Trivia / Nintendogs

• Cash-Cow Franchise: Despite only having two installments separated into various titles, Nintendogs is one of Nintendo's best selling series.
• Dueling Games: The original game with the Nintendo DS Petz sequels.
• Dummied Out: The Maltese and Papillon breeds in the original version.
• Killer App:
  • The game which, for better or worse, cemented the DS as a casual player-friendly system.
  • The 3DS sequel wasn't as popular but still sold enough people on the 3DS. It was also later re-labeled as a "Nintendo Select" budget release.
• Market-Based Title: Nintendogs + Cats: Golden Retriever and New Friends is labeled Shiba Inu and New Friends in Japan, due to the relative popularity of the breed in that country. The Shiba Inu didn't become popular outside of Japan until a few years later, thanks to the internet.
• Moved to the Next Console: It was supposed to be a Gamecube title but it was moved to the DS in order to utilize its touch-screen and microphone.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: There's the infamous "Nintencats" rumor which involves Nintendo creating full, playable, counterparts involving cats but not releasing them since a game about kittens wouldn't sell. Often times it was released in Japan but sold so poorly that it was kept in Japan. While this rumor was fake, the sequel did add kittens.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: There have been plenty of hoaxes about breeding the puppies. They tend to include having 9999 trainer points and having dogs of "a certain nature". Due to the young age of the target audience, many people believe it even over a decade after the release of the original game.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game that would become Nintendogs was originally meant to be a Nintendo Gamecube title before development was moved to the Nintendo DS to utilize the touchscreen.
  • At one point, it was suggested that each breed got its own separate cartridge, meant to simulate picking out a dog in real life. When they realized this would mean they would take up a lot of space on store shelves, in addition to making the debugging process of each and every version very time-consuming, the idea was scrapped.
  • The developers wanted realistically fluffy fur on the dogs in the first game but hardware limitations meant that was impossible. The sequel features more realistic fur.
  • The original game features two unused breeds, the Maltese and the Papillon. The sequel game added in Malteses but not Papillons.
  • At one point the developers wanted to include horses into the games.
  • The data to + Cats features an unused toy gun.
  • Early screenshots for the original games show many differences. An early interface show unused "Phone", "Touch", and "Training" options. Leashes were also blue instead of green.
  • A prerelease screencap for + Cats shows that walking was more similar to how it was in the original game.
• Write What You Know: A pretty adorable example; Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired to create this game after his family adopted a dog.

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