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129-493: The Game Boy Camera , released as Pocket Camera in Japan, is an accessory for Nintendo 's Game Boy game console. It was released on February 21, 1998, in Japan, and manufacturing ceased in late 2002. As a toy for user-generated content , it can be used to shoot grayscale photographs, edit them or create original drawings, and transfer images between GBC units or to the 64DD art game suite Mario Artist . The accessory featured

258-734: A Ctrl + Alt + Reset keypress sequence—a hard reset which discards any information currently in RAM . Several oscilloscopes contain Easter eggs. One example is the HP ;54600B , known to have a Tetris (1985) clone, and the HP 54622D contains an imitation of the Asteroids (1979) game named Rocks . Another is the Tektronix 1755A Vector and Waveform Monitor which displays swimming fish when Remote > Software version

387-497: A ROM cartridge format for video games as well as both a central processing unit and a picture processing unit . The Family Computer , or Famicom, was released in Japan in July 1983 along with three games adapted from their original arcade versions: Donkey Kong , Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye . Its success was such that in 1984, it surpassed the market share held by Sega 's SG-1000 . That success also led to Nintendo leaving

516-430: A niche market , the slow and expensive manufacturing process, high product price, alongside long durability of the cards, which impacted sales due to the low replacement rate. As a solution, Nintendo produced a cheaper and lower-quality line of playing cards, Tengu , while also conducting product offerings in other cities such as Osaka , where card game profits were high. In addition, local merchants were interested in

645-469: A pinball game in Microsoft Word . Since 2002, Microsoft does not allow any hidden or undocumented code as part of its trustworthy computing initiative. The Debian operating system's package tool apt-get has an Easter egg involving an ASCII cow when variants on apt-get moo are typed into the shell. An Easter egg is found on all Microsoft Windows operating systems before XP . In

774-734: A " logic bomb " could also bypass testing. Kabay asserts that this undermined the Trusted Computing Base , a paradigm of trustworthy hardware and software in place since the 1980s, and is of concern wherever personal or confidential information is stored, as this may then be vulnerable to damage or manipulation. Microsoft created some of the largest and most elaborate Easter eggs, such as those in Microsoft Office . In 2005, Larry Osterman of Microsoft acknowledged Microsoft Easter eggs, and his involvement in development of one, but described them as "irresponsible", and wrote that

903-597: A 180°-swivel front-facing camera that allowed users to capture selfies . Its images can be printed to thermal paper with the Game Boy Printer . The GBC's cartridge contains minigames based on Nintendo's early games such as the arcade video game Space Fever and the Game & Watch handheld game Ball , and a chiptune music sequencer ; photographers have embraced its technological limitations as artistic challenges. The Game Boy Camera (GBC) interfaces with

1032-557: A 28% stake in PUX Corporation, a subsidiary of Panasonic , to develop facial , voice , and text recognition for its video games. Due to a 30% decrease in company income between April and December 2013, Iwata announced a temporary 50% cut to his salary, with other executives seeing reductions by 20%–30%. In January 2015, Nintendo ceased operations in the Brazilian market due in part to high import duties . This did not affect

1161-490: A 75% increase in income compared to the previous fiscal year, mainly contributed by the Nintendo Switch Online service. The year saw some changes to the company's management: outside director Naoki Mizutani retired from the board, and was replaced by Asa Shinkawa; and Yoshiaki Koizumi was promoted to senior executive officer, maintaining its role as deputy general manager of Nintendo EPD. By August, Nintendo

1290-728: A Tokyo branch in Chiyoda, Tokyo , and sold more than 1.5 million card packs, holding a high market share , for which it relied on televised advertising campaigns. In 1962, Nintendo became a public company by listing stock on the second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange and the Kyoto Stock Exchange. In the following year, the company adopted its current name, Nintendo & Co., Ltd. and started manufacturing games in addition to playing cards. In 1964, Nintendo earned ¥150 million . Although

1419-543: A character named Loo-Kee who typically appeared once per episode, hidden in a single screenshot. At the end of the episode, the screenshot would be shown again and Loo-Kee would challenge viewers to locate him before revealing his hiding place. Adventure Time also had a character known as The Snail that was hidden in almost every episode of the show. More recent broadcast media, where viewers have access to high-resolution digital copies or streaming services, may include further Easter eggs that can only be found by freezing

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1548-640: A character's room. Similarly, a programmer included the whole of TimeSplitters 2 (2002) within Homefront: The Revolution (2016), accessed by using a special code at an in-game arcade cabinet. Other Easter eggs originated unintentionally. The Konami Code , a type of cheat code , became an intentional Easter egg in most games, but it originated from Konami's Gradius (1985) for the Nintendo Entertainment System . The programmer, Kazuhisa Hashimoto , created

1677-670: A few Easter eggs , some of which have been described as "creepy", When The developers made disturbing pictures with it. Nintendo reportedly had plans to release a successor to the Game Boy Camera for the Game Boy Advance called the GameEye which would take color photos and feature connectivity with the GameCube through a game titled Stage Debut , but neither the GameEye nor Stage Debut were released. Initially,

1806-524: A financial crisis for the company. To try to find a more successful game, they put Miyamoto in charge of their next arcade game design, leading to the release of Donkey Kong in 1981, one of the first platform video games that allowed the player character to jump. The character Jumpman would later become Mario and Nintendo's official mascot . Mario was named after Mario Segale , the landlord of Nintendo's offices in Tukwila, Washington . Donkey Kong

1935-601: A hidden action game similar to Doom (1993) called The Hall of Tortured Souls . The Google search engine famously contains many Easter eggs , given to the user in response to certain search queries. Steve Jobs banned Easter eggs from Apple products upon his return to the company. The first Easter egg to appear after his death is in a 2012 update to the Mac App Store for OS X Mountain Lion , in which downloaded apps are temporarily timestamped as "24 January 1984",

2064-622: A homage to Nintendo's previous name - Marufuku. In April 2020, Reuters reported that ValueAct Capital had acquired over 2.6 million shares in Nintendo stock worth US$ 1.1 billion over the course of a year, giving them an overall stake of 2% in Nintendo. Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused delays in the production and distribution of some of Nintendo's products, the situation "had limited impact on business results"; in May 2020, Nintendo reported

