Nintendo

Nintendo's Kirby was pink from the very start, but when Kirby's Dream Land launched in North America in 1992, staff copied his grayscale Game Boy sprite literally and drew him white. For years, North American box art, manuals, and ads all showed a white Kirby.

Nintendo's Splatoon characters began as tofu blocks that shot ink to claim turf. Next came rabbits: ink showed on white fur, and ears signaled direction. But developers couldn't connect rabbits with ink, so they switched to squids.

From autumn 2026, Nintendo Switch 2 units in Europe will shift to a revision with a user-replaceable battery, to meet the EU's right to repair rules effective 2027. The new console is 14g heavier and its battery is actually 1% smaller — the cost of being fixable.

Nintendo began in 1889 as a maker of Hanafuda cards. Founder Fusajiro Yamauchi handcrafted them from mulberry bark in Kyoto. When Japan banned gambling in 1882, rival makers fled to avoid yakuza ties, but he persisted and soon led it — over 80 years before any video game.