Read Nintendo's Response to Kid's Super Mario Bros. 4 Pitch

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I used to write to Nintendo once or twice a year when I was a kid in the early to mid 90s. Whenever I would get stuck in a game, I would write to them for help. In all but one instance were they able to give me the info I needed to proceed.

Man...those were simpler times. I had my SNES, I had Nintendo Power, and I could go through an entire year with only two or three new games to play.

I received a similarly thoughtful letter in reply, when as a child (early-mid 90's) I sent in a letter to Nintendo asking why they didn't just team up with Sega to make the best games possible. The replier explained something about competition driving games to be better, but I didn't really get it at the time.

Aww, that's actually quite nice. Good for you, @Nintendo and your unnamed representative. Though I admit that I haven't been a big fan of the company for quite some time now, I agree with most of @Venter's sentiments. Now Ah know it's probably just a standard reply, but to be completely honest, I was actually sorta touched by it. Yup, that's how you treat people, folks. Kindness and Compassion, especially when it's not expected or required, is the kind of force that can move people and do things like nothin else can.

Last I checked, you're not supposed to start the beginning of a sentence with the word "Because".

I'm curious about the map and character designs he had.

Must be a hell of a slow news day.

Back in 1990 this would have been a big deal. Nintendo did finish Super Mario Bros 4. Super Mario World. The original Super Famicom cartridge. It would have been cool to receive at letter from Nintendo when your just a kid.

And 20 years later, he's just a blogger instead of a developer. What a waste!

Wow, They all are afraid of a lawsuit !! They should return to sender without open !!!!

Some people here seriously ignore how cool is to receive *something* back from your favorite game company (or *any* game company, for the matter...). A few years ago I got a few postcards with art from some Square-Enix games that I earned by their game rewards program, I completely forgot about that when I once found something from Square-Enix in the mail and I was like "oh NICE!! haha". This kid must have gone bonkers in 1990.

And this is Yamauchi-era Nintendo no less.

I have to admit that is pretty cool. Kudos to Nintendo.

Cute article, a really nice read. =)

Lol if a kid sent a letter to PC he wouldn't get a response

I used to write Nintendo quite a bit as a child. The responses I got never seemed like a standard form letter reply, as they mentioned specifics about what I wrote or ideas I pitched. They would also send me a ton of random stuff along with it, such as spec sheets on systems, little posters, etc. It was awesome and I loved it.

Having worked at Nintendo, but not in the writing department (which was part of one large call center floor at NOA), I can say that we did care about all of the letters kids sent in. Legally, though, we were constrained and we couldn't accept unsolicited game ideas, although many kids had wonderful ones.

What we DID do, though, is keep the amazing letter art! We had walls full of ornate, hand-decorated letters filled with Nintendo characters. When guests would come tour the call center as part of a larger tour we'd proudly show off the amazing artwork kids sent in out of their passion for Nintendo and its characters.

In the early 90's, when I worked there and when Nintendo was still fresh in America, most of the people answering letters were young men and women in their 20's, many with families of their own. We loved our jobs and, honestly, enjoyed our customers too. (Not all of them, of course, but most :) Our President at the time, Mr. Arakawa was a gentle man who cared a great deal about Nintendo's image and reputation and it showed in how much of a priority our customer service department was at the time.

Kids may have gotten form letters for legal reasons, but trust me the people reading those letters had big smiles on their faces.

Well @ least they were honest about it & gave him back his ideas.

I emailed Nintendo once about the $50 price tag on Twilight Princes years after being out and I got a respond from someone who went back and forth with me for about 4 emails. The people over at Nintendo are very kind and are willing to go the extra mile to express kindness even when people lash out at them. Must be a company standard or something but yeah he said something about their games being lower than that of PS3 and 360's.. he was on the wrong but he was kind.

For all of you saying that printers didn't exist in 1990... They most certainly did. They had ribbons, they printed files a bit like typewriters do, but they could most certainly be automated. There were also these devices called Word Processors that would allow you to alter standard form files that were then printed on paper with ribbon ink.

Not saying that this is what happened in this case, but the tech absolutely existed.

is it just me or did EA rip off Little Computer People on the C64 with The Sims?