2193-503: A hybrid design as a home and handheld console, Joy-Con controllers that each contain an accelerometer and gyroscope, and the simultaneous wireless networking of up to eight consoles. To expand its library, Nintendo entered alliances with several third-party and independent developers; by February 2019, more than 1,800 Switch games had been released. Worldwide sales of the Switch exceeded 55 million units by March 2020. In April 2018,

2322-565: A long-time employee of the company. Yokoi was moved to the newly created department and was responsible for coordinating various projects. Yokoi's experience in manufacturing electronic devices led Yamauchi to put him in charge of the company's games department, and his products would be mass-produced. During this period, Nintendo built a new production plant in Uji , just outside of Kyoto, and distributed classic tabletop games such as chess , shogi , go , and mahjong , and other foreign games under

2451-865: A million units were sold. Nintendo partnered with Magnavox to provide a light gun controller based on the Beam Gun design for the company's new home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey , in 1971. Other popular toys released at the time included the Ultra Hand , the Ultra Machine , the Ultra Scope, and the Love Tester , all designed by Yokoi. More than 1.2 million units of Ultra Hand were sold in Japan. The growing demand for Nintendo's products led Yamauchi to further expand

2580-460: A new department focused on arcade game development was created. In 1980, one of the first handheld video game systems , the Game & Watch , was created by Yokoi from the technology used in portable calculators. It became one of Nintendo's most successful products, with over 43.4 million units sold worldwide during its production period, and for which 59 games were made in total. Nintendo entered

2709-416: A partnership with The Walt Disney Company to incorporate its characters into playing cards, which opened it up to the children's market and resulted in a boost to Nintendo's playing card business. Nintendo automated the production of Japanese playing cards using backing paper, and also developed a distribution system that allowed it to offer its products in toy stores. By 1961, the company had established

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2838-440: A perceived slight. Easter eggs in video games take a variety of forms, from purely ornamental screens to aesthetic enhancements that change some element of the game during play. The Easter egg included in the original Age of Empires (1997) is an example of the latter; catapult projectiles are changed from stones to cows. More elaborate Easter eggs include secret levels and developers' rooms—fully functional, hidden areas of

2967-436: A player moves their avatar over a specific pixel (dubbed the "Gray Dot") during a certain part of the game and enters a previously "forbidden" part of the map where the message can be found. When Robinett left Atari, he did not inform the company of the acknowledgment that he included in the game. Shortly after his departure, the "Gray Dot" and his message were discovered by a player. Atari's management initially wanted to remove

3096-560: A reference to the Monty Python Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook skit; " exit %xb70 " returns the message "%SYSTEM-W-FISH, my hovercraft is full of eels" while " exit %x34b4 " returns a reference to an early Internet meme : "%SYSTEM-F-GAMEOVER, All your base are belong to us ". Easter eggs in the 1997 version of Microsoft Office include a hidden flight simulator in Microsoft Excel and

3225-550: A result of introducing programming tricks to get around some of the difficulty they had in getting Sega's strict certification for their games, catching any exceptions during execution to bring the game back to a usable state as to pass certification. For example, hitting the side of the Sonic 3D Blast (1996) cartridge while it is slotted in the console will bring the game back to the Level Select screen, which Burton explains

3354-472: A strategic alliance to develop the Nintendo 64 . NEC , Toshiba , and Sharp also contributed technology to the console. The Nintendo 64 was marketed as one of the first consoles to be designed with 64-bit architecture. As part of an agreement with Midway Games , the arcade games Killer Instinct and Cruis'n USA were ported to the console. Although the Nintendo 64 was planned for release in 1995,

3483-565: A three-dimensional environment with the aid of a sensor bar; the Nunchuk peripheral that includes an analog controller and an accelerometer; and the Wii MotionPlus expansion that increases the sensitivity of the main controller with the aid of gyroscopes . By 2016, more than 101 million Wii consoles had been sold worldwide, making it the most successful console of its generation, a distinction that Nintendo had not achieved since

3612-510: Is "another signifier of artistry in the world of DVD supplements." According to American film critics James Berardinelli and Roger Ebert , most DVDs do not contain them and most examples are "inconsequential", but a few, such as the one found on the Memento DVD release, are "worth the effort to seek out". Unlike DVDs and computer games, broadcast radio and television programs contain no executable code. Easter eggs may still appear in

3741-478: Is a limited edition gold themed for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , which contains unique stamps, and was available only in the United States through a mail-order offer from Nintendo Power . In September 2020, information was leaked of an unreleased Hello Kitty version of the camera. The camera is controlled, images are manipulated, and minigames are played by Game Boy software running from

3870-411: Is commonly assumed to mean "leave luck to heaven", but the assumption lacks historical validation; it has also been suggested to mean "the temple of free hanafuda ", but even descendants of Yamauchi do not know the true intended meaning of the name. Hanafuda cards had become popular after Japan banned most forms of gambling in 1882, though tolerated hanafuda. Sales of hanafuda cards were popular with

3999-758: Is compatible with all of the Game Boy line except Game Boy Micro . Video output is possible via the Super Game Boy for the Super NES and the Game Boy Player for the GameCube . The camera has a 128×128 pixel CMOS sensor, and can store 128×112, grayscale digital images using the 4-color palette of the Game Boy system. The Game Boy Camera line has five different standard colors of models: blue, green, red, yellow, and clear purple (Japan only). There

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4128-452: Is in the 1973 video game Moonlander , in which the player tries to land a Lunar module on the Moon; if the player opts to fly the module horizontally through several of the game's screens, they encounter a McDonald's restaurant, and if they land next to it, the astronaut will visit it instead of standing next to the ship. The earliest known Easter egg in software in general is one placed in

