16 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Nintendo

From a trading card company in Japan through a stratospheric rise to dominate both arcades and living rooms across all corners of the globe, Nintendo have waxed and waned with the best of them. However, where rivals like Sega would eventually stumble, fall and get lost amongst the tailgate dust, Ninty have thundered on, resolute in their determination to bring you the best video game experiences possible, no matter the cost. It led them to brokering a deal with Sony to develop a hybrid cartridge/disc-based system (more on that later), finance all manner of innovate products and characters from Mario to Link, Donkey Kong and back again - and even taking a huge risk with both the Wii and Wii U systems, just to give you something that little bit different, that little bit more characterful - that little bit more Nintendo. Over the years this attitude has brought them endless success (in 2015 you've still got people baying at the door to buy as many Amiibo figures as possible), and with the mysterious NX on the horizon (perhaps being a return to targeting hardcore gamers over motion-control fanatics), it could be their time to shine all over again. Regardless of what happens, Nintendo have made their mark on the world forevermore, and as cinema has the twin imagination-triggering prowess of Pixar and Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki, so too has Shigeru Miyamoto proven he's the Walt Disney of the video game realm. Let us know your favourite things about Nintendo in the comments below, alongside any more little-known facts we might've missed.

Just to really frazzle your brain-circuits, the associated picture here is 74KB, whereas the full game comes in at around 70KB, depending on slight localisation changes altering the occasional byte or two. It's a pretty awesome showcase of how far we've come with technology and rendering in general, and to go a step further; the combined file size of every game on both the NES and SNES wouldn't even come close to equating Mario's character model in Super Mario Bros. Wii U.