By now almost every Nintendo fan that has the Internet has seen the now famous Nintendo ON video. Still today over 7 months later the Nintendo ON is still a controversial subject. I have created this simple guide on the reasons why I think the Nintendo ON is fake and reasons why I think the Nintendo ON or a similar idea could really exist.
Reasons Why The Nintendo ON Video Is Fake:
1. Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo said it was fake at E3. Miyamoto said he never saw the video before.
2. Pablo Belmonte came out claiming to have created the video and showed exclusive high resolution pics of the ON. He also did several interviews including one with 1up where he showed even more pics of how he created the video and some stuff that was not even in the video. He also showed some of the other CG Nintendo related videos that he had made in the past.
3. Nintendo has already shown the console and the controller.
4. The costs of developing a 3D Visor that also has some form of Augment Immersion technology (demonstrated in the video) would be very high. Possibly cost more then the Xbox 360 and PS3. Nintendo has said that their next gen system will cost the cheapest. That simply isn’t the ON.
5. Nintendo had attempted to create a 3D Visor before called the “Virtual Boy” and it failed misserably and sold poorly.
6. In The Nintendo ON video it showed the user controlling the game with his bare hands when obviously the game will be controlled via the Freehand Style controller shown at TGS.
7. The console shown at E3 had one DVD drive in it and the ON had two. Why would Nintendo need so many drives? Now even if what was shown at E3 was fake I hardly doubt Nintendo would put two drives in any kind of console.
8. Nintendo claims that they want to draw in the non and casual gamers (women and parents). The ON would be the worst way to go about achieving that goal.
9. The graphics in the ON video were really good and can not be accomplished on a system only two times as powerful as a GameCube. Especially since the ON graphics showed practically no aliasing at all and looked better then any of the Xbox 360 games unveiled so far.
10. In the ON video Mario’s overall design was similar to the other Mario video Pablo Belmonte did. In the videos when Mario runs he puts his hands behind him as shown here. It is also worth noting that the overall designs for both Mario and Metroid where not only weird but kind of generic in design.
11. The dates in the beginning for each of the consoles are from the European releases. Pablo lives in Spain so this would make sense. However if Nintendo was targeting the American audience with this video they would have used the American release dates for the consoles.
12. Developers would know about the ON by now and it most likely would attract more developers yet no developers seem to be aware of such a device.
13. Casual gamers would be turned off by something you had to wear.
14. Why would there be two systems? Even if one was a fake it would be a waste of time to develop such a good fake system.
15. Multi player support would be limited to online wifi as it would be extremely expensive to have to but new controllers and Visors to play multi player with your friends in your house.
16. During the video they list the GameBoy Advanve as 2 Designs. If this video was intended for E3 they would have listed 3 Designs which would have been the GameBoy Micro.
17. Poor English is used throughout the video. “Most Sleek” “Surround Headphones” to name a few. Pablo is a 23 year old Spanish college art student.
Reasons Why The Nintendo ON Or Similar Technology Could Be Real (Also Includes Crazy Conspiracy Finds):
1. Pablo Belmonte did three known interviews. In his first interview he claimed that it took him two weeks to make the ON video. In his second interview he claimed it took him one week to create the ON video and in his third interview with 1up he claimed it took him 5 days to recreate the ON video.
2. He claimed that it originally took him four weeks to create the ON video but that he lost everything in a hard drive crash however he was able to save the famous castle scene of all things. If you have a hard drive crash how could you save part of it but not the other parts? Doesn’t make sense to me. Especially since the part claimed to be saved is the coolest part of the entire video.
3.The Quotes:
“I think maybe if I could do anything, I would make it so you don’t have to sit in front of a TV and play. If you could have a machine that you just plugged in and played inside a virtual world that - would be just great.” -Miyamoto (E3 2005)
“We invented the current way a console is played - in front of a television and holding a controller - but maybe that image will change.” -Satoru Iwata (Around E3 2005)
In the future, what do you think video games will be like? “It’s convenient to make games that are played on TVs. But I always wanted to have a custom-sized screen that wasn’t the typical four-cornered cathode-ray-tube TV. I’ve always thought that games would eventually break free of the confines of a TV screen to fill an entire room. But I would rather not say anything more about that.” -Miyamoto (After TGS 2005)
4. The controller is designed to manipulate 3D space and would work amazingly with a 3D Visor.
5. If you turn up the volume very loud during the part where all the castles are zooming by it sounds like they repeatedly say:
Reggie… Nin-ten-do
Reggie… Nin-ten-do
Reggie… Nin-ten-do
Reggie… Nin-ten-do
ETC!