4257-617: Is internationally recognized, as well as other characters like Donkey Kong , Link , Samus Aran , Kirby , and Pikachu . The company has sold more than 5.592 billion video games and over 836 million hardware units globally, as of March 2023. Nintendo has multiple subsidiaries in Japan and abroad, in addition to business partners such as HAL Laboratory , Intelligent Systems , Game Freak , and The Pokémon Company . Nintendo and its staff have received awards including Emmy Awards for Technology & Engineering , Game Awards , Game Developers Choice Awards , and British Academy Games Awards . It

4386-549: Is one of the wealthiest and most valuable companies in the Japanese market. Nintendo was founded as Nintendo Koppai on 23 September 1889 by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto , Japan, as an unincorporated establishment, to produce and distribute Japanese playing cards , or karuta ( かるた , from Portuguese carta , 'card') , most notably hanafuda ( 花札 , 'flower cards') . The name "Nintendo"

4515-605: Is selected on the CONFIG menu. In the second and third hardware revision of the Minolta Dynax/Maxxum/Alpha 9 (introduced in 1998) SLR camera, including all SSM/ADI upgraded bodies (since 2003), an undocumented button sequence can be utilized to reconfigure the camera to behave like the Dynax/Maxxum/Alpha 9Ti (1999) and subsequently invoke support for the limited model's extra functions also in

4644-533: Is the Nintendo Entertainment System , or NES, which was released in North America in 1985. The landmark games Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda were produced by Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka . Composer Koji Kondo reinforced the idea that musical themes could act as a complement to game mechanics rather than simply a miscellaneous element. Production of the NES lasted until 1995, and production of

4773-691: Is the pro controller for the Nintendo Switch , on the controller's motherboard , if a player holds down on the right stick and looks closely into the transparent plastic surrounding its socket while shining a light on it, there is a hidden message that reads "THX2ALLGAMEFANS!". The message was discovered by Japanese Twitter user Geo Stream on March 4, 2017, one day after the Switch's launch. American comic book artists are known to include hidden messages in their art: Easter eggs are found on films, DVDs , and Blu-ray Discs , often as deleted scenes or bonus features. Klinger states that their presence

4902-465: Is the default exception handling for any unidentified processor error, such as when connectivity between the cartridge and the console's microprocessor is temporarily lost. In computer software , Easter eggs are secret responses that occur as a result of an undocumented set of commands. The results can vary from a simple printed message or image to a page of programmer credits or a small video game hidden inside an otherwise serious piece of software. In

5031-685: The 128-bit Gekko processor and the DVD drive to be used in Nintendo's next home console. Meanwhile, a series of administrative changes occurred in 2000 when Nintendo's corporate offices were moved to the Minami-ku neighborhood in Kyoto, and Nintendo Benelux was established to manage the Dutch and Belgian territories. In 2001, two new Nintendo consoles were introduced: the Game Boy Advance , which

5160-715: The 1973 oil crisis caused both a spike in the cost of plastics and a change in consumer priorities that put essential products over pastimes, and Nintendo lost several billion yen. In 1974, Nintendo released Wild Gunman , a skeet shooting arcade simulation consisting of a 16 mm image projector with a sensor that detects a beam from the player's light gun . Both the Laser Clay Shooting System and Wild Gunman were successfully exported to Europe and North America. However, Nintendo's production speeds were still slow compared to rival companies such as Bandai and Tomy , and their prices were high, which led to

5289-532: The CD-i , and Sony's independent efforts resulted in the creation of the PlayStation console . The first issue of Nintendo Power magazine, which had an annual circulation of 1.5 million copies in the United States, was published in 1988. In July 1989, Nintendo held the first Nintendo Space World trade show with the name Shoshinkai to announce and demonstrate upcoming Nintendo products. That year,

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5418-535: The Game Boy Advance SP , an improved version of the Game Boy Advance with a foldable case, an illuminated display, and a rechargeable battery. By the end of its production cycle in 2010, over 43.5 million units had been sold worldwide. Nintendo also released the Game Boy Player , a peripheral that allows Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games to be played on the GameCube. In 2004, Nintendo released

5547-522: The Game Boy Color was released. In addition to backward compatibility with Game Boy games, the console's similar capacity to the NES resulted in select adaptations of games from that library, such as Super Mario Bros. Deluxe . Since then, over 118.6 million Game Boy and Game Boy Color consoles have been sold worldwide. In May 1999, with the advent of the PlayStation 2 , Nintendo entered an agreement with IBM and Panasonic to develop

5676-401: The Game Boy Printer , which utilizes thermal paper to print saved images. Both the camera and the printer were marketed by Nintendo as light-hearted entertainment devices aimed mainly at children in all three major video game regions of the world: Japan, North America, and Europe. N64 Magazine (which has since been superseded by NGamer ) dedicated a monthly section to the device. The GBC

5805-534: The Kee Games label and include changes to the hardware that make the game appear different from the Atari version. Anti-Aircraft II (1975) includes a means to modify the circuit board to make the airplanes in the game appear as alien UFOs. Fries surmises that this feature may have been intended for a Kee Games release. For this reason, and because it requires a hardware modification, Fries questions whether it meets

5934-494: The Nintendo 2DS , a version of the 3DS that lacks the clamshell design of Nintendo's previous handheld consoles and the stereoscopic effects of the 3DS. With 13.5 million units sold worldwide, the Wii U is the least successful video game console in Nintendo's history. In 2014, a new product line was released consisting of figures of Nintendo characters called amiibos . On 25 September 2013, Nintendo announced its acquisition of

6063-636: The Nintendo DS , which featured such innovations as dual screens – one of which is a touchscreen – and wireless connectivity for multiplayer play. Throughout its lifetime, more than 154 million units were sold, making it the most successful handheld console and the second bestselling console in history. In 2005, Nintendo released the Game Boy Micro , the last system in the Game Boy line . Sales did not meet Nintendo's expectations, with 2.5 million units being sold by 2007. In mid-2005,

6192-754: The Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Since then, Nintendo has produced some of the most successful consoles in the video game industry , such as the Game Boy , the Super Nintendo Entertainment System , the Nintendo DS , the Wii , and the Nintendo Switch . It has created or published numerous major franchises, including Mario , Donkey Kong , The Legend of Zelda , Metroid , Fire Emblem , Kirby , Star Fox , Pokémon , Super Smash Bros. , Animal Crossing , Pikmin , Xenoblade Chronicles , and Splatoon , and Nintendo's mascot, Mario ,

