Company: Nintendo

In 2020, hackers Gary Bowser and Max "MAXiMiLiEN" Louarn were arrested and extradited to the United States for money laundering and selling products meant to crack the Nintendo Switch's copy protection to run pirated copies of games. The two were members of Team Xecuter, a hacking group which specialized in similar measures for a large number of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft consoles. In 2021, Bowser pled guilty on conspiracy and trafficking charges and was sentenced to 40 months in prison; Nintendo later filed a separate civil suit against him, which together with the prison sentence left him $14.5 million in debt. The company's legal department claimed during the court case that the unusually severe punishments were intended to send a chilling effect through the piracy world, intimidating would-be hackers by using Bowser's punishment as an example.

Following the case, multiple news outlets noted the irony of Gary Bowser's last name, which is shared with Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser and Mario series antagonist Bowser.

According to Activision Blizzard's former CEO Bobby Kotick in an interview on the podcast "Grit", the American conglomerate holdings company Berkshire Hathaway was at one point interested in buying Nintendo, or at least exploring the idea of it. Former vice chairman Charlie Munger had mentioned this to him during a period in the early 2010's when French investment company Vivendi was forced to sell its stake in Activision Blizzard, as Berkshire Hathaway was one of the potential buyers (in the end, they would buy themselves back from Vivendi and go independent). Kotick claimed that Munger didn't like the business of video games, feeling that they were "a step removed from gambling" and that Kotick was "preying off people's addictions", but he saw financial value in Activision Blizzard and Nintendo as companies:


In the end, Munger never went through with the idea, and Berkshire Hathaway has not shown any interest or intent to buy a video game company since.

The first official crossover between a Nintendo property and a Sega property is often assumed to be either Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. While these are indeed the first Nintendo-Sega crossovers within the gaming medium, there have been instances prior of crossovers in supplementary marketing material:

• A 1994 advert made by DIC for animation industry insiders showing their global reach through the Panda Club and Dragon Club TV blocks in China shows Sonic The Hedgehog waving through a TV screen while Mario pats him on the back, joined by Madeline from the Madeline book series and Billy Lee as seen in the cartoon adaptation of Double Dragon.
• The infamous Fight for the FoxBox promotional film made by 4Kids Entertainment in 2003, which utilizes existing anime and cartoon clips to make a new crossover story, shows Dr. Eggman and King Dedede as allies alongside Dial-bolic from Ultimate MUSCLE, Dr. K from Cubix: Robots for Everyone, and Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles working for Wayne from The Cramp Twins in an attempt to shut down the titular television channel. Although the villains do interact in this half-hour film, the heroes mostly do not, with Kirby and Sonic never sharing screen time in particular.

This is, of course, discounting instances of unauthorised parodies and mockery at the height of the console wars.

Monolith Soft was originally owned by Namco, but their relationship took a negative turn after Masaya Nakamura stepped down as president of Namco in 2002, three years prior to the company's merger with Bandai. As the company underwent changes, Monolith Soft felt that they were being given less creative freedom due to the newly-created Bandai Namco being less willing to take creative risks. They received consultation from Nintendo executive director Shinji Hatano, who advised them to continue making innovative projects. This inspired Monolith Soft to break away from Bandai Namco in favor of becoming a Nintendo subsidiary: Monolith Soft was allowed creative freedom in exchange for developing software exclusively for Nintendo platforms.

Initially, Nintendo had acquired an 80% share of the company, while Bandai Namco retained 16% of the company and remained as a development partner in part to strengthen their relationship with Nintendo. The remaining 4% was divided between the company's founders: Tetsuya Takahashi, Hirohide Sugiura, and Yasuyuki Honne. However, by April 2011, Nintendo had acquired the remaining 400 shares from Bandai Namco, granting them 96% ownership of Monolith Soft. The acquisition as a whole was notable for contrasting Nintendo's previous approach of not taking part in mergers and acquisitions of other companies. In a statement on the matter, former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated:


In December 2024, Nintendo purchased the remaining shares from the company's founders, fully acquiring Monolith Soft.

The NJS-3D1 was a PC flight stick made by Laral Group LLC - unusually, the flight stick bears the name and official quality seal of Nintendo on its packaging, along with a Nintendo 64 logo on the controller itself, despite not being compatible with any of Nintendo's hardware. The controller was made in a short-lived deal to manufacture PC accessories with Nintendo branding, with the only other product to come out of the line being a set of headphones.