This has been talked about by many people and it sounds like a robotic voice. I listened to it myself and yes it does really sound like it’s say that. Pretty clear if you turn it up as loud as you can.
6. Throughout the video there are several strange reflections that look like the console shown at E3.
7. I personally can’t see how it is possible to recreate the entire Mario castle scene so perfectly and many many times. One person emailed me saying that they could have pulled the graphics out of the rom set, however, how could they also anime it so well like the moving flag and also since the music with it perfectly? It’s just to perfect and even if they could take some stuff out of the rom it’s obvious that the graphics engine would not be running in the art program.
8. Not really big proof but the Nintendo ON logo is the exact same on logo on the console shown at E3 and the Freehand Style controller. Yes the ON logo is a standard on logo for any appliance but I never seen it used on a console before.
9. They have not unveiled the final name of the console yet or shown any games yet. Why? They could have shown at the very least a few tech demos. UNLESS it would give away all the secrets which could be a new way to view the game. A 3D Visor perhaps?
10. There was a second Nintendo ON video which was only 11 seconds long. It was shown on May 19th which was the very same day Nintendo showed off their console. The design was very similar to the ON video made by Pablo Belmonte and it showed other sides of the ON not previously shown which would indicate that it had to be done by Pablo Belmonte. I can’t see someone else being able to completely mimick the same design as Pablo Belmonte. Especially in only hours from the Revolution’s unveiling at E3.
11. The Nintendo ON video was released on May 12th which was the same day that the Xbox 360 was unveiled on MTV.
12. Pablo Belmonte made quite a splash with his ON video and yet Nintendo never offered him a job. Unless he already works for Nintendo and that could be how he got all the high resolution renders for the video. Perhaps he works for Nintendo and was given the task to create the ON video.
13. He calls him sell Psyco3leR Why is the P and the R captialized? “Public Relations” perhaps?
14. The music for the entire ON video was extremely well done. Is Pablo also a music expert? He was able to combine unique Mario tunes with some of the music featured in the movie “The Rundown” starring The Rock. However I never heard of some of the music variations before and it was combined together very professionally.
15. In the ON video it shows the ON next to a GameCube and a square box with arrows pointing to the ON video. The square box looks very similar in design to the Revolution. Could this be some kind of a hint? Could the GameCube be signifying backwards compatability? Could the box with a ? on it be similar to this theory?
16. Software developers have not yet seen final software development kits and some smaller developers have been turned down. Most likely to hide whatever big secrets Nintendo has.
19. “When you see the Revolution’s graphics you will saw Wow” -Iwata. Well considering the specs are vastly underpowered and Nintendo even said that they don’t care about having the best graphics why would the president of Nintendo make such a statement? Well if theres a new way to view the game like a 3D Visor that could be why he said that.
20. If there wasn’t something super big in the works then why is the console taking so long in development? It is not scheduled to come out until late 2006. Nintendo said sometime in 2006 but face it, the are not going to fully unveil and start marketing it until E3 in May and they are going to want to put a few months of advertising in so that people will learn about it before Nintendo releases it. Also developers said they were told it would be released around Thanksgiving. Why so long? The specs are low and it looks like a very simple system and the games have been in development for quite a while now or at least they should be. The games for the Xbox 360 where in development for less then a year before coming out. So whats taking the Big N so long? A 3D Visor perhaps?
21. I have spoke with several art designers who claim that there is no way the ON could have been in the short amount of time Pablo Belmonte claimed so.
22. This is kind of a weird one but a while back I was on a site who hosts thousands of commercials one of the commercials was Pablo’s Majora’s Mask commercial which was listed as a Japanese promo for the game. Japanese often times use CG for commercials. Could this have just been a simple mistake? Or did Pablo take the video from that site and claim it to be his work? Doubtful but you never know.
23. On May 9th last year a site appeared www.smashbrothers3.com on the site it played the ON music in the background and has some weird numbers on it. The site soon disapeared and now takes you to another site. Anyhow the site was made days before the ON appeared and is still registered to end on May 9th of 2006. The same day the Revolutio will be truly unveiled. Kind of strange.
24. The share quality of all the special effects and animation in the video is just crazy. So many tiny details and some I hard to imagine someone easily rendering. For example in some parts of the video where the camera pans around the ON you can see through the vents in the base of the ON. Thats pretty weird actually. If it was just a simple render then this would not be the case. You can also see between the Brain and the Visor that lays on top of it. Amazingly high quality CG if thats all it is.
25. In the beginning where they show the N64 and Mario 64 during the part where they are going through the systems they show what appears to be an early beta version of Mario 64. I have never seen videos on the internet from an earlier version of Mario 64. I tried to find some and couldn’t find anything. How would he have gotten them and surely he wouldn’t have used beta footage thats hard to find over regular release version footage.