6321-668: The Nintendo Labo line was released, consisting of cardboard accessories that interact with the Switch and the Joy-Con controllers. More than one million units of the Nintendo Labo Variety Kit were sold in its first year on the market. In 2018, Shuntaro Furukawa replaced Kimishima as company president, and in 2019, Doug Bowser succeeded Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé . In April 2019, Nintendo formed an alliance with Tencent to distribute

6450-665: The Nintendo World Store was inaugurated in New York City. Nintendo's next home console was conceived in 2001, although development commenced in 2003, taking inspiration from the Nintendo DS. Nintendo also considered the relative failure of the GameCube and instead opted to take a " Blue Ocean Strategy " by developing a reduced performance console in contrast to the high-performance consoles of Sony and Microsoft to avoid directly competing with them. The Wii

6579-566: The Sharp Corporation . In 1988, Gunpei Yokoi and his team at Nintendo R&D1 conceived the Game Boy , the first handheld video game console made by Nintendo. Nintendo released the Game Boy in 1989. In North America, the Game Boy was bundled with the popular third-party game Tetris after a difficult negotiation process with Elektronorgtechnica . The Game Boy was a significant success. In its first two weeks of sale in Japan, its initial inventory of 300,000 units sold out, and in

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6708-649: The TOPS-10 operating system (for the DEC PDP-10 mainframe computer ), the make command is used to invoke the TECO editor to create a file. If given the file name argument love , so that the command reads make love , it will pause and respond not war? before creating the file. The Easter egg was added sometime between October 1967 and October 1968 by William F. Weiher at the Stanford AI Lab to

6837-605: The Taishō era dated to 1915 indicates that the business was named Yamauchi Nintendo but still used the Marufuku Nintendo Co. brand for its playing cards. Japanese culture stipulated that for Nintendo to continue as a family business after Yamauchi's retirement, Yamauchi had to adopt his son-in-law so that he could take over the business. As a result, Sekiryo Kaneda adopted the Yamauchi surname in 1907 and headed

6966-414: The arcade video game market with Sheriff and Radar Scope , released in Japan in 1979 and 1980 respectively. Sheriff , also known as Bandido in some regions, marked the first original video game made by Nintendo, was published by Sega and developed by Genyo Takeda and Shigeru Miyamoto . Radar Scope rivaled Galaxian in Japanese arcades but failed to find an audience overseas and created

7095-450: The iOS and Android systems, Miitomo , was released. Since then, Nintendo has produced other similar apps, such as Super Mario Run , Fire Emblem Heroes , Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp , Mario Kart Tour , and Pokémon Go , the last being developed by Niantic and having generated $ 115 million in revenue for Nintendo. In March 2016, the loyalty program My Nintendo replaced Club Nintendo . The NES Classic Edition

7224-467: The motherboards . The 500 says " B52/Rock Lobster ", the 600 says " June Bug ", and the 1200 says " Channel Z ". The Amiga OS software contains hidden messages. Many integrated circuit (chip) designers have included hidden graphics elements termed chip art , including images, phrases, developer initials, logos, and more. This artwork, like the rest of the chip, is reproduced in each copy by lithography and etching . These are visible only when

7353-423: The natural environment and regional culture of Sonobe , popular culture influences like Westerns and detective fiction , along with folk Shinto practices and family media . These would each be seen in most of Nintendo's major franchises which developed following Miyamoto's creative leadership. Two key events in Nintendo's history occurred in 1979: its American subsidiary was opened in New York City, and

7482-450: The yakuza -run gaming parlors in Kyoto. Other card manufacturers had opted to leave the market not wanting to be associated with criminal ties, but Yamauchi persisted without such fears to become the primary producer of hanafuda within a few years. With the increase of the cards' popularity, Yamauchi hired assistants to mass-produce to satisfy the demand. Even with a favorable start, the business faced financial struggle due to operating in

7611-724: The "Play It Loud!" advertising campaign for Game Boys with different-colored casings. The Advanced Computer Modeling graphics used in Donkey Kong Country for the Super NES and Donkey Kong Land for the Game Boy were technologically innovative, as was the Satellaview satellite modem peripheral for the Super Famicom, which allowed the digital transmission of data via a communications satellite in space. In mid-1993, Nintendo and Silicon Graphics announced

7740-510: The "make" command for PDP-6 / PDP-10 computers sometime in October 1967–October 1968, wherein if the user attempts to create a file named "love" by typing "make love", the program responds " not war? " before proceeding. The use of the term " Easter egg " to describe secret features in video games originates from the 1980 video game Adventure for the Atari 2600 game console, programmed by

7869-408: The 1990s with the Super NES. Several accessories were released for the Wii from 2007 to 2010, such as the Wii Balance Board , the Wii Wheel and the WiiWare download service. In 2009, Nintendo Iberica S.A. expanded its commercial operations to Portugal through a new office in Lisbon . By that year, Nintendo held a 68.3% share of the worldwide handheld gaming market. In 2010, Nintendo celebrated

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7998-465: The 25th anniversary of Mario's debut appearance, for which certain allusive products were put on sale. The event included the release of Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition and special editions of the Nintendo DSi XL and Wii. Following an announcement in March 2010, Nintendo released the Nintendo 3DS in 2011. The console produces stereoscopic effects without 3D glasses. By 2018, more than 69 million units had been sold worldwide;

8127-502: The 3D Text screen saver , entering the text "volcano" will display the names of all the volcanoes in the United States. Microsoft removed this Easter egg in XP but added others. In Windows Vista and later, by launching a screensaver executable (introduced with Windows Vista) on the command line with the /p65552 flag, for example launching the "bubbles" screen saver with bubbles.scr /p65552 command-line parameter, it runs as desktop wallpaper . Microsoft Excel 95 contains

