misstep towards a game development, not this one. In 2008, they presented Wii Music! A game that allows players to play instruments with their Wii Motes and boy was it very very cringe. Seeing it live on stay was horrendous, but watching a live performance of developers botching their way through the Super Mario Bros. theme was painful to watch. Surprisingly it received mixed reviews so there was something in it, but not this I assume.
6. The Micro Game Boy Commercial
Nintendo prides itself on being family first. Although they cater their games to everyone, especially when the ESRB rating system helps Nintendo bring in more Mature games, most of their games focus on family entertainment no matter which console it is. Even their commercials do show that…for the most part. Aside from the Pokémon Commercial and Yoshi’s Island commercial, their commercial of the Micro Game Boy which depicted a mouse going through a maze to get the Micro Game Boy, only the hump it loads over the Game Boy Micro. This displays how bad their motto is of family friendly entertainment. There are plenty of bad Nintendo ads but this made it to our screens and internet folks. And it’s a mouse doing love making...with a handheld console. A handheld console you once held in your hands. Disgusting.
5. Their other terrible ads!
So the mouse commercial was a misstep, describing that Nintendo's newest handheld console can be so addictive that you want to whip it out and stick it up the handheld device till you are satisfied! But lo and behold, there is more terrible advertising that Nintendo has done. Including the terrible “You can’t beat us” commercial of terrifying 3D model characters in distorted voices. But it goes far and beyond bizarre and bad when Nintendo try to advertise on gaming magazines such as the colored tones sticking out of someone’s skin, calling Earthbound the most stinkiest game in their advertisement, and telling gamers to “Be One” with a large photo of a Hot Dog while displaying game images under it. “Be One?” Be a…Hot Dog? And the Mental Health Institute with Wario Ware asking “Who are you?” But hey, Nintendo do like to get raunchy with their advertisement of the Game Boy Pocket of someone gaming while ignoring a woman tied to the bed in lingerie, or having a ferret going for someone's dick. Nintendo, why do you have to be so weird?
4. Letting go some of the biggest third party characters and companies
It has happened to anyone, as many third party publishers and developers would have iconic characters in their companies, with the likes of Ryu in Street Fighter, Lara Croft in Core Dynamics now Square Enix, or a Moogle in Final Fantasy. However, this is a major consistency with Nintendo as they are not only able to have licensing rights to publish some third party games, but would easily lose them to competitors over the years. Games like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear were Nintendo exclusive until Sony picked them up due to the limitation the N64 had compared to the PS1 and didn’t have a major fighting game in their arsenal aside from Mortal Kombat so they had to create Smash Bros instead. Banjo Kazooie, Conker, and Perfect Dark were among the top best games Nintendo had at that time but would eventually be bought out by Microsoft when they acquired Rare. Although Nintendo still had their iconic characters, like Mario, Link, and Pikachu, it feels very troubling that at one point Nintendo was the must have console to play some of the best series any companies have and suddenly wipe away in an instant.
3. The Nintendo Switch underperformance on certain games
The Nintendo Switch was not a bad console at all. The idea of taking a video game console with you wherever you go was their goal, and you could argue Nintendo was trying to do that with the Nintendo Wii U. Being able to enjoy gaming on a portable device and even having extra controllers was a great choice and we the fans bought in on what Nintendo had to offer. However, there were some missteps that sadly hurt the Switch’s reputation. Reports of Joy-con’s performance really caused tension as controllers would automatically move without player’s participation and prices for replacing new joy-cons is absurd. Even better quality joy-cons would get struck by Nintendo’s lawsuit department because Nintendo felt it’s capitalizing on their product rather than allowing others to provide something that can help the experience. The biggest coupe de gras was the Switch console itself as a lack of outlet means that you need the charging port with you at all times if you need to recharge the Switch and poor graphics and memory makes various third party games feel like they belong in the Fifth or Sixth Generation of Consoles rather than modern. Nintendo has promised a lot with their latest Switch 2 console but only time would tell if it can keep up with the demands today.
2. Lawsuit on Content Creators
Why can’t Nintendo allow fans to create videos of their games or content? It’s somewhat free, you don’t necessarily need them to be under contract, and in a way could make those want to buy the game as well with just a few minutes of gameplay content. Well Nintendo has a habit of going against those who they deemed a hinder to their products, with their lawsuit against Blockbuster for renting out games instead of selling them, third party companies for creating functional controls that’s not under their brand, and in this case Content Creators for creating videos using the likeness of Nintendo games or characters without their consent. The reason for said lawsuits center around the fear that if people would watch platforms like YouTube or Twitch that people would not be buying games at all and instead can watch it for free instead which is mind bobbling given how ridiculous it is that content creators were supposed to encourage gamers to go out and play the game instead.
1. Inadvertently created the Sony PlayStation
In the 80’s, Nintendo slowly became a prominent name in the electronic business thanks to the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. They have been placed on a high pedestal like Sony. So when reports came in that Nintendo is looking to collaborate with Sony in creating a new gaming console, one that would hold the quality, entertainment, and strength that both Nintendo and Sony possess, the hype was on an all time high. The thought of Nintendo producing games with Sony’s technology was massive, especially when considering that discs were slowly becoming a big deal into the mid 90’s. Well unfortunately Nintendo has gotten cold feet and backed out of the deal. Reports suggest that Nintendo didn’t want to negotiate with Sony in terms of management and quality assurance, as well as financial issues, and instead decided to go with Samsung instead during a Consumer's Electronic Show event, which shocked the world and Sony in a wrong way. Sega made an effort to swoop in for the deal but nothing came of it between Sega and Sony, and it seemed that the mega console that many were anticipating would no longer exist. Instead of backing out of the gaming industry, Ken Kutaragi pushed forward with his project and managed to convince the executives at Sony to help create their own video game console with no restrictions from other companies and thus the Sony PlayStation was born. It took over as the best gaming console in the world over Nintendo and Sega, and sold 100,000 units on launch. If only Nintendo didn’t back out of the deal, we wouldn’t have Sony as the third major gaming company today. If only…
