Sometimes our job takes us into the realm of myth and mystery, and in the case of the Nvidia MG20 Nintendo 3DS Prototype, we’ve often felt like Nathan Drake or Lara Croft, skulking around temples in search of treasure.
And just like Bigfoot, Mothman, and Brandon doing a full days work, there are some fables that we need to see to believe.
The Nvidia MG20 Nintendo 3DS prototype has always been one of gaming history’s ‘maybes’, but thanks to Rare Gaming Dump’s YouTube escapades and information taken from the 2018 Gigaleak that saw countless Nintendo prototypes and unreleased games taken from Ninty over a 2 month period, its existence has been myth-busted.
That means, according to the mighty minds over at Tom’s Hardware, Nintendo and Nvidia had been working together long before the Tegra X1 that powers everyone’s favourite hybrid handheld, the Nintendo Switch.
Buckle up, folks- it’s history time!
The Nvidia MG20 – A Small Slice Of Nintendo History
So what’s the deal with this MG20 anyway? I mean, why is there so much fuss about it that I’ve stopped to write an article about it for you?
Well, just like with many consoles and handhelds, there are always prototype stages that never come to fruition. I mean, we only need to look at the fabled Nintendo PlayStation for proof of that.
Things go wrong or new tech becomes available, and old prototypes or plans get shelved. And for nerds like us, this stuff is incredibly fascinating.
We all know that the 3DS rocked the gaming world and baffled the minds of gamers. It’s an impressive piece of hardware, and one that this release shows Nintendo were teaming up with Nvidia to make.
That means that, going by the information in the Gigaleak, Ninty and Nvidia (or N squared as I like to think of them) were working on a Nvidia powered Nintendo 3DS back in 2006.
As RGD describes, the prefix MG has never been used before or after this time, meaning that it looked like a specific ‘mobile gaming’ chip that the company was hoping Nintendo would snap up and roll with, and one that they very nearly did.
But this is precisely where I start to get a little confused, because like many others, I associate Nvidia in 2006 as being the minds behind early mobile phone gaming graphics, not the makers of what would go onto be the 3DS.
There’s a big jump from a flip phone to a clamshell 3D handheld, even though they can both be slammed shut when you’re angry!
A Stepping Stone In the Right Direction
Credit: Nvidia
From what we can gather, just in the same way that Skyward Sword was a stepping stone to Breath of the Wild, this collaboration provided influence for other bigger and better projects.
As I’ve mentioned above, Nvidia went on to produce the Tegra chip that powers the Nintendo Switch, and after the MG20, the same project lead worked on the first of the new Tegra chips back in 2009.
If you know your 3DS history, then you’ll know that the graphics processor in the 3DS was eventually made by DMP and not Nvidia, and the potential collaboration disappeared into space and time.
Was the world not ready for the 3DS and still excited by the Nintendo’s last ‘standard DS’ model the DSi, or were Nvidia unsuccessful in creating enough power for the 3DS, scuppering Nintendo’s plans and forcing them to go back to the drawing board?
The way Hideki Konno was mobbed by the ensuing press might lead to the first being true, but one thing is for sure; the Nvidia MG20 Nintendo 3DS Prototype is an interesting piece of gaming history and one that makes us wonder ‘what could have been’.
It’s interesting to think that two companies who worked on the most successful next gen console of our time and the contiually-rising contender for the best selling console ever made might have made that magic back in 2006.
Still sometimes it’s just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it’s nice to know that, even after a failed prototype, they managed to create some magic in the end!
You can check out the full Retro Gaming Dump video for even more backstory!