8256-475: The COMPIL program for the PDP-6, which was then used in the TOPS-10 operating system, making it the first Easter egg in a software program. This same behavior occurs on the RSTS/E operating system, where TECO will provide this response. Other Unix operating systems respond to " why " with " why not " (a reference to The Prisoner in Berkeley Unix , 1977). Some versions of the DEC OpenVMS operating system have concealed exit status codes, including

8385-464: The European release of the GameCube in May 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi announced his resignation as the president of Nintendo, and Satoru Iwata was selected by the company as his successor. Yamauchi would remain as advisor and director of the company until 2005, and he died in 2013. Iwata's appointment as president ended the Yamauchi succession at the helm of the company, a practice that had been in place since its foundation. In 2003, Nintendo released

8514-403: The Famicom in America was also impacted. To differentiate the Famicom from its competitors in America, Nintendo rebranded it as an entertainment system and its cartridges as Game Paks, with a design reminiscent of a VCR . Nintendo implemented a lockout chip in the Game Paks for control on its third party library to avoid the market saturation that had occurred in the United States. The result

8643-495: The Famicom lasted until 2003. In total, around 62 million Famicom and NES consoles were sold worldwide. During this period, Nintendo created a copyright infringement protection in the form of the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality, added to their products so that customers may recognize their authenticity in the market. By this time, Nintendo's network of electronic suppliers had extended to around thirty companies, including Ricoh (Nintendo's main source for semiconductors ) and

8772-430: The Famicom. In the early 1980s, several video game consoles proliferated in the United States, as well as low-quality games produced by third-party developers , which oversaturated the market and led to the video game crash of 1983 . Consequently, a recession hit the American video game industry , whose revenues went from over $ 3 billion to $ 100 million between 1983 and 1985. Nintendo's initiative to launch

8901-410: The Game Boy Camera was not well received within Nintendo. However, Masato Kuwahara approached Creatures, Inc. President Hirokazu Tanaka regarding the development of the software for the device, which solidified the project. The camera's built-in software was co-developed by Nintendo Research & Development 1 and the Japanese company Jupiter , with Tanaka directing the project. The Game Boy Camera

9030-429: The GameCube, even with such distinguishing features as the miniDVD format of its games and Internet connectivity for a few games, its sales were lower than those of its predecessors, and during the six years of its production, 21.7 million units were sold worldwide. The GameCube struggled against its rivals in the market, and its initial poor sales led to Nintendo posting a first half fiscal year loss in 2003 for

9159-430: The Internet through Randnet . Third-party vendors have reverse engineered the GBC system to create modern transfer methods such as USB , SD cards and Wi-Fi . The GBC cartridge's software has numerous references to other Nintendo products. There are a few differences between the North American and Japanese versions, including the unlockable B album pictures and the stamps that can be placed on pictures. The software has

9288-459: The Japanese arcade market in late 1985. At this time, Nintendo adopted a series of guidelines that involved the validation of each game produced for the Famicom before its distribution on the market, agreements with developers to ensure that no Famicom game would be adapted to other consoles within two years of its release, and restricting developers from producing more than five games per year for

9417-764: The NES. In response to the competition, Uemura designed the Super Famicom , which launched in 1990. The first batch of 300,000 consoles sold out in hours. The following year, as with the NES, Nintendo distributed a modified version of the Super Famicom to the United States market, titled the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Launch games for the Super Famicom and Super NES include Super Mario World , F-Zero , Pilotwings , SimCity , and Gradius III . By mid-1992, over 46 million Super Famicom and Super NES consoles had been sold. The console's life cycle lasted until 1999 in

9546-790: The Nintendo Switch in China starting in December. The theme park area Super Nintendo World opened at Universal Studios Japan in 2021. In early 2020, Plan See Do, a hotel and restaurant development company, announced that it would refurbish the former Nintendo headquarters from the 1930s as a hotel, with plans to add 20 guest rooms, a restaurant, a bar, and a gym. The building is owned by Yamauchi Co., Ltd., an asset management company of Nintendo's founding family. The hotel later opened in April 2022, with 18 guest rooms, and named Marufukuro in

9675-643: The Nippon Game brand. The company's restructuring preserved a couple of areas dedicated to playing card manufacturing. In 1970, the company's stock listing was promoted to the first section of the Osaka Stock Exchange, and the reconstruction and enlargement of its corporate headquarters was completed. The year represented a watershed moment in Nintendo's history as it released Japan's first electronic toy—the Beam Gun , an optoelectronic pistol designed by Masayuki Uemura . In total, more than

9804-716: The United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, and Australia. In 1992, Nintendo acquired a majority stake in the Seattle Mariners baseball team, and sold most of its shares in 2016. On July 31, 1992, Nintendo of America announced it would cease manufacturing arcade games and systems. In 1993, Star Fox was released, which marked an industry milestone by being the first video game to make use of the Super FX chip. The proliferation of graphically violent video games, such as Mortal Kombat , caused controversy and led to

9933-567: The United States, and until 2003 in Japan. In March 1990, the first Nintendo World Championship was held, with participants from 29 American cities competing for the title of "best Nintendo player in the world". In June 1990, the subsidiary Nintendo of Europe was opened in Großostheim , Germany; in 1993, subsequent subsidiaries were established in the Netherlands (where Bandai had previously distributed Nintendo's products), France,

10062-494: The United States, an additional 40,000 units were sold on its first day of distribution. Around this time, Nintendo entered an agreement with Sony to develop the Super Famicom CD-ROM Adapter , a peripheral for the upcoming Super Famicom capable of playing CD-ROMs . However, the collaboration did not last as Yamauchi preferred to continue developing the technology with Philips , which would result in

10191-578: The black model. One of HP's electronic pocket calculators , the HP-45 (introduced in 1973), has a built-in undocumented stopwatch . The firmware of HP's ScanJet 5p image scanner contains an easter egg wherein, on a cold power-on, holding down the scan button when the SCSI ID selector on the back is set to "0" will cause the ScanJet to play a rendition of Schiller 's " Ode to Joy ", by modulating

