Making Nintendo 365 UK

One of my favourite features of the Nintendo Today! app is Nintendo365. It offers a daily glimpse into Nintendo's rich publishing history, but there are problems with it.

Nintendo365 is sorted by Japanese release dates, and showcases North American box art. I can't help but see Mario Tennis: Power Tour or Mario Pinball Land and note an overriding sense of revisionism.

There's nothing wrong with celebrating a global history, but there is a sense that with virtually all British games magazines out of print and internet archival being a shambles that idiosyncrasies will be lost in favour of the stronger, singular narrative.

I recently launched Nintendo 365 UK, a social media channel focusing on UK-specific Nintendo history. I'm working my way backwards, so right now the "live" dataset relates to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, but I have preliminary datasets in the research stage going back to the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Documenting this has been tough, so I wanted to share some challenges I've faced, and explain how much history is either inaccurate or totally lost to time.

I've cultivated a consistent style for my "on this day" posts, focusing on Nintendo Switch HOME Menu icons. My original intention was to use box art (while physical media still exists), however I ran into issues far sooner than anticipated.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is not an old title. It's barely been on the market for a year, and yet, trying to find a clean version of the final UK box art is tough.

There seems to be two assets out there, one with English-only text on the cover but a provisional PEGI rating, and one with the final PEGI rating but every European language.

The final release features the final PEGI rating and English-only text on the cover.

Is rejecting this pre-release imagery over the top? Yes, but I need to draw a line somewhere, and if I'm going to do it, I want to do it right. HOME Menu icons it is.

Nintendo's official website should make this fairly easy, it displays the HOME Menu icons in the search results. Most of the time...

Let's just say The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild causing me problems was not on my bingo card. Fortunately, I have been able to extract the image from the web version of Nintendo Music, but if this wasn't already on Nintendo Music, I'd be stuffed.

I have all the assets I need for the live dataset, but I want to now dive into some of the challenges I am facing with older platforms. Let's start with Wii U.

Here's another problem I didn't expect to encounter so early: release date accuracy.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker launched on 2 January 2015 according to Nintendo's official website. So, how did I legally buy it in 2014?

There's a story here. Treasure Tracker was originally scheduled for 9 January 2015, before being brought forward to 2 January 2015.

2 January is an awful release date for the UK market. In Scotland, it is a Bank Holiday, and distribution networks typically operate a reduced service between Christmas and New Year.

While I can't confirm retailer backlash, given Nintendo initially green-lit online retailers release the game on 22 December 2014, and then GAME decided to stock it physically on that date too, I imagine some words were had.

Upon seeing reports online, I took myself down to GAME on 22 December 2014 and bought my physical copy of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Nintendo might not like to acknowledge it, but to me, that was the launch date.

This is hardly the first time Nintendo's launch plans have fallen apart. Pokémon X and Pokémon Y and the fabled 12 October 2013 simultaneous global launch got derailed too.

A number of individual retailers across Europe broke the street date for Pokémon X and Pokémon Y. This is a fairly common occurrence, but to say the UK market went full-scale Team Rocket is an understatement.

Who blinked first? I don't know, but by lunchtime on 11 October 2013 seemingly every UK retailer was selling Pokémon X and Pokémon Y.

And Nintendo's newest hardware, the Nintendo 2DS.

I was at University at the time. My friends had lectures that afternoon, whereas I did not, so I walked into four different retailers and picked up a copy of the game from each so we could all start our Kalos journeys later that day.

Three retailers told me Nintendo "okayed it", one of them even went as far to say it was "an official release date change", whereas GAME told me they were selling it "because everyone else is". Nintendo would like to forget this happened, but let's not forget how they retaliated.

Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire released globally on 21 November 2014 - except Europe, who got it on 28 November 2014. And, to really hammer home the lesson, Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon released globally on 18 November 2016 - except Europe, who got it on 23 November 2016.

Nintendo usually fine the retailers for breaking street dates, but in these instances they elected to punish an entire continent. Twice. Thanks, Nintendo.

I want to stress, these aren't the occasional online orders arriving a day early - this is mass, nationwide availability for everyone who walks into a shop.

In my book, that's the release date.

Skipping a generation or four, let's look at the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Industry body UKIE claim the console launched on 1 September 1986, Computer & Video Games (issue 68, pg. 9) magazine reports a June 1987 launch, but the official warranty card mail-in competition was accepting entries on 1 May 1987.

We genuinely don't know when Nintendo's first console launched in the United Kingdom.

I'm not sure we can even trust the warranty card competition prizes as proof of the launch line-up, some of those games wouldn't launch until the second half of 1987.

The best resource for this information will be Computer Trade Weekly, an trades publication often used by retailers to inform them of new products.

Early editions aren't preserved online, and The British Library archives only go back to 1994. This is utterly tragic.

Nintendo wouldn't handle their UK operation for some time, with their first UK office opening in January 2001. The wider European operation only got started in 1990.

I'd love to link to the source of that, but of course...

Nintendo's earliest interactions with the UK market were through distributors like Mattel (NES) and Computer Games Limited (Game & Watch). I hadn't even heard of CGL until I started this project, and you can imagine information about them has not been thoroughly documented.

I will be rolling out more platforms when I am confident in my information, and I'll think about how to carefully cover platforms I have less confidence in.

The internet has sadly become an echo-chamber where one drop of bad information gets parroted into becoming the accepted fact - and I don't want to add to the noise.

Researching this has been a lot of fun. I've already learnt so much I didn't know before, and I am keen to share this in a truthful, verifiable manner that respects the original preservers of information.

I'll end this with one interesting nugget I found in the corner of the internet last night. We got limited edition Game & Watch releases!