At Spaceworld 2000 during the unveiling of the GameCube, there were five models that came from backstage each one holding a uniquely colored GameCube, the hot pink color never seeing an official release. Each GameCube featured a small window cut into the jewel (black circular disk atop the GameCube) allowing for the player to see the disk and disk tray. These prototypes do not actually function as they were made just to be shown at Spaceworld 2000.

Lexibook, a company infamous for low-quality unlicensed NES-based consoles (or "Famiclones") featuring plagiarized content from a variety of sources including Nintendo games, entered an official agreement with Nintendo in 2020 to license various Nintendo IPs including Animal Crossing, The Legend of Zelda, and Mario.

Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé was approached by rapper Kanye West with an idea of a video game, later to be known as "Only One", which was based on his late mother, Donda West, where players have to "guide his mother to the gates of Heaven by holding her to the light." Fils-Aimé politely declined his offer due to the amount of projects that were currently in development within the company at the time.

According to a later article by Nintendo Everything, West attempted to pitch his game idea to Shigeru Miyamoto as well, showing him a prototype for Only One during E3 2015. Miyamoto described the game as "very interesting" and "very moving," voicing his approval for the idea, but ultimately didn't go through with it, likely due to Nintendo's glut of prior commitments.

Revealed in concept art by former Retro Studios employee Sammy Hall, Retro Studios actually worked on two major projects for Nintendo using two of their biggest IPs before Nintendo cancelled them for unknown reasons.

One of them was a project in the Mario series centered around the supporting character Boo. Little is known about the project outside of the Concept art, but hints released with the concept art tease that it would have been released for one of Nintendo's handhelds (such as the DS) as well as there being things in the game referred to as "possession powers" and "Broomies".

The other game, rumored to be centered around the character of Sheik from The Legend of Zelda series, was more elaborate. Hints leaked by Hall and released with the concept art suggest that it would of been about, and centered around, the origin of the Master Sword in the Bad Timeline and would feature "the last Sheik" as it's main character. The game would have also seen the Dark Gerudo tribe engaging in their decade-long birth to Ganon. The project was describe as an "Action/RPG".

According to Shigeru Miyamoto in a Keynote speech at the 2018 Computer Entertainment Developers Conference, the reason he and Nintendo never created an MMORPG game (and probably never will) is because he personally finds it boring and tiring to have to handle a game that needs constant updates and attention for an extremely large amount of time and would thus rather create a great number of unique games constantly over the same timespan.

Nintendo's First Gaming Console was a Pong Console "Color TV-Game 6". It was only released in Japan in 1977. Nintendo made a update a few years later "Color TV-Game 15" with 15 Games and detachable controllers.

Nintendo prohibits Shigeru Miyamoto from either walking or biking to work, asking him to drive instead. This is because he's become an invaluable asset to the company and they fear he might get hit by a motorist if he commutes to work outside the safety of a vehicle.

Nintendo once attempted to buy the exclusive production rights to the Harry Potter franchise. J.K. Rowling turned it down in favor of several other proposals by media giants with greater resources, such as Disney and Universal. Whereas Nintendo was only able to offer video game adaptations of the books, these larger companies had the ability to adapt the franchise for television and film, as well as gaming.

In the end, Rowling sold the rights to Warner Bros., who would later contract Electronic Arts to create the video game adaptations of the Harry Potter film series.

At E3 2015, Nintendo's press conference featured puppet versions of Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Reggie Fils-Aime between announcements; these puppets were created by the Jim Henson Company, the same studio known for producing The Muppets and Sesame Street as well as the original Yoda puppet in Star Wars.

Nintendo had filed a patent for a mobile gaming phone, though the concept was never used. The patent was filed on November 27, 2001, however it wasn't published until June 27, 2006.

Nintendo's original headquarters are located in the territory of the Aizukotetsukai, one of Japan's oldest and most powerful Yakuza groups, and their hanafuda cards were primarily used in Yakuza-owned gambling dens.

In 1988, the Ralston Cereal Company released a Nintendo based cereal called "Nintendo Cereal System." It had two different types of cereal in it, one based on Super Mario Bros, tasting fruity, and one based on the original Legend of Zelda, tasting like berry. It was discontinued a year later.

On average, Nintendo has released a new console every 5-6 years.

Nintendo started out as a card company under the name Nintendo Koppai. They made Hanafuda cards when they started becoming popular. This lasted from 1889-1928. Nintendo continues to manufacture cards with Nintendo themes on the Nintendo web site in Japan.

Nintendo used to be the majority owner of the Major League Baseball team "the Seattle Mariners" since 1992, but sold most of their shares in the team in August 2016, currently retaining 10% ownership.