65 Facts About Nintendo Entertainment

1.

Nintendo Entertainment has multiple subsidiaries in Japan and abroad, in addition to business partners such as The Pokemon Company and HAL Laboratory.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,916
2.

Nintendo Entertainment was founded as Nintendo Entertainment Karuta on 23 September 1889 by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi in Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan, to produce and distribute, a type of traditional Japanese playing card.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,917
3.

Nintendo Entertainment subsisted and, in 1907, entered into an agreement with Nihon Senbai—later known as the Japan Tobacco—to market its cards to various cigarette stores throughout the country.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,918
4.

In 1959, Nintendo Entertainment contracted with Walt Disney to incorporate his company's animated characters into the cards.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,919
5.

Nintendo Entertainment developed a distribution system that allowed it to offer its products in toy stores.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,920
6.

When Disney card sales began to decline, Nintendo Entertainment realized that it had no real alternative to alleviate the situation.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,921
7.

Nintendo Entertainment partnered with Magnavox to provide a light gun controller based on the Beam Gun design for the company's new home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, in 1971.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,922
8.

In 1974, Nintendo Entertainment released Wild Gunman, a skeet shooting arcade simulation consisting of a 16 mm image projector with a sensor that detects a beam from the player's light gun.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,923
9.

Two key events in Nintendo Entertainment's history occurred in 1979: its American subsidiary was opened in New York City, and a new department focused on arcade game development was created.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,924
10.

Nintendo Entertainment entered the arcade video game market with Sheriff and Radar Scope, released in Japan in 1979 and 1980 respectively.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,925
11.

In 1983, Nintendo Entertainment opened a new production facility in Uji and was listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,926
12.

Nintendo Entertainment implemented a lockout chip in the Game Paks for control on its third party library to avoid the market saturation that had occurred in the United States.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,927
13.

Around this time, Nintendo Entertainment entered an agreement with Sony to develop the Super Famicom CD-ROM Adapter, a peripheral for the upcoming Super Famicom capable of playing CD-ROMs.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,928
14.

In 1992, Nintendo Entertainment acquired a majority stake in the Seattle Mariners baseball team, and sold most of its shares in 2016.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,929
15.

Nintendo Entertainment ceased manufacturing arcade games and systems in September 1992.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,930
16.

The Nintendo Entertainment 64 was marketed as one of the first consoles to be designed with 64-bit architecture.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,931
17.

In 1995, Nintendo Entertainment released the Virtual Boy, a console designed by Gunpei Yokoi with stereoscopic graphics.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,932
18.

In 1997, Nintendo Entertainment released the Rumble Pak, a plug-in device that connects to the Nintendo Entertainment 64 controller and produces a vibration during certain moments of a game.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,933
19.

In May 1999, with the advent of the PlayStation 2, Nintendo Entertainment entered an agreement with IBM and Panasonic to develop the 128-bit Gekko processor and the DVD drive to be used in Nintendo Entertainment's next home console.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,934
20.

In 2001, two new Nintendo Entertainment consoles were introduced: the Game Boy Advance, which was designed by Gwenael Nicolas with stylistic departure from its predecessors, and the GameCube.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,935
21.

Nintendo Entertainment collaborated with Sega and Namco to develop Triforce, an arcade board to facilitate the conversion of arcade titles to the GameCube.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,936
22.

In 2003, Nintendo Entertainment released the Game Boy Advance SP, an improved version of the Game Boy Advance with a foldable case, an illuminated display, and a rechargeable battery.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,937
23.

Nintendo Entertainment released the Game Boy Player, a peripheral that allows Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games to be played on the GameCube.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,938
24.

Later that year, Nintendo Entertainment released the Nintendo Entertainment DS, which featured such innovations as dual screens – one of which being a touchscreen – and wireless connectivity for multiplayer play.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,939
25.

In 2005, Nintendo Entertainment released the Game Boy Micro, the last system in the Game Boy line.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,940
26.

Nintendo Entertainment considered the relative failure of the GameCube, and instead opted to take a "blue ocean strategy" by developing a reduced performance console in contrast to the high-performance consoles of Sony and Microsoft to avoid directly competiting with them.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,941
27.

In 2010, Nintendo Entertainment celebrated the 25th anniversary of Mario's debut appearance, for which certain allusive products were put on sale.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,942
28.

In 2011, Nintendo Entertainment celebrated the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda with the orchestra concert tour The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses and the video game The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,943
29.

In January 2015, Nintendo Entertainment ceased operations in the Brazilian market due in part to high import duties.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,944
30.

Nintendo Entertainment reached an agreement with NC Games for Nintendo Entertainment's products to resume distribution in Brazil by 2017, and by September 2020, the Switch was released in Brazil.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,945
31.

Financial losses caused by the Wii U, along with Sony's intention to release its video games to other platforms such as smart TVs, motivated Nintendo Entertainment to rethink its strategy concerning the production and distribution of its properties.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,946
32.

Nintendo Entertainment announced plans in June 2021 to convert its former Uji Ogura plant, where it had previously made playing and hanafuda cards, into a museum for the company to be completed by the 2023 fiscal year.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,947
33.

In July 2022, Nintendo Entertainment announced the acquisition of Dynamo Pictures, a Japanese CG production company who mainly works on game and anime, including the Pikmin shorts released by Nintendo Entertainment in the 2010s.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,948
34.

Nintendo Entertainment announced their intent to acquire Dynamo Pictures and change its name to Nintendo Entertainment Pictures on July 14,2022, citing the focus of the company to strengthen the planning and production structure of visual content.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,949
35.

