Innovation or madness: Nintendo's most bizarre products

Say Nintendo, and people immediately start thinking about Pokémon, Zelda, and Mario with the accompanying Mushroom Kingdom. That's not surprising, since that's undoubtedly what they're best known for and it only seems to be getting bigger. But we should remember that Nintendo has done more than that.

I'm not talking about Donkey Kong, Kirby, or Pikmin - nor F-Zero, Punch-Out, or Pilotwings - but much stranger things. If you've been around for a long time, you're probably familiar with most of these, but here are ten or so Nintendo products of the more unexpected variety, which in many cases are difficult to imagine being developed and released today.

Nintendo Love Tester (1969)

It's easy to forget that Nintendo is a really old company that has been around for well over 100 years. That means they've only been working with video games for about a third of the time they've been active. And one of the things they released relatively shortly before they got into video games was the Love Tester. It's a way for lovesick young people to test how much they love each other. You would hold a ball, and the meter would give you a scientific (well, sort of) result. In fact, this was re-released as recently as 2010, and it's definitely one of their most unusual products.

Famicom Disk System (1986)

The year was 1986 and the NES had just been launched in the West. In Japan, the console had already been around for a few years, and Nintendo launched something called the Famicom Disk System that same year. The name is self-explanatory and consisted of a floppy disk drive for the NES. Nintendo was Nintendo even then, and opted for its own standard rather than any existing solution, but it was still a great success. The floppy disks made the games cheaper and it was often possible to save on them, which led to NES manuals occasionally stating that you could save in the games (e.g. Excite Bike), even though this was not possible.

I Am a Teacher: Super Mario Sweater (1986)

And while we're on the subject of the Famicom Disk System, I must mention I Am a Teacher: Super Mario Sweater. What lies behind this long and somewhat clumsy title? Well, Nintendo thought at the time (remember that Mario was not particularly well known at this point) that gamers with a Famicom - Japan's NES - who had invested in the disk drive needed to learn how to knit sweaters with Mario motifs. And I really have nothing more to add. Bizarre is just the first way to describe this (followed by possibly Lovely).

Pro Wrestling (1987)

Today, Nintendo stands for wholesome entertainment and is synonymous with family fun. Even though they occasionally publish slightly more violent titles, they don't produce them themselves. But Nintendo used to have a broader range. In addition to Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda, they also offered racing, sports, and wrestling. Pro Wrestling stands out from the crowd like a shining beacon, offering a very violent wrestling extravaganza with blood, headbutts, bites, backbreakers, and chokeholds. It was a very good game and one of the most violent of the NES era, which Nintendo today seems to barely want to acknowledge even exists. But we know that they can produce entertainment violence like few others... if they want to.

Power Glove (1989)

The very bizarre Power Glove was so strange even when it was released that today it has achieved cult status and in many ways feels like a kind of ground zero for American gaming culture in the 1980s. The idea was that it would replace your controller and make you one with the game, as well as replacing certain commands with motion sensitivity. The Power Glove is cool, I'll give it that, but it was totally unusable and an absurdly odd gadget.

Game Boy Camera/Printer (1998)

Today, we all walk around with a superb camera in our pocket, ready to take pictures at any time. But it hasn't always been that way. Around the time decent digital cameras started to appear, Nintendo launched a camera for the Game Boy. During this era, there were no smartphones or tablets, and it was a given that photos would be printed, so naturally, a printer was also launched. The camera was of almost unbelievably poor quality and only took small, grainy, black-and-white pictures. But it became a cult classic anyway and still has its fans today, even though the concept felt strange and outdated even when it was first released.

Mario Family (2001)

The Game Boy Color was about to be replaced by the Game Boy Advance, but there was still some life left in the trusty old device, and Nintendo took the opportunity to release Mario Family. Never heard of it? Not surprising. It was only released in Japan and involved using it with a certain type of sewing machine to create Mario patterns. It therefore has certain similarities with the aforementioned I Am a Teacher: Super Mario Sweater, but here you wouldn't learn much, just get help sewing Mario.

Nintendo e-Reader (2001)

We don't know exactly what the idea was, but in 2001 Nintendo suddenly released the e-Reader for the Game Boy Advance. It could read QR codes sold as trading cards to unlock retro games and bonus content. We don't know exactly what the plan was for this, but only a few games were released (which were stored on several QR codes that had to be scanned one by one), and in Europe it never even had an official debut. A very bizarre gadget.

Wii Music (2008)

Guitar Hero and Rock Band were hugely popular at the time, and Nintendo wanted to jump on the bandwagon. It was only two years after the launch of the Wii, whose Wii remote had already been used in all sorts of strange ways (often with rather poor results), and Nintendo was reluctant to release games that did not utilise motion sensitivity. I suppose they felt that this added value to their products. The result was Wii Music, one of the most bland titles ever released, where the Wii remote could imitate over 60 instruments, but none of them well. Basically, it was a full-priced title that let you play air guitar, and it stands as one of the most bizarre products ever.

Face Training (2010)

When the Nintendo DS update DSi was launched, Nintendo had equipped it with cameras. This felt perhaps superfluous, and Nintendo tried to find a use for them, launching Face Training in 2010 (three years earlier in Japan in a slightly different version). So what was this game about? Well, like Brain Training, it was about training something, in this case the face. The idea was that you would do exercises with your face while the substandard camera - under the supervision of beauty expert Fumiko Inudo - checked that you were doing everything right, while there were also simpler game elements. The concept was never even released in the US and can be considered useless fluff, but a rather original idea at that.

Alarmo (2024)

Yes, Nintendo continues to surprise even today, and as recently as last year, they made the collective gaming world raise their eyebrows. Out of nowhere, they announced an alarm clock, a product that today has been almost completely replaced by smartphones. It comes in a stylish Mario red colour and has features to help you fall asleep and wake up comfortably, plays music from classic Nintendo titles, and costs an unreasonable amount. A truly strange product that nevertheless cheers you up and shows that Nintendo can still surprise like few others.