10320-547: The business in 1929. By that time, Nintendo was the largest playing card business in Japan. In 1933, Sekiryo Kaneda established the company as a general partnership named Yamauchi Nintendo & Co., Ltd. investing in the construction of a new corporate headquarters located next to the original building, near the Toba-kaidō train station . Because Sekiryo's marriage to Yamauchi's daughter produced no male heirs, he planned to adopt his son-in-law Shikanojo Inaba, an artist in

10449-562: The business styled itself as Marufuku Nintendo Card Co. The war created considerable difficulties for companies in the leisure sector, which were subject to new levies such as the Karuta Zei ("playing cards tax"). Nintendo subsisted and, in 1907, entered into an agreement with Nihon Senbai—later known as the Japan Tobacco —to market its cards to various cigarette stores throughout the country. A Nintendo promotional calendar from

10578-481: The cabinet's controls in the right order, the player can have the message "Hi Ron!" appear on the screen. Fries describes it as "the earliest arcade game yet known that clearly meets the definition of an Easter egg". The existence of this Easter egg was not published until 2017, leading Fries to suggest that, as more than one hundred arcade games predate Starship 1 , earlier Easter eggs may still be undiscovered. Fries says that some Atari arcade cabinets were resold under

10707-573: The cable, to be printed on the Game Boy Printer , copied between GBC units, or copied via the Nintendo 64 controller 's Transfer Pak to a 64DD floppy disk. The Japanese GBC is optionally integrated into the Mario Artist suite of multimedia games for the 64DD peripheral. There, users can create drawn and 3D-animated avatars of themselves based on photographs taken with the camera, integrate these personalized avatars into various 64DD games including Mario Artist and SimCity 64 , or post art on

10836-506: The camera's attached cartridge. Individual photographs can be taken and edited with features including a delay timer, time lapse, trick lenses like mirroring and scaling, montage, and panorama for stitching together component photos into one large image. The user can further edit the images by placing Nintendo's stamps, or by freehand doodles. Images can be combined as frames of an animation. Images can be interconnected with clickable hyperlinks in "hot spots" mode. Images can be transferred via

10965-693: The chip package is opened and examined under magnification. The 1984 CVAX microchip implementation of the MicroVAX CPU contains in its etchings the Russian phrase in the Cyrillic alphabet "VAX: When you care enough to steal the very best", placed there because, "knowing that some CVAXs would end up in the USSR, the team wanted the Russians to know that we were thinking of them". Another notable example

11094-639: The code as a means to rapidly debug the game by giving the player's avatar additional health and powers to easily traverse the game. These types of codes are normally removed from the game before it is shipped but, in the case of Gradius , Hashimoto forgot to remove it and the code was soon discovered by players. Its popularity inspired Konami to reuse the code and purposely retain it for many of its future games as an Easter egg. Technical issues may also create unintentional Easter eggs. Jon Burton , founder of Traveller's Tales , said that many seemingly apparent Easter eggs in their Sega Genesis games came about as

11223-500: The company was experiencing a period of economic prosperity, the Disney cards and derived products made it dependent on the children's market. The situation was exacerbated by the falling sales of its adult-oriented playing cards caused by Japanese society gravitating toward other hobbies such as pachinko , bowling , and nightly outings. When Disney card sales began to decline, Nintendo realized that it had no real alternative to alleviate

11352-641: The company's Operating System division "has a 'no Easter Eggs' policy" as part of its Trustworthy Computing initiative. In 2006, Douglas W. Jones said that while "some Easter eggs may be intentional tools used to detect illegal copying , others are clearly examples of unauthorized functionality that has slipped through the quality-control tests at the vendor". While hidden Easter eggs themselves are harmless, it may be possible for malware to be hidden in similar ways in voting machines or other computers. Netscape Navigator contributor Jamie Zawinski stated in an interview in 1998 that harmless Easter eggs impose

11481-426: The company's employ and the father of his grandson Hiroshi , born in 1927. However, Inaba abandoned his family and the company, so Hiroshi was made Sekiryo's eventual successor. World War II negatively impacted the company as Japanese authorities prohibited the diffusion of foreign card games, and as the priorities of Japanese society shifted, its interest in recreational activities waned. During this time, Nintendo

11610-435: The content itself, such as a hidden Mickey in a Disney film or a real telephone number instead of a 555 fictitious telephone number . A 2014 Super Bowl advertisement was leaked online in which a lady gives a man a real telephone number, which the advertiser had hidden as a marketing ploy; the first caller to the number received a pair of tickets to the game. The 1980s animated series She-Ra: Princess of Power featured

11739-742: The creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board , in whose development Nintendo collaborated during 1994. These measures also encouraged Nintendo to abandon the content guidelines it had enforced since the release of the NES. Commercial strategies implemented by Nintendo during this time include the Nintendo Gateway System , an in-flight entertainment service available for airlines, cruise ships and hotels, and

11868-519: The date of the sales launch of the original Macintosh . The Python programming language and its ecosystem of libraries include various Easter eggs. While computer-related Easter eggs are often found in installed software , occasionally they exist in the firmware of certain devices. On some home and early personal computers the ROM contains Easter eggs, including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, or images of

11997-555: The definition of an Easter egg. In 2004, an Easter egg displaying programmer Bradley Reid-Selth's surname was found in Video Whizball (1978), a game for the Fairchild Channel F system. Since Adventure , there has been a long history of video game developers placing Easter eggs in their games. Most Easter eggs are intentional—an attempt to communicate with the player or a way of getting even with management for

12126-592: The development team in the ROM. These Mac Easter eggs were well-publicized in the Macintosh press at the time along with the means to access them, and were later recovered by an NYC Resistor team, a hacker collective , through elaborate reverse engineering . Similarly, the Radio Shack Color Computer ;3 's ROM contains code which displays what looks like three Microware developers on

12255-566: The discontinuation of some of their light gun products. The subsidiary Nintendo Leisure System Co., Ltd., which developed these products, was closed as a result of the economic impact dealt by the oil crisis. Yamauchi, motivated by the successes of Atari and Magnavox with their video game consoles , acquired the Japanese distribution rights for the Magnavox Odyssey in 1974, and reached an agreement with Mitsubishi Electric to develop similar products between 1975 and 1978, including

