Over the holidays we’re reposting some select features from the past 12 months. A mix of talking points, interviews, opinions and more from NL staff and contributors, you’ll find our usual mix of thoughtfulness, expertise, frivolity, retro nostalgia and – of course – enthusiasm for all things Nintendo. Happy Holidays!
In the magazine business, the back page is where you’ll find all the weird nonsense we can’t fit anywhere else. Some might call it “filler”; we prefer “an entire page for making terrible jokes tangentially related to the magazine’s content.”
We don’t have (paper) pages online, but we still love terrible jokes — so welcome to our semi-regular feature, The Back Page. Today, Kerry delves into the story of the elusive, colorful man who is the legendary ‘Nintendo Uncle’…
uncle. Maybe yours, maybe your friend. Maybe the uncle of someone who goes by the name MIYAM0T0S_HAIR on the internet.
You know the one. No, not the one everyone saw dancing enthusiastically Steps at the birthday party in that viral video. The other, the one that was somehow never mentioned until the moment their existence was needed to outdo a bunch of one’s peers in a game brawl, often on the playground. Him. The one who works for Nintendo. What is it called?
Nintendo Uncle – Man
This suddenly remembered and mysterious (but definitely real) cousin doesn’t do any of the boring jobs you usually see advertised by large publisher/developer hybrid corporations, like marketing or accounts or just programming while sitting at a computer like your usual boring uncle does, Ivan; oh no, this magical uncle works in a special secret section that no one has ever heard of.
Obviously, the Nintendo-owning uncle you’re talking to can’t go into detail about this particular bunker project because, you know, it’s a secret, the uncle apparently spent his days looking at all sorts of mystical Nintendo stuff and then, for some reason, often breaking legally binding, career-ending nondisclosure agreements just so their niece or nephew would have some juicy gossip to share online. The new Zelda will only be in the cloud version! Mario will be in Pokémon Graphite! Nintendo will stop making consoles!
Nintendo Uncle – myth
Historians speculate that the myth of Uncle Nintendo is so strong that it may even predate the Japanese card maker hanafuda itself; a story capable of transcending time, space and basic common sense thanks to the vast number of people who have summoned this fleeting being.
But why? Why do people do this? And why do we allow them to do that?
You can have an unlimited number of uncles, they can reasonably range in age, they can live almost anywhere at any time — and no one can prove otherwise
Part of this rambling comes down to how perfect the scenario is if you’re the kind of person who desperately wants your social group to hang on your every word on short notice. You can have an unlimited number of uncles, they can reasonably range in age, they can live almost anywhere at any time — and no one can prove otherwise.
There’s some built-in reassurance in the fact that it’s not unusual for your friends to have never met either of your uncles at all (especially one who’s very busy working at Nintendo at the moment) and unless someone tries to pull the rare Reverse-Double-Uncle maneuver — claiming that your uncle can’t possibly work at nintendo because everyone knows theirs definitely does — your claim is pretty safe from casual social scrutiny. No matter how many times it’s been told, the Nintendo Uncle setup is always convincing enough for uninitiated listeners to let the person spinning the yarn continue.
And that’s where the rest of us come in. Nintendo Uncle endures in the modern age because we enjoy hearing these ridiculous falsehoods as much as some people enjoy telling them.
Half life 3 is a Switch exclusive right? I pray, tell me more. You heard a new one Nintendo Labo the set comes out next year and will include the dedicated F-zero controller but can’t tell why? Come on, you’re kidding! Your Nintendo uncle loaned you a prototype N64 cart that contains mother 3 in English? Of course it is — spill those beans! Konami will celebrate 35 years of its ever popular Castlevania series not with a new game collection or a hyper-expensive collectible, but a bunch of NFTs? ALRIGHT, now you push it. As if…
Oh.
Nintendo Uncle – Statistics
Our own estimates suggest that there are at least 160,300 uncles directly employed by Nintendo at any given time, all working on super-secret Switch 3D Pro Advance hardware projects and sharing game prototypes that their nephews and nieces are not allowed to show anyone, e.g. Pokemon sword Turbo Stadium and Kirby Super Star: Uncensored Edition – The One Where DeDeDe Dies With The Blood And Guts and Everything.
This estimated figure poses a problem, however, as last year’s annual report showed that Nintendo employs 6,574 people worldwide, with 3,411 staff members identifying as male. For the sake of argument, let’s be incredibly generous and assume that each of them is a real Nintendo Uncle, whether it’s newly minted interns, grizzled directors or creative colleagues.
According to the latest figures at the time of writing, the Switch has now sold nearly 93 million units. Let’s also assume that every hypothetical real Nintendo uncle has a neat pair of ‘snacks’, and they both bought one of those 93 million Switches. If we did the math right, in the best possible scenario, about 0.007% of Switch owners actually have an uncle who works for Nintendo, somewhere.
Which means there is a very small chance MIYAM0T0S_HAIR power they are telling the truth when they say they have a special Switch with a 3DS cart slot and that Hello infinite definitely coming to Switch next year.
Nintendo Uncle – True
And yet, against all odds and the wildest rumors people have supposedly heard straight from the mouths of their Nintendo uncles, sometimes, just sometimes, these far-fetched stories turn out to be true. Sonic games on a Nintendo system? Yeah right! Oh wait no, that really happened. A lot actually happened. And it continues to happen.
Almost every round of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that has ever been played is the real stories of the Nintendo Uncle of the entire chat server
Almost every round of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that has ever been played is the real stories of the uncle Nintendo chat server. Bayonetta teams up with Metal Gear Solid’s Snake to take down Pokémon Fire Emblem’s Marth and Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth glory atop the Silph Co. building? It’s something you can do right now.
For a while, Nintendo actually used satellites to transmit everything new Zelda, F-zeroand Kirby (mini) games in homes. Nintendo may not be uncle’s home. Perhaps not even the large number of Japanese households that could potentially sign up for the Satellaview service, but at one time that unlikely fact was entirely true.
And of course, we all heard that one in particular crazy a concoction about Nintendo completely ditching the separate home and portable markets to create a weird hybrid console with detachable controllers that’s supposed to be everything at once. That will never take off, surely?
What was your favorite uncle-based Nintendo rumor? Which of your dear old uncle’s trusts have you broken on the playground? Let us know below.
Table of Contents
