If you’re a savvy follower of Nintendo rumors, you may recognize the name Emily Rogers. Rogers is a journalist with a great number of connections within the video game industry, particularly within Nintendo. As a result, she has been a reliable source for insider details, predicting many new games and systems before they were officially revealed. Her track record is very impressive, as she has been correct far more often than not when it comes to her statements.
Back in 2012, Rogers first established her reputation as a highly reliable insider when she published her first-ever blog post on the Emily Rogers Blog. She started out with a bang when she unleashed a very fascinating fact about the Nintendo DS and revealed that the brand we know and love could have turned out very differently.
Sometime in 2010, Rogers had an opportunity to talk to employees in Nintendo of America’s marketing department. It was here that she learned that the Nintendo DS originally went by a very different name: the “City Boy.”
Rogers learned that Nintendo had predicted the threat of smartphone gaming all the way back in 2003. With this in mind, the company was set on encouraging consumers of their upcoming portable device to carry it with them everywhere, as they would with a phone.
The “Game Boy” name, as Rogers explains, “had the image of being a handheld for younger gamers, and Nintendo was determined to get rid of that image.” The idea of replacing “Game” with “City” was supposed to appeal to a “young adult urban audience who have a busy ‘always on the go’ lifestyle.”
Evidence that Rogers’ source was legitimate is still available online, too. Nintendo of America actually filed a trademark for “City Boy” on March 18, 2004, two months before the reveal of the Nintendo DS at E3 2004.
You can see for yourself on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website if you select “Search trademarks” and search for “City Boy.” You’ll find Nintendo’s trademark under the serial number “79007567.” You may also notice that it was filed under the category of “electronic goods and services,” confirming it as hardware.
So, what happened to “City Boy?” It seems that Nintendo later decided on “Nintendo DS” to further distance the system from the “Game Boy” brand. The company seemed to lack confidence in the DS and predicted it was likely to fail, and if this was the case, Nintendo didn’t want to tarnish the “Game Boy” name. With this in mind, they initially did not consider the DS as a replacement or a successor.
On March 1, 2004, the late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told Japanese website Mainichi Interactive, “It is a ‘unique’ machine, so not everybody will understand it right away. There might only be 10 to 15 people applauding during its unveiling at E3, but they’ll understand it once they touch it. At the least, it should serve as a hint towards [our] next-generation console.” Iwata also told a Japanese newspaper in December 2003 that he considered the yet-to-be-announced system as a “third pillar, next to GameCube and Game Boy.”
It’s funny now to think that Nintendo was skeptical about the performance of their latest handheld back then, considering the overwhelming success the Nintendo DS would come to bring them. In any case, I’m sure I’m not the only one relieved that it wasn’t called the “Nintendo City Boy.” We may have got used to the silly name over time, as we did with the “Wii U,” but “Nintendo DS” just sounded right from the get-go — a great name for an even greater system.