26. At E3 Nintendo said that you will be able to make small loki style games on the Revolution. In the ON video it says “Make Games”.
27. At E3 Reggie said “Let your right brain run wild” and in the ON video the base is called the Brain.
28. In the ON video it shows that the Brain can hook up to a TV or a Monitor. If this video was suppose to have been made weeks before E3 then how would Pablo know the Revolution could hook up to a monitor when that feature wasn’t unveiled until about a week before E3 in an IGN interview?
29. Strange logo appeared on one of the Nintendo webcams during E3. Just simply saying “ON” and then “Nintendo” on the right of it.
30. Both the ON and the Revolution shown at E3 has a Auto Loading DVD slot.
31. The original slogan for Revolution was “Touching is good but feeling is better” which in the ON video it says “Feel Games”.
32. The site www.nintendoon.com appears to go through a masking site so you really can’t see who owns the site. At least I can’t find the original owner. The UK ON site is no longer around.
33. Even before the ON video was released rumors ran crazy with the existence of a 3D Visor. Many blogs surfaced claiming to have inside information regarding the Revolution’s unknown secrets. One of the more convincing of blogs is by a guy that goes by the name of N5_DEV and his blog can be found here. Before TGS where the Freehand Style controller was unvieled:
I asked N5_DEV some questions:
First I asked: How do you control that game itself?
With 2 controllers : one in each hand. They are motion sensitive. You can use one to aim someone in a FPS for example. You can simply walk in the game by using one of the pressure sensitive buttons.
I asked: When can we expect the Visor to be fully unveiled? TGS?
He said: The main part, but probably not the whole thing, will be detailed during the TGS.
Could he be talking about the controller being a part of the Visor?
I ask: How powerful is the console compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3?
He says: You cannot compare these systems because revolution uses a totally different way for graphics. But if you compare grahics and not hardware, Revolution is by far the most powerful.
He seems to be hinting that the Revolution is underpowered but that you will still be amazed because of the way the graphics are displayed.
So far everything he says has accurately described the the controller. HOWEVER he could have been hinting at a controller design similar to this which seems to also accurately fit his cryptic hints.
34. What is stopping the Nintendo ON from simply being an addon to the console? What if Nintendo released a standard $200 package which included the console shown at E3, the Freehand Style controller with Numbchuck attachement and perhaps one NES, SNES, N64 game of your choice for download? Then as an addon feature you could purchase the ON for an additional $200-300. Perhaps thats what the ON video was trying to show then they showed the Brain next to a square box with a ? on it. Nintendo really might try to market both products. It would cater perfectly to the casual gamer who may not want the Visor functionality and yet give the hardcore gamer the chance to use the 3D Visor to furthermore enhance their gaming experience. So if the Visor idea failed a second time it wouldn’t kill the Revolution as it was only an addon. Nintendo said that there will be a lot of addons for the Revolution and considering they invested quite a bit of money researching wireless and WiFi technology and said that the Revolution will support WiFi out of the box you can’t help but wonder why this couldn’t work with the ON? The Xbox 360 and the PS3 won’t even support WiFi. You have to buy an adaptor for them and the Xbox 360’s adaptor is $100 for a part that probably costs them $1 to make. Again N5_Dev claimed that the ON was an addon.
35. The video just ended in the middle of the Mario scene. Most of the other videos Pablo made had at least some sort of ending like his logo. It just cut off in the middle of the audio and video sequence. Almost like it was ripped from something. He claimed that he lost the rest of the video and that is all he could recreate. What was the rush? Why did he feel that he HAD to release it on May 12th? If the original version was 30 minutes long and he was recreating it why did he not redo everything up to the 30 minute mark like the original? Doesn’t make sense to me. Why the rush? He said he worked on it day and night? Why?
36. In the pic where it shows the Brain, GameCube and the square box with the ? in it could
mean that the GameCube stands for backwards compatable with the Brain and the square box could simply stand for the older systems for backwards compatability.
37. Nintendo has never said that a Visor or anything like it was in the works. They simply said the ON was fake. Maybe a different Visor is in the works or maybe the ON has been change and is no longer called the ON.
38. Without HD it might be possible to accomplish the ON video’s graphics in HDless resolutions depending on the graphics capability. Miyamoto is known for changing Mario over the years so it is possible that the Mario design in the video is really Miyamoto’s newer version of Mario. OR it could have simply just been some prerendered stuff to give people an idea since the games are still in very early development when that video was released.
