An old Nintendo Switch boot animation codenamed NX has surfaced online after 7 years

Many gamers today are not familiar with the Nintendo NX . So let’s clarify the truth for them before we go any further. In internal communications and marketing, the Nintendo Switch was referred to as the NX. At that point, all anyone knew about the Switch was its NX codename.

For new gamers, this may not sound interesting, but the official NX loading animation has recently been leaked online.

It was originally announced in March 2015 when Nintendo announced a collaboration with mobile device developer DeNA . For over a year and a half, the console has been known by its code name. After much anticipation, Nintendo finally introduced the Switch on October 20, 2016 .

Below you can see the animated NX logo that leaked from a prototype copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and was posted by Twitter user Paul Kelly .

The Nintendo Switches Codename was the NX and this was an early Logo / Boot Up animation used during development of the Console ( It was found in the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Prototype ) This was never seen outside Nintendo pic.twitter.com/B1bS5zCKOu

— Paul Kelly (@PaulFelixKelly) November 20, 2022

While there is nothing to show other than the blue themed GIF above, we can clearly see how Nintendo was going to use the blue theme for “Switch”. Also, it’s not clear if the company ever intended to name the device NX, as it developed quite a lot of software around the name, so many people didn’t automatically think of it as a “codename”.

Apparently, even though “NX” was just a working title, Nintendo animated the NX menu back when it was just a development kit so that programmers could use it to create video games. However, screenshots of both this and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have now been released.

Seems like a prototype of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has leaked online with a build date of 2016/10/18 09:37:23 with debug features enabled.

Do note that the characters shown WILL NOT be part of the Booster Course Pass, and are likely just placeholders.

(Screencaps from Discord.) pic.twitter.com/gMvS10m4gX

— MaxiBash (@trashbandatcoot) November 20, 2022

It is still unknown if Nintendo would have adopted the all-blue NX approach and this leak is of no use to anyone right now, but it’s interesting for older players to look at it anyway.