The NES and SNES were very important consoles to me. Nintendo basically kickstarted my love of video games. I have a lot to be thankful for. However, after the SNES generation, I went full PlayStation for years. With money being tight, I had to pick a side and the glory that was Final Fantasy VII was the deciding factor. Well, in actuality, my brother got the PS1 and sort of forced my hand to abandon Nintendo. However, it happened I have no regrets. While that was a shared console experience, the PS2 was all my own. By that time my brother and sister had moved out. It was also the first console I bought with my own money that I scraped together from odd jobs, birthday and Christmas cash cards, and so on. It was in this generation that I became more cognizant of the video game industry.

That is to say, I finally subscribed to a video game magazine thanks to my grandparents. As the Official PlayStation Magazine offered demo discs, that was the one I had to go with and was an easy way to help motivate said grandparents even though video games may as well have been aliens in their eyes. Anyway, the magazine was an eye-opening experience and my first foray into not just news, but fun facts. See? I eventually tied my PlayStation ramble nostalgia trip into this article. Yes, for your reading enjoyment, I tracked down thirty cool facts about old Nintendo games because I missed a lot of them while I was a Sony hound. Make sense?

30 War Always Changes

It's great that Fire Emblem is blossoming in the West again, but fans are still clamoring for a new Advance Wars title. It's been ten years without a peep from Nintendo since Advance Wars: Days of Ruin launched for the DS in 2008. Speaking of Advance Wars, that's not the name of series even though it’s the first outside of Japan. It debuted on the Famicom, the Japanese NES, in 1988 as Famicom Wars. The technical title is just Wars as it took the console name. Yeah, we missed a lot of these gems.

29 Stop Banjo And Swap Kazooie

When Rare was developing Banjo-Kazooie 2, or Banjo-Tooie as they "cutely" named it, they had an idea to add in a feature called Stop 'n' Swop. Basically if you owned both games, you could quickly swap out cartridges in order to unlock new items and secrets in the sequel. Thanks to a console revision for the N64, Rare had to stop the implantation. That said the code is still in the game. This is a fascinating look at how this secret was uncovered successfully.

28 The Team Behind Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger has a ton of endings to it, which is apt given the fact that it incorporates time travel. One of the more bizarre endings you can acquire involves meeting the head developers of the game including Akira Toriyama, who many might know from Dragon Ball Z, and Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy.

The heroes of time.

Also Yuji Hori, Nobu Uematsu, and Kazuhiro Aoki. At the time I had no idea who these people were even with their uncanny pixel models. Now that I'm educated, it's a sweet treat.

27 Uncharted: Conker’s Deception

Banjo-Kazooie was an adorable, family-friendly platformer. Conker's Bad Fur Day, on the other hand, was Rare's chance to go hog wild. Besides the content in the game, promotions leading up for it were crazy too. There was a cross promotion with Playboy, yes the magazine, wherein they held tournaments for college kids concerning the game’s multiplayer. The winner of one of these tournaments was Neil Druckmann. Who's that? Oh you know, just the guy that creatively directed The Last of Us and Uncharted 4.

26 Rare Abandons Donkey Kong

When Microsoft bought Rare in 2002, they were working on 3 Donkey Kong titles. Since they could no longer work for Nintendo and use the IP rights to the name, two games were changed into something new. Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers became It’s Mr. Pants and Diddy Kong Pilot became Banjo Pilot. The other, which was scrapped altogether, was Donkey Kong Racing, which became Sabreman Stampede. As for the other two games that came out, well, they probably should have been canceled too.

25 Dragon Quest’s Secret Stats

In the original Dragon Quest, or as it was called in the West, Dragon Warrior, the first four letters in your name determines your stats. This is never really explained in the game, but since this is the day of Internet guides, there are tons you can follow online if you somehow never played this game back on the NES. And why would you?

What’s in a name?

It’s very basic, super hard, and not that fun. However, if you're a dedicated Dragon Quest fan, then here's a quick guide if you're curious.

24 Who The Heck Is Tina?

In the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VI, Terra is named Tina. Feedback on this name was not high so when it was localized in the West the name was changed to something more exotic aka Terra. This may have been a prompt to name lead characters as forces of nature in the sequels aka Cloud, Squall, Tidus, and Lightning. You could also pin that idea on Tetsuya Nomura who was a character designer, or general designer on all of these. Even in his own game, Kingdom Hearts, Sora can be read as sky in Japanese.

23 A Fire Burns In The West

This is somewhat related to old school games, but check this out. The Fire Emblem anime came out before first game in North America. It released on November 3, 2003 for the GBA and is the seventh game in the series while the anime debuted in 1997 as a two part OVA based on the third game, Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem. Funnily enough the localizers changed some names that wouldn’t match up with later depictions in the West. Marth, for example, was called Mars.

22 The Golden Goose Of GoldenEye

GoldenEye was THE definitive first-person shooter on the N64. You could even argue it was that for multiplayer as well though I'm sure some would argue that would belong to Super Smash Bros., or even Mario Kart 64.