39. Why would Nintendo rent the largest theater if there wasn’t going to be something big unveiled. Check this theater out. Also there are a few people getting confused because Nintendo used a smaller Kodak theater. Let me clearify that Nintendo has never used this specific theater. This is a big thing for Nintendo. You can see in the older E3 Press videos that their older theaters they used where not even close as luxuriest as the theater they are using next year. Microsoft and Sony has never used such a theater either so I bag the questions “Why Nintendo?” The emmy awards are handed out in this exact theater. I hardly doubt it’s going to be used to show a few more details for the Revolution and thats it unless they really do have something major in the works. I don’t consider Displacement Mapping, Cube Mapping, Nurbs, price for console, backwards compatability, or a small extra controller functionality a big secret and I highly doubt they would not only use the Kodak theater to unveil it. Specially considering they are already advertising about E3 to major press members.
40. It has been reported that the console shown at E3 was hollow and had nothing in it. Also the front slot would not open as if it was glued there. Of course this was a simple prototype design but still a bit strange none the less.
41. Where is Pablo Belmonte these days? He has no website, doesn’t even say anything online that I am aware of and he doesn’t seem to be working on anymore videos. Supposely he made this video as it has his logo on it as well as is in Spanish but for some reason it doesn’t seem to fit his style. Why did he call it Nintendo ON V.2? Kind of weird.
42. Kind of a strange thing happend. A while back I emailed Emagin asking if they where partnered with SeriousGamer007. This was when SeriousGamer007 was really pushing that he was working with Emagin. I got a responce back FROM SeriousGamer007 saying yes he was. Did Emagin forward my email to SeriousGamer007? Kind of strange that they would do that and it would also show they don’t read through peoples emails. I think I still have the email if anyone requires proof.
43. OK many of you may or may not remember the phone call with Bruce. It was a 1 minute video that was supposely a conversation with a guy who works for Emgain which is a company who makes 3D Visors and according to the guy Nintendo is indeed working with them. A lot of people claim this phone call at the least to be real. You can listen to it here.
44. This is kind of a strange one. About 5 minutes and 16 seconds into the video on the part that goes over you head you can see two small black dots. It looks like it perhaps connects to the Brain for maybe recharging the batteries. Would Pablo Belmonte go that far into detail for just a small fan video?
45. Another strange quote:
Well, the concept of a home system today is defined as hardware that you tether to a box, and you are tethered to it via a controller; we think that’s an old paradigm. We think that the consumer wants something much more innovative than that. Coupled with the concept of strong community and immersion into the gameplay, we think that’s what we need to deliver on from a consumer proposition standpoint. -Reggie Fils-Aime (Around E3 2005)
This is a weird quote. I really don’t know what to think of this one. It would explain the theory of the ON attachement and the theory of there being several parts to the system (Base Unit, Visor, Controller, Possibly a Memory Module). Either way you look at it, it’s just a very strange quote that seems not to make much sense as well so far we are seeing that standard system with controller and TV yet Nintendo is saying that image might change. They keep on pushing out those hints.
46. This is a cool video I just found thats about the ON. Don’t know who made it and I am almost sure it’s fan made but I still like it. Check it out here. Also this video from a GIC in August was pretty weird as well. Though it doesn’t answer the secrets to the Revolution.
47. This is kind of a strange one. About 5 minutes and 16 seconds into the video on the part that goes over you head you can see two small black dots. It looks like it perhaps connects to the Brain for maybe recharging the batteries. Would Pablo Belmonte go that far into detail for just a small fan video?
As you can see there is enough information to fuel the ON/Visor rumors for a lot longer. There has been nothing that completely debunks the possibility of a Visor ever being in development. Half of what Nintendo says hints at a Visor with all their crazy quotes and half of Nintendo seems to be targeting a totally different stragedy. So what do I believe? In the end I would have to say that I do not believe that the ON or anything like it is coming for the Revolution for all of the reasons I stated in the first post. That said I still can’t confirm this 100% and there really are a lot of crazy stuff that supports the ON/Visor theory. I don’t care who you are you can not say with 100% certainy that a Visor is not coming. Nintendo isn’t talking and has hardly revealed anything yet. I do think something big is in the works and I do think it has something to do with viewing the game but what exactly I just don’t know. Something is strange. Nintendo is to calm. Though the GameCube made them money their home consoles have sold horribly and now Nintendo is as calm as ever. They know they have something big that will change gaming forever. They show no signs of fear or worry. Would the Freehand Style controller alone be enough to conquer the next gen game consoles?
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Ahhh Mel Gibson, the newest crazy ass mofo from Hollywood. I miss the days of Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, and Mad Max. It's a shame that this guy just went off the deep end.