12384-437: The employee Warren Robinett . At the time, Atari did not include programmers' names in the game credits, both to prevent competitors from poaching its developers as well as to deny developers a means to bargain with the management of the new owners, Warner Communications . Robinett, who disagreed with his supervisor over this lack of acknowledgment, secretly programmed the message "Created by Warren Robinett" to appear only if

12513-611: The entire development team. The palmtop PC HP 200LX (1994) includes an undocumented hex calculator HEXCALC.EXM . The built-in maze game "Lair of Squid" incorporates a hidden gallery of the software developers. In test mode it displays several poems. Other notable examples include some versions of the AMI BIOS that on 13 November 1993, proceeded to play "Happy Birthday" via the PC speaker repeatedly instead of booting , as well as several early Apple Macintosh models that have photos of

12642-525: The figure increased to 75 million by the start of 2019. In 2011, Nintendo celebrated the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda with the orchestra concert tour The Legend of Zelda : Symphony of the Goddesses and the video game The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword . In 2012 and 2013, two new Nintendo game consoles were introduced: the Wii U , with high-definition graphics and a GamePad controller with near-field communication technology, and

12771-727: The first microprocessor for video games systems, the Color TV-Game series, and an arcade game inspired by Othello . During this period, Takeda developed the video game EVR Race , and Shigeru Miyamoto joined Yokoi's team with the responsibility of designing the casing for the Color TV-Game consoles. In 1978, Nintendo's research and development department was split into two facilities, Nintendo Research & Development 1 and Nintendo Research & Development 2 , respectively managed by Yokoi and Uemura. Shigeru Miyamoto brought distinctive sources of inspiration, including

12900-418: The first World of Nintendo stores-within-a-store , which carried official Nintendo merchandise, were opened in the United States. According to company information, more than 25% of homes in the United States had an NES in 1989. In the late 1980s, Nintendo's dominance slipped with the appearance of NEC 's PC Engine and Sega 's Mega Drive , 16-bit game consoles with improved graphics and audio compared to

13029-498: The first company to succeed in mass-producing plastic playing cards in Japan. Some of the company's employees, accustomed to a more cautious and conservative leadership, viewed the new measures with concern, and the rising tension led to a call for a strike . However, the measure had no major impact, as Hiroshi resorted to the dismissal of several dissatisfied workers. In 1959, Nintendo moved its headquarters to Kamitakamatsu-cho, Fukuine, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto. The company entered into

13158-481: The first text adventure game, Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), from which Adventure was fashioned, which includes several secret words. One of these is " xyzzy ", a command which enables the player to move between two points in the game world. According to research by Ed Fries , one of the earliest Easter eggs in a graphical video games could be found in Starship 1 (1977), programmed by Ron Milner. By triggering

13287-459: The first time since the company went public in 1962. In 2002, the Pokémon Mini was released. Its dimensions were smaller than that of the Game Boy Advance and it weighed 70 grams, making it the smallest video game console in history. Nintendo collaborated with Sega and Namco to develop Triforce , an arcade board to facilitate the conversion of arcade titles to the GameCube. Following

13416-519: The game. Developers' rooms often include inside jokes from the fandom or development team and differ from a debug room in that they are specifically intended for the player to find. Some games even include hidden minigames as Easter eggs. In the LucasArts game Day of the Tentacle (1993), the original Maniac Mansion (1987) game can be played in its full version by using a home computer in

13545-591: The greatest of all time . In 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy , a console designed by Gunpei Yokoi with stereoscopic graphics . Critics were generally disappointed with the quality of the games and red-colored graphics, and complained of gameplay-induced headaches. The system sold poorly and was quietly discontinued. Amid the system's failure, Yokoi formally retired from Nintendo. In February 1996, Pocket Monsters Red and Green , known internationally as Pokémon Red and Blue , developed by Game Freak

13674-589: The message and release the game again, until this was deemed too costly. Instead, Steve Wright, the Director of Software Development in the Atari Consumer Division, suggested that they keep the message and, in fact, encourage the inclusion of such messages in future games, describing them as Easter eggs for consumers to find. While Robinett's message in Adventure led to the first use of

13803-407: The offices, for which he acquired the surrounding land and assigned the production of cards to the original Nintendo building. Meanwhile, Yokoi, Uemura, and new employees such as Genyo Takeda , continued to develop innovative products for the company. The Laser Clay Shooting System was released in 1973 and managed to surpass bowling in popularity. Though Nintendo's toys continued to gain popularity,

13932-450: The photographed environment. As well as using the Game Boy printer within his practice. A PhD student performed astrophotography of scenes including Jupiter, through academic telescopes using GBC. In 2017, a research engineer developed a neural network application to automatically convert GBC monochrome images into color images. Several modern smartphone apps have modes to simulate GBC image quality. In 2016, an Instagram artist included

14061-489: The phrase "Easter egg", Easter eggs were included in previous video games. The earliest known video game Easter egg is in Moonlander (1973), in which the player tries to land a spaceship on the Moon. If the player flies far enough horizontally, they encounter a McDonald's restaurant, and if they land next to it, an astronaut will visit it instead of standing next to the ship. Other early known Easter eggs include one in

14190-498: The presidency and headed manufacturing operations. His first actions involved several important changes in the operation of the company: in 1951, he changed the company name to Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd. and in the following year, he centralized the manufacturing facilities dispersed in Kyoto, which led to the expansion of the offices in Kamitakamatsu-cho, Fukuine, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto. In 1953, Nintendo became

14319-680: The production schedules of third-party developers influenced a delay, and the console was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in the United States and March 1997 in Europe. By the end of its production in 2002, around 33 million Nintendo 64 consoles were sold worldwide, and it is considered one of the most recognized video game systems in history. 388 games were produced for the Nintendo 64 in total, some of which – particularly Super Mario 64 , The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , and GoldenEye 007 – have been distinguished as some of

14448-510: The prospect of continuous renewal of decks, thus avoiding the suspicions that reusing cards would generate. According to Nintendo, the business' first western-style card deck was put on the market in 1902, although other documents postpone the date to 1907, shortly after the Russo-Japanese War . Although the cards were initially meant for export, they quickly gained popularity not only abroad but also in Japan. During this time,

