Trivia: The DS was codenamed Iris

Here’s a little weekend trivia for you all. Did you know that before there was the Nintendo DS, there was the Nintendo “Iris”? No, that’s not another handheld. That was actually the original codename for the now-famed DS.

 

 

 

Here’s a little weekend trivia for you all. Did you know that before there was the Nintendo DS, there was the Nintendo “Iris”? No, that’s not another handheld. That was actually the original codename for the now-famed DS.

 

SPD producer Gorou Abe mentioned this trivia in a recent Iwata Asks episode, with Iwata delving more into it:

 

“The “Iris” Abe-san mentioned isn’t widely known, so I will explain. Iris was the codename of a next-generation device we were explorin to succeed the Game Boy Advance – in other words, before development of the Nintendo DS.

 

Eventually, it became a two-screen device with the codename Nitro, which went out into the world as the Nintendo DS. So, broadly speaking, Iris was the foundation for the Nintendo DS. You might say that Abe-san carried out his original objectives across five and a half years.”

 

 

Via [Siliconera]