With a brand new home console just weeks from being revealed by Nintendo, it seems apt to look back at Nintendo's past systems, specifically the rumor-mongering and pre-release hype that preceded their reveals. After all, the best way to find hints about Nintendo's future is to look at their past to see what concepts they talked about but never released or fully realized.
Project Reality and the Ultra 64
In late 1993, Project Reality was revealed, starting one of the first well-documented pre-console-launch hype examples. Nintendo's third home console made use of a then-powerful Silicon Graphics chip that would produce "infinitely evolving worlds that instantly and continuously react to the commands and whims of the individual players." Project Reality eventually became the Nintendo 64, and, while it did help usher in an era of 3D graphics, it didn't feature anything remotely close to infinitely evolving worlds.
Even before we knew of Project Reality's real name, rumors swirled around the system's supercomputer-like power. Rivals such as Sega and Sony decried the system, which was slated for a low $250 price point, saying that Nintendo shouldn't write checks they couldn't cash.
Meanwhile, Nintendo executives were making bold statements, such as this comment by Nintendo of America's then vice president Howard Lincoln: "Our work with Silicon Graphics enables us to actually skip a generation by diving straight through to 64-bit, 3D video entertainment."
The hype train rolled along even more so when, in 1994, Nintendo announced a partnership with Rare and Williams Entertainment, who was the parent company of Midway at the time. The two companies worked on arcade games purportedly using Nintendo 64 (at the time known as the Ultra 64) hardware. Sadly, that wasn't actually true, as the two games, Killer Instinct and Cruis'n USA, ran on arcade hardware that was in actuality far more powerful.
Nintendo also announced a partnership with GTE Interactive Media. The popular thinking there was that Nintendo wanted to cultivate a game content delivery service over the Internet and/or phone lines, much like their previous effort on the Super Famicom, the Satellaview. Although it should be noted that Nintendo has a history of developing ideas behind the scenes for years, so maybe this ahead-of-its-time concept has developed into something innovative and different for their next system.
The Nintendo 64 was originally set to come out in late 1995, but delays pushed it back several times. The system was playable for the first time at Spaceworld 1995, Nintendo's gaming expo held in Japan, with a playable Mario, and a better handle on the system's inner workings ended the pre-launch speculation.
The Lost System of Atlantis and the Game Boy Advance
The history of the system that would become the Game Boy Advance, and to an extent the DS, oddly dates back to around the Nintendo 64's launch, five years before the system would be released. In 1996, several gaming magazines talked of Project Atlantis, a super-powerful handheld system with graphical capabilities on par with the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. Reportedly promised to boast 30 hours of battery life, Atlantis quietly disappeared into the ether, and most assumed that, following the announcement of the Game Boy Advance, it was being refined to become the Game Boy Advance. However, that wasn't exactly the case.
In a 1998
interview with GameSpot, Howard Lincoln commented directly when he was asked about Project Atlantis, saying "At one point there were some people in the UK working on that. But that project was closed down years ago."
Lincoln could have been coy, not wanting to reveal Nintendo's hand prematurely, but
a DSi-focused presentation by Nintendo's Masato Kuwahara at GDC 2009 recalled the rumors surrounding Atlantis. According to pictures revealed during the presentation, the prototype dwarfed the DSi, which in itself is one of the bigger Nintendo handhelds. It was structured like the Game Boys of the era, but featured four face buttons set up in a similar manner as the Super Nintendo controller.
Rumors began swirling around the Advanced Game Boy/Game Boy Advance (both of which were referred to as temporary names) in 1999. Early reports, which ousted the chip maker as UK-based ARM (likely the "people in the UK" Lincoln referred to regarding Project Atlantis), also jumped to the conclusions that, since ARM made cell phone chips, the new Game Boy would be online-enabled. Whether that was ever actually considered is unknown, though there were a few Japan-only experiments that might have spun out of this, such as Mobile Golf for the Game Boy Color and GBA, which used cell phone networks to play online.
Reports also came in that the Game Boy Advance would use discs, but those were squashed early on as the Game Boy and Game Boy Color backwards compatibility was widely speculated. The buzz around the Game Boy Advance was, for the most part, severely overshadowed by a big aquatic mammal: The Dolphin.
Swimming with the Dolphin
Shortly before E3 1999, Nintendo's fourth home console system, commonly referred to as N2000 at the time, was revealed to be codenamed Project Dolphin. IGN
broke the story at the time, with their Nintendo insider saying, "Management is claiming better graphics than the [PlayStation 2], and supposedly it will run on DVD, but that's still a big maybe at this point."
