24 Facts That Will Change The Way You See Nintendo

Now you're playing with power.

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1. Nintendo began as a playing card company in 1889.

2. At one point, Nintendo tried (and failed) to branch into making ballpoint pens, noodle soup, and baby swings.

3. In real life, Mario's jump would be over 25 feet high.

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4. Bowser has a son named Bowser Jr. in the Mario franchise. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Nintendo classics like Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda, he himself is (somehow?) Bowser Jr.'s mother.

5. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak appeared in the Nintendo Power magazine's top Tetris scores so many times that he was banned to make room for new names. He kept submitting his scores anyway by spelling his name backwards.

6. The Konami code (up up down down left right left right B A start) was originally used to help programmers skip through the game. Now it's a huge part of pop culture.

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7. The GameCube isn't actually a cube. Its dimensions are 5.9 by 4.3 by 6.3 inches.

8. Sony was going to develop a CD add-on for the Super Nintendo. When the deal didn't work out, they went on to create the first PlayStation.

9. Wii Sports is the best-selling Nintendo game ever, even outselling Super Mario Bros. and games in the Pokémon franchise.

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10. The Super Mario Bros. movie was the first movie based on a video game.

11. Tom Hanks was originally cast in the Super Mario Bros. movie, but was dropped when Nintendo decided he wasn't worth the money.

12. Luigi is a pun in Japanese, as "ruiji" means "similar."

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13. The Legend of Zelda was the first console game that allowed you to save your game.

14.. Gunpei Yokoi, an assembly line worker at Nintendo, caught the eye of his boss because of the toys he made in his free time. He later went on to invent the Game and Watch system and its successor, the Game Boy.

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15. The three main characters in Donkey Kong were based on the characters of Popeye the Sailor Man. He wanted to capture the love triangle between a hero, a villain, and a damsel and distress. The villain eventually became Mario.

16. Before Mario had a name, he was known as Jumpman in Donkey Kong. Before that, within Nintendo he was just known as Ossan, which means "middle-aged guy." The name Mario came from Nintendo's Brooklyn factory landlord.

17. After Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., Miyamoto thought about patenting jumping in games.

Nintendo / Anjali Patel / BuzzFeed

18. Nintendo won Emmy awards for "game controller innovation" for its Wii and DS systems.

19. Nintendo revolutionized the gaming industry several times over through controllers that constantly introduced new features to mass markets. The NES controller was the first to have the directional pad on the left, the SNES introduced left and right shoulder bottoms, the Nintendo 64 popularized analog thumb sticks, and the Wii motion control.

20. After receiving complains that "Mario Party" caused blisters by encouraging players to quickly move a grooved joystick, Nintendo agreed to provide $80 million worth of protective gloves to game owners.

Ahmed Ali Akbar

21. The Nintendo store in NYC (occasionally) displays a Game Boy that has been damaged by a bombing in the 1990-91 Gulf War. It’s still totally playable.

22. Miyamoto, the creator of most core Nintendo franchises, based most of the most iconic franchises on his personal experiences. Zelda was designed to be like a "miniature garden," inspired by his boyhood memories of freely exploring the "fields, woods, and caves outside Kyoto."

23. Nintendo owns the rights to a porn parody starring Ron Jeremy named Super Hornio Brothers. Seriously. Mostly so that it never saw the light of day again.

24. Nintendo's current VP of sales is named Doug Bowser. No relation to the fire-breathing Koopa.

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And now a message from our new Vice President of Sales, Doug Bowser. http://t.co/Qb6GYxgRrC

11:30 PM - 20 May 2015