A rare piece of Nintendo history just surfaced at a Hard Off used goods store. It is a DSi LL with a TV tuner (DSテレビ). The “Ishinomaki City” (石巻市) engraving on the console and the tuner indicate that they were donated by Nintendo to the municipality after the devastating Tohoku earthquake in 2011.
That year, when asked by a shareholder about Nintendo’s earthquake relief efforts, Iwata stated that the company communicated with local governments and visited evacuation centers to provide products requested, in addition to a monetary donation of 300M yen.
Since Nintendo refused publicity for the recovery support, and even struck this Q&A from the official transcript, it was unclear to outsiders what Nintendo products were given to the evacuees, until this photo appears.
Image source: X account hard_ishinomaki
Unofficial Q&A transcript: そらねこ屋
[Originally posted on 2025-10-20 Pacific Time]