The DVD talk was a hot-button issue at the time. It was well known that Nintendo wouldn't make the same cartridge-based mistake they made with the Nintendo 64, but the idea of the Dolphin having DVD playback was up in the air, especially as Nintendo later revealed the proprietary mini-discs that the system would use. After the GameCube was released, a DVD playback version, dubbed the Panasonic Q, was released in Japan.
The Internet, which was filled with all sorts of Nintendo-related fan sites at the time, blew up with all sorts of new system rumors. There were several rumors sprouting from Nintendo sources that the GameCube might feature a tilt-sensing controller, something similar to what the Wii would introduce in 2006.
The name of the system was one of the biggest question marks up until the GameCube name was announced in August 2000. The leading rumored candidate was StarCube, and while Nintendo has never publicly commented on the name, it had a lot of support from trademarks and patents, meaning it very likely was a potential title for the system. There is a rumor about a rumor that stated that StarCube was going to be the system's name until the last second when a Nintendo executive demanded they put the word "game" in the name.
The GameCube's Spaceworld 2000 reveal answered all the pressing questions, though there was the lingering problem that circulated throughout the next few months: Would the system only come in purple?
Dual Screens and Rumors
The first murmurs of Nintendo's next portable might have actually been before the Game Boy Advance even came out. In an interview with Next Generation magazine from early 2000, Nintendo's then director and general manager Hiroshi Imanishi said "We're developing [Game Boy Advance] and also at the same time developing the next portable system."
Imanishi's words were never clarified to be related to the DS and nothing more was said about the GBA successor during that time. It wasn't until 2003 that word leaked that Nintendo was working on a new Game Boy. Soon, word spread about a peculiar two-screened portable. The system was named in January 2004, though at the time "DS" stood for Developer's System. The way Nintendo spoke about the DS made it seem that two screens would change the face of the world.
"We have developed Nintendo DS based upon a completely different concept from existing game devices in order to provide players with a unique entertainment experience for the 21st century," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in the system's debut press release. In that same release, Nintendo also deliberately mentioned how the DS would be marketed separately from the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance, bringing in the idea of the DS being a third pillar for the company.
Details trickled out from various sources before the system's full reveal at E3 2004. Nintendo faced heat because Sony's recently revealed PSP was looking to be a graphical powerhouse while the DS seemed to be a 2D-focused two-screened gimmick. Rumors swirled about a decent 3D graphics engine, an innovative touch screen, Wi-Fi capabilities, and an instant messaging system. The last tidbit in particular was something that clearly got lost in translation, as the purported instant messaging system turned out to be PictoChat, which is great fun at places like E3 or PAX, but is unfortunately limited to local multiplayer only, making the dreams of an AIM-like service wistful.
The system's name was something else that came into contention, mostly thanks to Nintendo's own insistence that the Nintendo DS was just a placeholder. The system's internal codename was Nitro, and after journalists found out about it, a lot of them pegged that as the system's name. Despite repeated insistence that the Nintendo DS was a mere placeholder name, Nintendo confirmed the system's name as just that in late July 2004.
Nintendo's Talking About a Revolution
In the years leading up Wii's release, Satoru Iwata hinted at how the graphical prowess of systems was reaching a point of diminishing returns, and in order to combat that, Nintendo needed to do something different. That something different, he said, would be immediately apparent when you saw what they had in mind. In retrospect, I don't think even Iwata could've imagined the Wii being as big of a success as it turned out to be.
At the close of Nintendo's E3 2005 press conference, The Nintendo president stood on stage holding an unassuming box that was described as "three DVD cases put together." Nothing more was said about the system, except that it would be called the Revolution. While Project Reality, Atlantis, Dolphin, and Nitro all generated buzz, none of those rivaled the speculation of Nintendo's system that threatened to change the game.
Following E3 2005, there was very little information known about the system, codenamed the Revolution. Some details trickled out, chiefly involving high-definition graphics and a downloadable Virtual Console for old games.
In an interview with The New York Times, Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan said that the system would play standard DVDs and feature wireless controllers. The curious part is this: "It will play GameCube games as well as a new class of high-definition games, with new emphasis on online play." As we all know, the Wii does not support HD capabilities, and the online play has been a bit of an afterthought. Shortly after Kaplan's interview, it was revealed that the Wii wouldn't support HD graphics, which prompted a good deal of criticism. Speculation about the controller also ran rampant, and a few stray rumors appeared that predicted Nintendo's Wii Remote, which was unveiled at Tokyo Game Show 2005.
So what does all of this mean? It means that Nintendo's eyes are sometimes bigger than reality. It also shows that, over the years, Nintendo has gotten crazier and crazier with their ideas. When Iwata comes on stage on June 7th to unveil Project Café, the only surefire way to prepare yourself is to expect the unexpected, and put some stock into the rumors, even if you don't actually see them pay off until a system or two later.