14577-539: The rest of Nintendo's Latin American market due to an alliance with Juegos de Video Latinoamérica. Nintendo reached an agreement with NC Games for Nintendo's products to resume distribution in Brazil by 2017, and by September 2020, the Switch was released in Brazil. On 11 July 2015, Iwata died of bile duct cancer , and after a couple of months in which Miyamoto and Takeda jointly operated the company, Tatsumi Kimishima

14706-495: The show at certain points. In the anthology series Black Mirror , the producers have included Easter eggs that reference past episodes, or tie into future episodes, as a means of loosely tying together all episodes into a single Black Mirror universe. The Netflix series Stranger Things had a real-world Easter Egg where a pizza delivery van featured in the show's fourth season had the phone number (805) 45-PIZZA shown on its side. If that number, which translated to 805-457-4992

14835-418: The situation. After the 1964 Tokyo Olympics , Nintendo's stock price plummeted to its lowest recorded level of ¥60 . In 1965, Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi to maintain the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its playing cards. Yamauchi's experience with the previous initiatives led him to increase Nintendo's investment in a research and development department in 1969, directed by Hiroshi Imanishi,

14964-457: The speed of the audible stepper motor drive to produce specific pitches. The Commodore Amiga 1000 computer includes the signatures of the design and development team embossed on the inside of the case, including Jay Miner and the paw print of his dog, Mitchy. The Commodore Amiga models 500, 600, and 1200 each feature Easter eggs in the form of song titles by the B-52's as white printing on

15093-483: The vintage GBC hardware in his repertoire of high-technology stylized filters, creating a new gallery dedicated only to GBC photography, because its primitive camera "forces you to find a way to take beautiful pictures". Nintendo Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto . It develops, publishes and releases both video games and video game consoles . Nintendo

15222-593: Was a financial success for Nintendo both in Japan and overseas, and led Coleco to fight Atari for licensing rights for porting to home consoles and personal computers. In 1983, Nintendo opened a new production facility in Uji and was listed in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange . Uemura, taking inspiration from the ColecoVision , began creating a new video game console that would incorporate

15351-412: Was designed by Gwénaël Nicolas with stylistic departure from its predecessors, and the GameCube . During the first week of the Game Boy Advance's North American release in June 2001, over 500,000 units were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game console in the United States at the time. By the end of its production cycle in 2010, more than 81.5 million units had been sold worldwide. As for

15480-412: Was dialed, it led to a special message from Argyle, the fictional restaurant's delivery driver. Security author Michel E. Kabay discussed security concerns of Easter eggs in 2000, saying that, while software quality assurance requires that all code be tested, it is not known whether Easter eggs are. He said that, as they tend to be held as programming secrets from the rest of the product testing process,

15609-406: Was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Koppai by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business during the 1960s and acquiring legal status as a public company, Nintendo distributed its first console, the Color TV-Game , in 1977. It gained international recognition with the release of Donkey Kong in 1981 and

15738-467: Was launched with an initial MSRP of US$ 49.95. The Camera sold close to 500,000 units in its first three weeks of availability in Japan. As one of the earliest consumer digital cameras, the GBC has been legitimized for user-generated content , especially photography. Modern computer connectivity has required experimentation for image retrieval. The cover art of Neil Young 's 2000 album Silver & Gold

15867-643: Was named as Iwata's successor on 16 September 2015. As part of the management's restructuring, Miyamoto and Takeda were respectively named creative and technological advisors. The financial losses caused by the Wii U, along with Sony's intention to release its video games to other platforms such as smart TVs , motivated Nintendo to rethink its strategy concerning the production and distribution of its properties. In 2015, Nintendo formalized agreements with DeNA and Universal Parks & Resorts to extend its presence to smart devices and amusement parks respectively. In March 2016, Nintendo's first mobile app for

15996-445: Was named the richest company in Japan. In June 2021, the company announced plans to convert its former Uji Ogura plant, where it had manufactured playing and hanafuda cards, into a museum tentatively named "Nintendo Gallery", targeted to open by March 2024. In the following year, historic remains of a Yayoi period village were discovered in the construction site. Easter egg (media) The earliest known video game Easter egg

16125-522: Was partly supported by a financial injection from Hiroshi's wife Michiko Inaba, who came from a wealthy family. In 1947, Sekiryo founded the distribution company Marufuku Co., Ltd. responsible for Nintendo's sales and marketing operations, which would eventually go on to become the present-day Nintendo Co., Ltd., in Higashikawara-cho, Imagumano, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto . In 1950, due to Sekiryo's deteriorating health, Hiroshi Yamauchi assumed

16254-472: Was released in Japan for the Game Boy, and established the popular Pokémon franchise. The game went on to sell 31.37 million units, with the video game series exceeding a total of 300 million units in sales as of 2017. In 1997, Nintendo released the Rumble Pak , a plug-in device that connects to the Nintendo 64 controller and produces a vibration during certain moments of a game. In 1998,

16383-589: Was released in November 2006, with a total of 33 launch games. With the Wii, Nintendo sought to reach a broader demographic than its seventh-generation competitors, with the intention of also encompassing the "non-consumer" sector. To this end, Nintendo invested in a $ 200 million advertising campaign. The Wii's innovations include the Wii Remote controller, equipped with an accelerometer system and infrared sensors that allow it to detect its position in

16512-623: Was released in November 2016. The console is a version of the NES based on emulation, HDMI , and the Wii remote. Its successor, the Super NES Classic Edition , was released in September 2017. By October 2018, around ten million units of both consoles combined had been sold worldwide. The Wii U's successor in the eighth generation of video game consoles , the Nintendo Switch , was released in March 2017. The Switch features

16641-445: Was taken using a Game Boy Camera. In 2000, a professional photographer created a color workflow similar to the world's earliest color photography, to process GBC's grayscale photos through red, green, and blue filters to produce a color photograph. An artist using a Game Boy Camera and three colour process has developed a series of works since 2012, focussing on how the interplay between what the abstracted images reveal and conceal about

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