Since the launch of the Color TV-Game in 1977, Nintendo Entertainment has produced and distributed home, handheld, dedicated and hybrid consoles.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,950
36.

Nintendo Entertainment promoted its Nintendo DS handheld with the tagline "Touching is Good".

FactSnippet No. 1,836,951
37.

The Nintendo Entertainment Switch uses the slogan "Switch and Play" in North America, and "Play anywhere, anytime, with anyone" elsewhere.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,952
38.

Since 2006, in conjunction with the launch of the Wii, Nintendo Entertainment changed its logo to a gray variant that lacks a colored background inside the wordmark, making it transparent.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,953
39.

Nintendo Entertainment established The Pokemon Company alongside Creatures and Game Freak to manage the Pokemon brand.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,954
40.

Bergsala were the only non-Nintendo Entertainment owned distributor of Nintendo Entertainment's products, until 2019 when Tor Gaming gained distribution rights in Israel.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,955
41.

Nintendo Entertainment has partnered with Tencent to release Nintendo Entertainment products in China, following the lifting of the country's console ban in 2015.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,956
42.

Nintendo Entertainment founded its North American subsidiary in 1980 as Nintendo Entertainment of America.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,957
43.

Nintendo Entertainment panicked when the game failed in the fickle market upon its arrival from its four-month boat ride from Japan.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,958
44.

Nintendo Entertainment Treehouse is NoA's localization team, composed of around 80 staff who are responsible for translating text from Japanese to English, creating videos and marketing plans, and quality assurance.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,959
45.

Many years, Nintendo Entertainment had a policy of strict content guidelines for video games published on its consoles.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,960
46.

Nintendo Entertainment allowed the Super NES version of Mortal Kombat II to ship uncensored the following year with a content warning on the packaging.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,961
47.

Video game ratings systems were introduced with the Entertainment Software Rating Board of 1994 and the Pan European Game Information of 2003, and Nintendo discontinued most of its censorship policies in favor of consumers making their own choices.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,962
48.

Nintendo Entertainment has generally been proactive to assure its intellectual property in both hardware and software is protected.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,963
49.

Nintendo Entertainment did seek legal action to try to stop release of these unauthorized clones, but estimated they still lost in potential sales to these clones.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,964
50.

Nintendo Entertainment had witnessed the events of a flooded game market that occurred in the United states in the early 1980s that led to the 1983 video game crash, and with the Famicom had taken business steps, such as controlling the cartridge production process, to prevent a similar flood of video game clones.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,965
51.

Nintendo Entertainment took to creating its "Nintendo Entertainment Seal of Quality" stamped on the games it made to dissuade consumers from purchasing these bootlegs, and as it prepared the Famicom for entry to Western regions as the NES, incorporated a lock-out system that only allowed authorized game cartridges they manufactured to be playable on the system.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,966
52.

Nintendo Entertainment has used emulation by itself or licensed from third parties to provide means to re-release games from their older platforms on newer systems, with Virtual Console, which re-released classic games as downloadable titles, the NES and Super NES library for Nintendo Entertainment Switch Online subscribers, and with dedicated consoles like the NES and Super NES Classic Editions.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,967
53.

However, Nintendo Entertainment has taken a hard stance against unlicensed emulation of its video games and consoles, stating that it is the single largest threat to the intellectual property rights of video game developers.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,968
54.

Nintendo Entertainment has taken legal action against those that made modchips for its hardware; notably, in 2020 and 2021, Nintendo took action against Team Xecuter which had been making modchips for Nintendo's consoles since 2013, after members of that team were arrested by the United States Department of Justice.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,969
55.

Nintendo Entertainment had taken issue with the tournament using emulated versions of Super Smash Bros.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,970
56.

Fangames that reuse or recreate Nintendo Entertainment assets have been targeted by Nintendo Entertainment typically through cease and desist letters or DMCA-based takedown to shut down these projects.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,971
57.

In recent years, Nintendo Entertainment has taken legal action against sites that knowingly distribute ROM images of its games.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,972
58.

On 19 July 2018, Nintendo Entertainment sued Jacob Mathias, the owner of distribution websites LoveROMs and LoveRetro, for "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo Entertainment's intellectual property rights".

FactSnippet No. 1,836,973
59.

Nintendo Entertainment settled with Mathias in November 2018 for more than along with relinquishing all ROM images in their ownership.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,974
60.

Nintendo Entertainment won a separate suit against RomUniverse in May 2021, which offered infringing copies of Nintendo Entertainment DS and Switch games in addition to ROM images.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,975
61.

Nintendo Entertainment successfully won a suit in the United Kingdom in September 2019 to force the major Internet service providers in the country to block access to sites that offered copyright-infringing copies of Switch software or hacks for the Nintendo Entertainment Switch to run unauthorized software.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,976
62.

Nintendo Entertainment sought enforcement action against a hacker that for several years had infiltrated Nintendo Entertainment's internal database by various means including phishing to obtain plans for games and hardware for upcoming shows like E3.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,977
63.

The leak may have been related to BroadOn, a company that Nintendo Entertainment had contracted to help with the Wii's design, or to Zammis Clark, a Malwarebytes employee and hacker who pleaded guilty to infiltrating Microsoft's and Nintendo Entertainment's servers between March and May 2018.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,978
64.

In 1992, Nintendo teamed with the Starlight Children's Foundation to build Starlight Fun Center mobile entertainment units and install them in hospitals.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,979
65.

Nintendo Entertainment has consistently been ranked last in Greenpeace's "Guide to Greener Electronics" due to Nintendo Entertainment's failure to publish information.

FactSnippet No. 1,836,980