Company: Nintendo

While Nintendo's name is often translated as "leave luck to heaven," the veracity of this is dubious at best, owed in part to a lack of historical documentation and the wide range of possible readings for the name as written in Kanji. Among other things, "Nintendo" can also be interpreted as the more mundane "the temple of free hanafuda," referring to the company's initial purpose as a playing card manufacturer. Late president Hiroshi Yamauchi, who was descended from company founder Fusajiro Yamauchi, admitted that he didn't know what "Nintendo" actually meant, and that "leave luck to heaven" was only accepted by the company because it seemed plausible.

According to Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo attempted to develop an erotic game called Fascination in the 1970's. Intended for the Laser Clay Shooting System, which combined a light gun with pre-recorded 16mm film clips, the game was designed as an adult-oriented sister title to 1974's Wild Gunman, where the goal was to shoot a woman's clothes off in response to cues in the footage; a successful gameplay session would end with the woman being left completely nude. Prototypes were created using footage of a hired model, but according to Yokoi, the game was ultimately shelved due to the machinery in the cabinets being infeasibly fragile and complex compared to Wild Gunman.

SimCopter 64 was a game announced by Maxis at E3 1997 which was meant to be a complimentary game to the later announced SimCity 64. It underwent a tumultuous development cycle that saw it change from a simple rescue mission game into something entirely different. There were also conflicting reports from both Nintendo and Maxis about what console it would be releasing on and the level of connectivity it would share with its counterpart SimCity 64. All of these issues ultimately ended in it fading out of the public eye and being silently cancelled as no more updates were given leading up to its supposed release window.

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, has official licensing rights to various Nintendo IP including Animal Crossing and Super 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.

An ad for the original Donkey Kong Game & Watch named the damsel in distress "Louise" instead of Pauline. This was also the first Nintendo product to utilize the cross-directional control system known as the "D-Pad".

Shortly before Shigeru Miyamoto's GDC 2007 keynote was about to start, Nintendo of America COO Reggie Fils-Aime was taking the time to sign autographs and pose for pictures, when one gamer shouted from the crown, "Kick his ass and take his name!". Reggie asked, "Who?" - to the reply of "Phil Harrison, front row!"

Phil Harrison, a representative director of Sony at the time, was seated in the center of the front row in the crowd. Reggie Fils-Aime smiled and responded with "Some would say we've already done that," referring to the Wii outselling the PlayStation 3.

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.