This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

When you hear the word Nintendo, we reckon it’s a pretty safe bet that you think of that iconic word encircled in a bold oval. As it turns out though, there were some at Nintendo of America who wanted to freshen up that logo a little, maybe even change it completely.

During an appearance on the Present Value podcast, former NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that the marketing department at Nintendo of America were toying with redesigns when he first arrived at the company. Needless to say, the Regginator soon put a stop to that:

“From a branding standpoint, we had to be clear in what Nintendo as a brand stood for, as well as what the individual franchises stood for. I’ll give you an example. When I joined Nintendo, there was a sense of almost shame that Nintendo appealed to young consumers, and the marketing team at Nintendo of America started doing things with the logo – that classic Nintendo logo in an oval – they would put it into graffiti style, or they’d do different things to try and age up the logo, and I put a stop to that because that is not our brand.
And what we needed to do was yes, appeal to a broad swatch of consumers, but we needed to do it based on what the brand stood for, and not doing it in some false way. Systemically, we went through and cleaned up the presentation of the brand, but we also created messaging coupled with content that really broadened the reach, broadened the appeal, and set the stage for all of the great products we would launch like Wii, like Wii Fit, and eventually the Nintendo Switch.”

Ironically, the Nintendo logo kind of disappeared a little during the Wii era, with that system officially known as ‘Wii’ as opposed to ‘Nintendo Wii’ a la ‘Nintendo Gamecube’ or ‘Nintendo Switch’. The grey variant was used much more too. Personally, I’m happy Nintendo have reverted to their bold red with the Switch, and am very glad they didn’t go with a graffiti style logo all those years ago.

What do you think? Is the logo too iconic to change now, or do you think it could do with a refresh. Let us know below!

Source: Nintendo Everything