"Suck my little yellow balls Mr Ballmer" - Hiroshi Yamauchi

DISCLAIMER: The quote was not made by Hiroshi Yamauchi, it came from a fake Wired article from 2005. Find out more here.



After learning that Americans don't understand the concepts of loyalty or honor and rather think that offering bucket loads of money can get you anywhere Hiroshi Yamauchi (then Nintendo President) put it plainly. He stood up and said it, "Suck my little yellow balls Mr Ballmer" in English [source: February 2005 Issue of Wired Magazine]. Perhaps he stayed up all night revising it to know exactly how to say it. Now you know why Microsoft never bought out Nintendo when entering the console market.

The guy was (is) crazy, his upbringing is ample proof, spoiled little bugger from the start (check his Wiki to see), he became president of the company by default. Used to having his own way he literally said such things as "[People who play RPGs are] depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games." out of spite when Square dumped Nintendo for Sony.

Most people believe that Nintendo started off as a taxi company and went onto the 'love hotel' industry however that's false. Hiroshi actually headed up these two businesses before he was made president of Nintendo. Nintendo up until that time was a trading card company and initially remained as such under his control.

He went nuts (more so than usual) when given control of the company firing off his own relatives (under his Grandfathers permission) so that he could run the company with no challenges. He was the first and last stop for approval making before a product went into market. That isn't to say he was a terrible decision maker or made bad judgements, his instincts tended to be pretty good. After all he did recognize Miyamoto's talents and had Donkey Kong released in the US to amazing success.

Another one of his rather specific instincts was the concept of the 'console for games'. That is to say he wanted consoles to exist for games, be sold cheap but be fun to play. He also believed it was software that sold consoles, as he says:

"(people) do not play with the game machine itself. They play with the software,
and they are forced to purchase a game machine in order to use the software.
Therefore the price of the machine should be as cheap as possible."

Perhaps the Game Cube isn't the best example of this given it possessed a number of glaring holes, however the direction he took the company in proved supremely true, the Wii itself is a testament of his philosophy back before the Game Cube even started and while it took the collective creativity of his successor and the designer (whose skills he recognized years ago) it was ultimately his philosophy that drove the company back to the undisputed top of the industry.

Nintendo Stock Goes Up and Up

You wondering how much Nintendo is gaining from its recent success? You wonder why Nintendo is ignoring 'hardcore' gamers? Same reason.

VIA Shamoozal

26 Interesting Facts About Nintendo

1) Did you know that the word 'Nintendo' is composed of 3 Japanese Kanji characters 'nin'-'ten'-'do', and can mean "Heaven blesses hard work", but it can also mean the following: "Leave luck to heaven", "we do all that we can, as best we can, and await the results" or "Work hard but in the end it´s in the hands of the heaven".

Other suggestions are "Deep in the mind we have to do whatever we have to do" and some people believe that it stands for: "The house where you leave everything to the heaven/fortune".

2) Nintendo started back in 1890 with playing cards

3) In the US a burglar had broken into severel houses stealing various electronic equipment, he was finally nabbed one day when he was caught red handed - playing Street Fighter. He said he was getting a new top score, just couldn't stop. Talk about addictive!

4) During the production of Super Mario Bros. 3 there were plans to have a Cenatur Mario.

5) After the release of the SNES Nintendo also released a SNES arcade with the games Super Tennis, F-Zero and Super Mario World.

6) In Super Mario RPG Bowser and Mario joined forces for the first time.

7) Pocket Monsters has outsold Final Fantasy 7 two to one.

8) Star Fox was originally just a tech demo for the SuperFX chip, but went on to become a full blown game.

9) Metroid doesn't do well in Japan, it only lives on because of its popularity overseas. This is also probably why Nintendo outsourced the development of Metroid to a US based studio.

10) Despite plenty of proof and showing that R.O.B was a failed concept Minoru Arakawa (ex-NOA president) pressed forward with its release, and yes, it bombed. Since then R.O.B has made plenty of appearances, most recently on Mario Kart DS.

11) The SNES was the target of some criminals, for some time Nintendo only shipped the consoles late at night to avoid them being stolen. Too bad they weren't as careful with the Black Nintendo DS.

12) There has been an instance in which Burglars broke into an electronics store and only took the Nintendo 64's leaving the Playstation's on shelves.

13) "Who knows how Mario will look in the future. Maybe he'll wear metallic clothes!" -Shigeru Miyamoto (1991).

14) Super Mario 64 was originally planned to be a SNES game using an enhanced SuperFX chip. This fell through due to the technological limitations and the game was moved on to the Nintendo 64.

15) Mario used to be a carpenter called 'Jump Man', he featured in a game where he fought a Gorilla called 'Donkey Kong'. He is now known as Mario and is an Italian plumber.

16) Mario is named after Mario Segali a landlord in New York. What happened was that the NOA President of the time, Minoru Arakawa, saw 'Jump Man' he likened him to his landlord, Mario Segali.

17) Nintendo ex-president (and nutcase) Hiroshi Yamauchi has been compared to the Mother Brain from Metroid and his office has been likened to the 'realm of the Mother Brain'.

18) Zelda: Ocarina of Time outsold 'A Bug's Life'.

19) Cid has been featured in every Final Fantasy title on the SNES (at least) and has been likened to the Yoda of the Final Fantasy series by producer Hironobu Sakaguchi.

20) Final Fantasy on the Nintendo 64.

'nuff said really.

21) After losing a lawsuit to prevent the Game Genies distribution Nintendo got a little sore and started making their games to crash if they were using Game Genie. This is why there are severel versions of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3/4.

22) The street outside of the office of Nintendo's distributor in Sweden was renamed "Marios gata".

23) Fujiko Takimoto who did the voice acting for Link as child is a woman, that explains Link's extremely light voice.

24) Some 'concerned parents' were planning on suing Nintendo because their kids had sustained blisters from many a hour of Nintendo goodness.

25) Miyamoto says that the inspiration behind 'Legend of Zelda' was the childrens innate desire of exploration and the movie 'Legend', directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Cruise.

26) The Japanese version of Mario Kart 64 featured many signs advertising spinoffs of real world brands with Super Mario twists, the only one that made it to the US was 'Koopa Air' (i.e. 'Nike Air').



VIA Nintendo Land

Working For Nintendo

It isn't all fun'n'games... oh wait. This is a video made as an entry to the NintendoShortCuts contest, it's in the top ten selection. Looks like working at Nintendo isn't about Karoshi for the great Miyamoto san after all.