There’s a lot that goes into crafting a logo.
From a design perspective, creating a logo for a brand or a video game title itself,
capturing the essence of what that company or story is about is tougher than it looks.
Over the years in the video game industry, there’s been plenty of logos that have become
household icons, and many of them have a story behind why they look the way they do.
So today, we’re diving deeper into these stories of these logos and company names with
our list of the top 10 secret meanings behind famous video game logos.
10 Ubisoft The current Ubisoft logo is meant to represent
the company’s ‘touch of madness’.
For context, the early days of Ubisoft’s logo were a little odd.
Or rather, are odd now, and feel SUPER RETRO.
Ubisoft, was created in 1986 in Brittany, France, and finished their first game, Zombi,
in 1987.
Ubi means ‘where’ in Latin, and is supposed to be a take on ‘softwear’.
Back in those days, the Ubisoft logo felt a whole lot like the old MTV logos.
Since, it’s changed its logo only 3 times, with the latest being a minimalist approach.
The company has stated that “the swirl and the letter O are both deliberately created
to be reminiscent of hand-drawn shapes that represent our human qualities of enthusiasm,
curiosity, and the grain de folie that Ubisoft is known for.”
Grain de folie translates to touch of madness.
9 Konami Since its creation in 1981, Konami has gone
through 5 different logos over the years, but it’s first was simply its name with
a slight curve at the bottom of the K.
The company originated in 1969 as a jukebox rental and repair business, and the name itself
was made up of the three individuals who ran it – Kagemasa Kozuki – the KO, Yoshinobu
Nakama – the NA, and Tatsuo Miyasako – the MI.
8 Naughty Dog Naughty Dog’s logo is an amalgamation of
founders Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin’s collective efforts since 1984, when they first started
the company, which was called JAM software at the time.
In September 1989, they changed the company name to Naughty Dog, but still kept the same
JAM aesthetic.
They cycled through a few different logos, one graffiti inspired, one with three different
type faces and another featuring a mascot of a dog with the word ‘Nawty’ written
on its shirt.
But in 1996, after releasing Crash Bandicoot for the Playstation, the branding grew up
a bit and matured into the logo we know today, and a few years later, the company was bought
by Sony in 2001.
7 Xbox The story of Microsoft’s Xbox dates back
to 1998 when four engineers working at the company’s DirectX team started playing around
with a prototype for the first Windows-based videogame platform.
This platform would become the Xbox, a new direct competitor with industry giant Playstation.
But before infamous marketing agency Wunderman put together the now iconic green X logo,
the console’s original logo was a little less sleek, and a little more 90’s in its
early days before hitting the market.
6 Sega Sega didn’t always have the name we now
know.
Originally, it was founded as ‘Standard Games’ in 1940 by a trio of American business
men in Honolulu to provide coin operated amusement machines to military bases for those stationed
to have something to do in their leisure time.
After WW2, they sold their company and it became Service Games, which was later shortened
to Sega in 1965.
Since, it’s had over 100 variations crafted, with many of them incorporating some of Sega’s
more memorable properties, including Sonic the Hedgehog, their second and most well-known
mascot, who in the 90s, they tended to include all over their games, even the ones not starring
him.
5 Assassin’s Creed logo Assassin’s Creed made a pretty big splash
in the world of gaming when its first title was released back in 2007.
The logo has become quite memorable, and anyone with any knowledge on gaming is likely familiar
with its triangular shape.
It’s a logo that has a lot of importance in the world of the game itself.
The insignia is used to mark entrances to various important assassins’ necessities,
like headquarters, the Assassin Bureaus and the Assassin Tombs.
But in the real world, the logo was designed to represent an eagle’s skull pictured from
behind, with an eagle, according to the developers, being a bird of prey animal that sums up the
predatory – and often aerial – nature of the assassins themselves, along with the
motifs of courage and freedom that the Assassin’s Creed lore itself often boasts.
4 Atari The Atari logo was created by George Opperman,
the company’s very first in-house graphic designer.
His goal with the logo was to achieve two things – that the silhouette of the whole
logo was to look like the letter A, and that it’s three prongs were based off of Atari’s
first groundbreaking game, Pong.
The outside lines represent two players, and the middle line is for the line that splits
the Pong court in the game.
It’s also worth noting that the logo has gotten praise for resembling Mount Fuji, which
is often believed to have been the intention behind the logo itself.
3 Playstation The Playstation logo is the perfect example
of how much goes into crafting a logo.
The now iconic upright P and horizontal S went through multiple iterations before designer
Manabu Sakamoto and Sony settled on a final look.
With at least 19 other options, there were a lot of ideas on the table before settling
with the logo we are familiar with today.
In addition to that, the Playstation controller also has an interesting meaning – the triangle,
square, circle and x buttons all mean specific things, with the triangle referring to viewpoint,
the square being a piece of paper, and the x and circle buttons standing for yes and
no.
2 Sonic Hirokazu Yasuhara and Naoto Oshima revealed
during a talk at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco what the origin of the Sonic
logo was, and it’s pretty compelling.
Oshima had made up a backstory for Sonic that was never a part of the official Sonic story
Sega released.
In Oshima’s story, Sonic wasn’t a real character at all – he was created by a pilot
who was known for going fast, who had painted his plane’s nose to look like a hedgehog.
The pilot would eventually marry a children’s author who created Sonic the hedgehog, and
the emblem was on the pilot’s jacket.
Hence why the design of the emblem has a touch of aviation in it.
1 Nintendo It wasn’t until the 1960’s that Nintendo
embraced Roman script for their logo to be more understandable for its Western audiences.
Prior to that, it had a bit of an identity crisis, with many variations of its logo,
the earliest being three kanji symbols.
This is where things get interesting.
It’s often believed that Nintendo’s name means ‘leave luck to heaven’, but it’s
history of being a playing card company may have proven otherwise when it comes to translating
the meaning behind its name in Japanese.
With origins rooting back to the late 19th century, the company was originally the Nintendo
Playing Card Co (the latter half of the name being dropped in 1963).
They sold playing cards when they first came into fruition, and when sales started to decline
in 1889, they started to make lower quality cards which they sold under the name of Tengu
– a word often associated with illegal gambling.
In the book The History of Nintendo 1889-1980, Florent Gorges and Isao Yamazaki examine almost
a century worth of information about the company, and break down what the Japanese characters
could have meant in the context of their playing card past – ‘nin’ standing for chivalry
or refer to ‘duty’, ‘ten’ standing for tengu, and ‘do’ being associated with
‘shrine’ or ‘sanctuary’, which companies often added to the end of their names to give
themselves prestige.
When two yakuza members were asked on their take of the Nintendo title by Tokyo Vice writer
Jake Adelstein, they both had similar responses - Nintendo comes from ninkyo, and refers to
the concept of chivalry in crime; Adelstein explains, “the yazuka don’t think of themselves
as criminals, because they argue that they are ninkyo dantai, aka humanitarian groups.”
There we have it friends!
Did you know any of these stories behind these logos?
Are there other ones with a cool story that we should’ve included on this list?
Let us know in those comments below!
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