Remember the Game Boy?
In the 1991 Gulf War, a soldier had a Game Boy in his barracks & then all of a sudden here comes a mortar attack!
The troops had to scramble including the Game Boy owner leaving his Game Boy behind in the process.
The soldier later discovered that his Game Boy somehow survived the attack & was STILL WORKING!
Charred up & melted yet still playing the very same Tetris cartridge it was playing before it was bombed!
Soldier somewhere along the line donated the battle-worn Game Boy to Nintendo & they put it on display at their Nintendo World Store in New York City.
22 years later it STILL WORKS with that VERY SAME Tetris cartridge playing within it.
Here's the item in question.
Another example.
A few years ago G4TV decided to do a stress test on the competing consoles of the 6th generation era—Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft's XBox, & Nintendo's Gamecube.
Smashing it with heavy weights, dropping it from stories high, & hitting it with a sledgehammer.
G4TV host Morgan Webb did the hands-on testing & guess which console survived the destruction?
Another example.
Some dudes decided to drag a Nintendo Gamecube behind a car for some reason.
They wanted to see how strong the Gamecube was & how much damage it could take.
Gamecube bounced violently off the pavement, ate the grass, just damaged all around (a poster on the comment board said that another car hit the Gamecube which was edited out of the footage).
The game disc lid was loose & unhinged & it didn't look like the thing would work.
They turn it on later when they get to their house & you can guess the results (they even put a game in it).
One last example.
A site called GizmoSlip decided to do a drop test on the Wii U Gamepad, that tablet-like controller for the Wii U.
(I call it the Upad)
The GizmoSlip host dropped it at 4 foot heights from different angles. Guess what was the result.
People have come up with a catchphrase for this Nintendo phenomenon:
Nintendium.
And there are so many anecdotes of Nintendo consoles, cartridges, & discs left outside for months in the snowy cold & the drenching rains, accidentally left in clothes pockets while going through the washing machine, dropped into toilets full of water, surviving house fires yet still surviving & still working.
The site TVTropes.org has a series of entries for Nintendo under its
Tonka Tough trope.
Some of the accounts under these entries sound almost like Ripley's Belieive It Or Not level but they are all true.
It's very simple. Nintendo which started as (and still is) a playing card company also became a toy company in the 1960s.
Kids tear up stuff. We know this. So you have to make something that can stand up to the many many
innovative ways a kid can destroy an item. Good toy companies know this.
Kids make up & will always make up a major component of Nintendo's audience so their products have to stand up to a kid's abuse.
The high-tech toys known as videogames & videogame consoles fall right into line with that philosophy.
Nintendo is one of the last of the 'Maytag washer' style of companies making products today.
Those old commercials with the bored lonely Maytag repairman exampling the durability of Maytag products (at least once upon a time).
That represents Nintendo's commitment to quality. A quality they maintain in hardware as well as software.
I have Nintendo consoles from over 20 years ago & they still work as good as new top this day despite being caked in layers of dust from years of non-use.
You get your money's worth from Nintendo. They're one of the last companies in the world to actually give a damn.
And they treat their staff very well. When the company goes through a rough patch the president of the company doesn't go around firing his staff to cut costs.
HE takes the pay cut instead.
Satoru Iwata is his name, the successor to the late Hiroshi Yamauchi who transitioned Nintendo from playing cards to videogames.
Nintendo President Takes Blame for 3DS, Getting 50 Per Cent Pay Cut
Satoru Iwata Refuses to Layoff Nintendo Employees
For this reason alone, people should get behind Nintendo.
The Progressives & Democrats at this site should see Nintendo as business done RIGHT.
High quality durable products at affordable prices that last a lifetime backed by a corporate structure that values their employees & their customers.
All this talk about PlayStations & XBoxes...
Nintendo brought this videogame business back from the brink of death in the 1980s & have made it what it is today.
This is their field, this is their baby. Others will come, others will go but Nintendo will always be here like that old oak tree in the forest.
The real home console to look at is the Wii U.
John Lucas
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