This week's roundup of DYK little known game facts:

-DYK? Nintendo Owns the Seattle Mariners. Back in 1992 Nintendo became the majority owner of major league baseball team the Seattle Mariners.


-DYK? The interesting story behind the Donkey Kong License:
Rewind back to the NES era, and Nintendo is facing some heavy legal action. With who you ask? Why with Universal Studios, which thinks Donkey Kong infringes on the King Kong trademark. Because Nintendo's first bit had just hit in the States, it was a crucial legal battle to win. Nintendo pulled out the big guns with attorney John Kirby, who successfully argued that the King Kong plot and characters were "in the public domain."

To thank Kirby, Nintendo bought him a sailboat and granted him "exclusive worldwide rights to use the name for sailboats."


-DYK? Nintendo used to run a "Love Hotel" One of the ideas explored by the early N, popular in Japan & offered couples rooms by the hour.


-DYK? Megaman originally started as a concept for a game based on Astro Boy, early on Capcom lost the license and made Megaman instead. ‪#‎itsprofitabletorecycle‬


-DYK? There already was a Super Mario 4, In Japan at least. When Super Mario World hit stores in Japan, the game was subtitled Super Mario Bros 4, perhaps to prevent any confusion. Strangely enough, in America Yoshi's Island was also known as Super Mario World 2, though that wasn't included in the Japanese title.


-DYK? Nintendo is 121 Years Old, founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi on 9/23/1889 as a Japanese playing card company. (Sony founded. 1946, Microsoft founded 1975)


-DYK? Concept art for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past shows that some early costumes for Zelda had an odd sci-fi theme. ‪#‎futurelink‬


-DYK? The P in P-Wing stands for Paratroopa. As explained by a Mario developer, the P-Wing represents one of the wings used by the flying turtles known as Paratroopas. Meaning some poor Paratroopa had to be maimed just so you could skip a stage that was too tough for you.


-DYK? Boo in Super Mario is based on a developer’s wife.
First appearing in Super Mario Bros 3, Boos have become an indispensable enemy in the Mario series. The monsters origins come from an incident in co-designer Takeshi Tezuka’s life according to an interview with Miyamoto. He said, “Mr. Tezuka got an idea about putting his wife in the game. His wife is very quiet normally, but one day she exploded, maddened by all the time he spent at work. In the game, there is now a character who shrinks when Mario looks at it, but when Mario turns away, it will grow large and menacing."


-DYK? Diddy Kong originally designed to be Donkey Kong Jr.
The Donkey Kong series had been pretty quiet until Rare took it over in the early ‘90s with Donkey Kong Country. When Rare was first designing the game, the plan was for Donkey Kong to be accompanied by a second player as Donkey Kong Junior. But Nintendo felt Rare’s redesign for the ape was too extreme. Given the choice, Rare kept the redesign and renamed him Diddy Kong.


-DYK? Original audio of the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time had Muslim-type chanting that was cut because Muslims took it offensively. ‪#‎far2pc‬


-DYK? New Super Mario Bros Wii originally had a chicken Power Up. Nintendo decided to use penguins instead. ‪#‎theotherwhitemeatmario‬

-DYK? Ocarina of Time was originally designed to be played in 1st person mode. ‪#‎dodgedAFPbullet‬

-DYK? In Nintendo's Animal Crossing, the signs in the museum are written in Hylian, from the Legend of Zelda. ‪#‎adoptedherooftime‬


You can be sure to find these and other interesting tidbits of info and announcements on our twitter @miktekstudios, and on our facebook page www.facebook.com/miktekstudios. Follow or Like today!