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The BBC recently made a major gaming blunder on air, and Nintendo fans have been quick to point it out across social media. During a morning TV segment, UK Interactive Entertainment CEO Nick Poole and BBC hosts Jon Kay and Sally Nugent showed off a small assortment of classic consoles, including the ZX81, a Nintendo Wii, and a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, while discussing the increasing popularity of retro gaming in the UK.
According to the UKIE, retro systems like the Super Nintendo have been playing an increasing role in physical game sales and game culture events in the UK, thanks in part to the nostalgia and community connections these old consoles can evoke. Nick Poole and the BBC hosts also discussed how word-of-mouth from online influencers can lead more people toward classic gaming, as well as how recent television and movie adaptations like The Last of Us and Fallout are creating an increased crossover between video games and other media.
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The BBC segment would eventually spread across social media, but not for reasons that anyone involved would have wanted. The SNES system on display had an NES game cartridge for the original Super Mario Bros. lodged in its cartridge slot, something that wouldn’t be possible without said cartridge being forced in. Unlike more contemporary Nintendo systems like the Switch 2, the SNES didn’t have backward compatibility with the old NES cartridges, making this blunder even more egregious for anyone with knowledge of the old systems.
BBC Accidentally Had NES Cartridge Jammed Into SNES
BBC’s morning show has an average viewership of 6.5 million people, meaning that plenty of gamers saw the mistake live and even more caught wind of it online after the fact. Some of these gamers wasted little time making fun of the slip-up involving the Super Nintendo console on social media outlets like Reddit, where one user joked that the station should have “gone full mental” by adding a Nintendo GameCube controller. Others simply jested that they “would like to report a crime” and that the team at BBC likely tried to insert the NES cartridge into the Nintendo Wii.
UKIE published an explanation for the mistake (via VGC), stating that the BBC Breakfast studio set up the gaming display and that Nick Poole had nothing to do with it. “For transparency, the studio team set up the in-studio display independently and handled the placement of the consoles,” said a UKIE spokesperson in response to the misplaced NES cartridge. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t adjust it whilst on air.” Even after UKIE distanced itself from the BBC’s very public gaming blunder, Nintendo fans have continued to note how this mistake continues to reflect a misunderstanding of video games among the general public.
Nintendo is a Japanese video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. While producing highly popular hardware consoles like the Switch, the company is known for its many first party video game franchises like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, and many more.
