Nintendo, for all its faults and missteps—which are, by this point, almost as famous as its successes—is still probably the greatest video game company of all time, and without a doubt the most influential. The standard controller format we all know and love is all down to Nintendo—the d-pad and the analog stick, everything.
Gaming may not even still be a thing, at least out here in the west, if Nintendo hadn't swooped in and revived the industry after it an epic collapse at the end of the Atari era. That’s not even getting into the endless list of classics Nintendo has produced on the software end of things. Mario, the defining 2D platforming series and then the first great 3D game with Super Mario 64; Zelda, probably the greatest adventure game series of all time, and actually the series to introduce save files to gaming. Those are the big two, but there are so many more, including everything from Pokémon to Donkey Kong: all Nintendo, if you didn’t know!
But while a decent cross-section of the greatest games of all time have come from Nintendo, and their reputation as a great gaming giant is beyond reproach, sometimes the details of the worlds they create don't exactly make total sense. Whether it be the biology, the geography, or the physics, we can actually find a lot in Nintendo's universes that completely defy logic. Below are just a few examples.
25 Peachy's... What Exactly?
The premise of almost every Mario game is beyond simple: rescue Princess Peach from the clutches of the evil Koopa King Bowser. Peach is, as her title implies, royalty, and is, like many fantasy princesses, extremely prone to getting stolen. That much is clear, but then the clarity ends. What is Peach for exactly? She doesn't seem to have any parents, and the “princess,” instead of “queen,” which implies that there IS a King or Queen Toadstool somewhere, ruling the kingdom. And if not, what then, is Peach a reigning monarch? Constantly getting stolen can’t be good government.
24 Eccentric Matchmaking
On the subject of Peach, what is going on between her and Mario? It’s implied to be some kind of romance, but there are multiple problems which people should be having with that but are not. Firstly, there is the clear, albeit unstated, age difference: Peach can’t be more than about twenty, whereas Mario is an out of shape middle-aged man of about, what, forty? He isn't exactly a catch, especially when we're comparing with royalty. And problem number two: this kind of relationship between a member of the royal family and, well, a plumber is not usually considered kosher.
23 They Must Not Teach History In Hyrule
The Legend of Zelda is not far behind Super Mario in reputation. Each game is one chapter in an epic saga: throughout the history of the land of Hyrule, there has always been a princess Zelda and a hero named Link who together thwart the monster Ganon. These legends are passed down by the people of Hyrule from generation to generation. Except every time a game starts, Link is clueless about who he is and what is going on. Zelda has the same problem often enough. But given that this keeps happening, how is it ever a surprise?
22 Bringing A Whole New Meaning To "Devilishly Hard"
Nintendo has its tried and true gems like Mario and Zelda, but it always keeps trying new ideas too, even if some of them are really weird! Devil World has to be one of the oddest games Nintendo has ever made. Never released here, the game's player must navigate around a Pac-Man-style maze collecting dots while under siege at the hands of… well, the devil. Yeah. The goal is to use holy objects to banish the devil from one maze onto the next. We understand why it was not considered a marketable idea this side of the pond.
21 Must Be GMOs
Ice Climber is another one-shot from Nintendo's NES days. The game is basically your standard mid-80s Nintendo fare, involving jumping around platforms, avoiding enemies and collecting items. It only gets weird once you get into the details, but then it gets really weird. The premise is that these two are climbing the glaciers of the north rescuing vegetables—eggplants and the like, which should not be able to survive these temperatures in the first place—from condors while being assaulted by sentient ice. It's like a bad dream, actually, and completely disorienting.
20 A Melting Pot This Ain't
Animal Crossing puts you in the shoes of a human newcomer to a town inhabited by a quirky cast of animal characters. The games make a joy out of such tasks as digging out weeds and repaying your mortgage—no small feat. But what is the relationship between the playable human characters and the animals? Judging by the fact that every human character arrives by train from somewhere else, it would seem that humans are not local—yet nobody remarks on this. You’d think someone would comment on the mass human immigration, but no.
19 Shells Come In All Shapes And Sizes
The Mario universe is diversely populated—there are the Toads, then we’ve got as the Yoshis, the Goombas, and the Koopas, etc. The Koopas have a particularly interesting history within the franchise. When they first appeared, they were exclusively villains—Bowser’s underlings, literally the invading troops of his army. But then their role shifted over time: some Koopas weren’t always so bad and they were eventually just another race like Toads or Yoshis. Except… Bowser is still identified as King Koopa, and his kids are called the Koopa Kids. Are there rival factions of Koopas now? Why has nobody clarified this?
18 It's Almost Worse Than LOST
Each Zelda game deals with a different Link and Zelda separated from the others by generations. Nintendo has always insisted there was, in fact, a master plan. But not until 2011 did they put out a book, Hyrule Historia, claiming to clarify everything. The convoluted nature of this timeline, however, suggests that Nintendo just slapped one together the best they could after the fact, so people would stop bothering them about it. It involves, for example, the timeline splitting into three branches after Ocarina of Time, and often even more awkward than most fan theories did!
17 Someone Messed Up The Jigsaw Puzzle A Bit
Hyrule's geography also gets weird. It's actually just plain freaky: snowy tundra next to the desert, mountain ranges randomly in the middle of the prairie, etcetera. This is especially apparent in the most recent entry of the series, Breath of the Wild, but it goes back much further than that. We’ve got desert right next to swamp right next to farmland in A Link to the Past, for example. This kind of craziness isn't all that uncommon in video games, true, but the Zelda franchise is a particularly brazen offender.