That box art though...

Anyway, did you know that this miraculous multiplayer mode was an afterthought and was developed just 6 weeks before launch? That's crazy considering that's what people remember about it. What a different world we'd be living in right now.

21 Golden Sun 64?

Golden Sun and its sequel were originally planned to be one game. Camelot, the developer, had problems with the Game Boy Advance’s cart space, which was limited, so they decided to split the game in two parts. That's why they came out so close together. In Japan they were only ten months apart! Another fun fact regarding the development is that it originated on the N64, though according to all sources it was only very brief and no footage of this state exists.

20 Shout At The Devil

In the original Kid Icarus on NES you can haggle with the shopkeepers by pressing A and B at the same time. Funnily enough in Japan it was a lot simpler. All you needed to do was speak into your controller. That's right, the Famicom controllers came with built in audio mics. Consider that a little piece of bonus trivia. Oh, and as long as I'm at it the Famicom came with two controllers, both hard wired to the console. There, now I'm done.

19 Why No Tarzan?

Even though Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is supposed to be a rehash of the events of the first game, it lacks the Tarzan world, which is the only Disney one missing. This was because Square Enix didn’t have the rights to used the name in it, or any of the subsequent sequels.

Not my king of the jungle.

Why did it come to the remastered version then? Well Square Enix had to renegotiate a deal. Tarzan is such a ho-hum Disney movie anyway so I don't think any fans cared that it disappeared from the franchise.

18 Kirby’s Dystopian Future

Kirby is supposed to be this cute, easy character to get used to for kids new to games. Nothing creepy about any of his lore, right? Well, think again. Nintendo loves to skirt the line at times regarding their seemingly kid-friendly titles like Pokémon which has a laundry list of screwed up lore. Anyway, getting back to this pink puffball, in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, there is a world you travel too called the Shiver Star, which many theorists think is Earth. Did Earth fall into a cold nuclear fallout?

17 A Whole New Mario World

There are a few differences between the Japanese and North American versions of Super Mario World. Reznor, the rhino boss, is a reference to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. It's called Bui Bui in Japan. Other changes include the title being Called Super Mario Bros. 4 in Japan. Also, Yoshi could eat the dolphins in Japan, but not in the West. When the game was ported to the Game Boy Advance, this feature was put back in across all versions.

16 Pokémon Stadium’s Rough Beginnings

Pokémon Stadium is actually the second game in the series. I had no idea until researching for this article. The first game was a Japanese exclusive and was originally developed for the 64DD. Due to problems within Nintendo regarding that peripheral’s release, the team had to quickly port the game to the N64 proper resulting in a lot of glitches and cut content.

A stadium worth of problems.

The game we got was an expansion that sort of cleared up the original's problems. So that said, don't get mad we didn't get it, as we didn’t miss out on anything.

15 Lost In Translation

Once you beat Dr. Wily in Mega Man 7 he will basically tell Mega Man that robots can’t be humans directly to which he says nothing, knowing this is true presumably. This is probably a reference to the Isaac Asimov rules of robotics. However, in North America Mega Man will say, "I am more than a robot!! [Perish] Wily!!" Why was this added? I’m unsure, but based on the Japanese read, this was probably meant as a piece of lore that has now been lost due to the misguided localization.

14 Link’s Awakening Multiplayer

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was a hit for the Game Boy. It became an even bigger phenomenon with the release of Link's Awakening DX for the Game Boy Color. Besides adding color, Nintendo had a bigger idea with this enhanced port. They planned to incorporate multiplayer, but because of time constraints, it was cut out. You can even see design documents of this idea in the Hyrule Historia. This feature was eventually added into the GBA port of A Link to the Past.

13 Nintendo’s Mortal Kombat Exclusive

Nintendo has an exclusive character that has never appeared in any of the other Mortal Kombat games for other platformers. That would be Khameleon, which is not to be confused with Chameleon. She is his counterpart.

Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma Khameleon.

She appears in the N64 version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy and later in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon on the Wii. She has since been a ghost, but that's pretty much because that was the last new Mortal Kombat game on a Nintendo platform.

12 EarthBound Vs Mother 2

There are a ton of differences between the Japanese and North American versions of Mother 2 aka EarthBound. For example, in Mother 2 stores had their headers changed from Drugs to Shop. Hey, Nintendo. I think kids can figure out this wasn't a literal illegal substance store. One of the weirder changes is the sound you hear when Pokey and Piggy are being scolded by their father. In Japan, it clearly sounds like he is beating them. Finally, in the dream sequence world, Ness is unclothed in Japan.

11 Free Pikmin Games For All

The original Pikmin game can be played on PC. If you pop that disc into your computer, there is a Windows executable file. It’ll run poorly, but if you switch to game mode it’ll work fine. This was probably a debug and was meant for developers to test the game on PC, but was never removed for the retail version. This is not an uncommon practice for games, but given that this was a small disc and not a standard size, its weird people even discovered this secret.