Remember the codename Nintendo “NX”? Before the Switch’s official unveiling, these two letters were how Nintendo referred to its NeXt-generation console.
The NX name was used by Nintendo to refer to the Switch both internally and publicly, as the company began to drum up excitement for the Switch’s unveiling. (And because in the Wii U era, there wasn’t much else to get excited about.)
But here’s one thing we never saw publicly: Nintendo’s own internal NX logo used in early versions of games destined for the Switch.
An animated NX logo has been leaked online, pulled from the files of an early in-development copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Being a pretty straightforward port of a Wii U game, there’s little else in the files of interest – it is very much just the Wii U game ported over to the NX, sorry, Switch hardware.
If you fancy watching 10 minutes of this early build, that’s on YouTube (for now):
Watch on YouTube
So, this is the first time we have seen this NX logo. Was this always intended as a placeholder? Did Nintendo ever consider keeping the NX name? For now, all we can do is gaze into its rather eye-like animation and wonder.