16 Or Nintendo Just Plain Failed Geography
Although Nintendo has also produced a few other games that failed geography. For example, you might remember the Golden Sun games that came out for the GBA way back in the early 2000s. Loosely modeled off our Earth, the geology of the games are, on close inspection, actually nonsensical, with river systems coming and going out of nowhere and random mountain ranges and continent shapes. Now, RPG realms don't have to be spot on perfectly designed—even Final Fantasy has had its geographically weird moments—but most are at least better than this.
15 Capsule Society
2011’s Skyward Sword seeks to establish an origin story for the franchise and takes place before Hyrule was even called Hyrule. The nameless surface of the earth had been abandoned by the human race, who now live above the clouds in Skyloft, where this game’s Link and Zelda come from. It is an apparently self-sufficient community complete with its own culture and economy. Pretty impressive, except, the place seems a bit too small to sustain all that: it's barely a village! How does anyone even manage to avoid inbreeding?
14 Wouldn't Want You To Catch 'Em All
Pokémon is one of the biggest sensations Nintendo has ever produced. The games are absolute classics, up there with Mario and Zelda in the pantheon of greats, with their addictive quest to catch ‘em all—one hundred and fifty back in the day and who knows how many now. But has anybody ever really noticed how screwed up the games’ premise actually is? Think about it: it's young children going out alone in the scary world to capture wild animals and make them fight each other. If this were real, protection services, would be all over it!
13 Invasion Of The Pod Pokémon?
On the subject of Pokémon—where the heck are the other animals? True, we see all kinds of different Pokémon—yes, with way too much diversity to plausibly be one species, but a single species they are. So where are all the other animals? Even in fictional universes, it's not normal to have a world with only one species of animals, right? There is one theory floating around the internet that Pokémon are actually an invasive species of aliens that copy the appearance of and then replace native Earthling animal species. This is unlikely—okay, beyond unlikely—but it would explain a lot.
12 Mario The Merman
Mario may look like just another fat plumber, but he’s able to do a lot of really cool stuff. He can jump really high, double in size just by eating mushrooms, shoot fireballs, even fly sometimes. Most of these require power-ups, but it all seems somehow… plausible. But there are some things even Super Mario should not be able to do. Mario can apparently survive without breathing: he even goes to outer space in Super Mario Galaxy, but he doesn't suffer from the lack of oxygen most of the time. Weird.
11 Mario The Ageless Immortal
Donkey Kong hit the arcades way back in 1980, but its still addictive now and its main characters—Mario and the title Kong himself—are still around. Except the Donkey Kong of the original game is not the same Donkey Kong starting in video games today—that original Kong is actually known today as Cranky Kong, the wizened coot of the Kong clan! Looking at his stooped frame and long grey beard, we can see that is has been quite a many years since his barrel-tossing days… except Mario hasn't aged nearly that much. Shouldn't they be about the same age, or close?
10 Get A Job, Mario
Mario is a plumber, that much has been long established, but we never see him work. You'd think he'd be having to keep himself pretty busy, what with all the money he must be burning hobnobbing with princesses and out adventuring all around the place… even in a land where coins literally do come out of thin air. You'd think he'd be begging for commissions to upkeep that lifestyle! But he doesn't even live near where he'd get business: his house is way out in the middle of nowhere! Doesn't seem like good practice.
9 Though, Honestly, This Would Get Great Ratings On TV
Mario Mario and Sonic were probably the most famous rivals in gaming—but things have changed: the plumber and the hedgehog are the best of friends. They even play sports together… at the Olympics? Yes, Mario and Sonic have competed in the Olympic Games, once in 2008 then again in 2010, in 2012, etc. In these games, Mario and Sonic characters compete for the gold—even though this is completely not how the Olympics work. Where are the nations? Aren’t they sort of the point? And the mere thought of pudgy Mario competing with Sonic in anything to do with speed is comical.
8 Plants Have An Excuse, At Least
2001’s Pikmin puts the player in the role of Captain Olimar, who has crash landed on an unknown planet (obviously Earth) and must fix his damaged ship and escape within 30 days. The key to his survival revolves around a species he discovers—the Pikmin. But the Pikmin apparently lie dormant in the ground until Olimar arrives and picks them, which begs the question of how they functioned, or even survived, before he came along—they can't see to do anything at all without his direction. How did they reproduce, or find sustenance on their own? The game doesn't provide any answer.
7 Look Like Apes, Have Families Like Rabbits
Donkey Kong, both the game and the character, started out very simply—just the story of one barrel-tossing ape. But things change. By the middle of the 90s, there was a whole, ever-expanding Kong family to go along with the eponymous DK in a growing catalog of games—some of which didn't even feature Donkey Kong at all! There's Diddy, Kiddy, Candy, Funky, Wrinkly, Lanky, Cranky, etc, etc, Memorize it if you want, but try to put together any plausible family tree and you hit a brick wall. It's an incoherent tangle that nobody thought to map out.
6 Adorable As Heck, Stumps Biologists
Who doesn’t love Yoshis?! They're an adorable bunch, coming in a whole variety of tropical colors. Try to figure out how they work as a species, biologically though, and… well, don't. They don't make a lot of sense. They mature insanely fast and apparently without the need of parents, even after hatching nearly instantly, and also use their unhatched eggs, grotesquely, as weapons. Also, people seem to use them as if they're disposable, and the poor things don't seem to mind any more than lemmings.