Shigeru speaks
Watch Miyamoto like a hawk - he loves dropping hints. During a Wind Waker interview, he went off on this tangent: “You may not believe it but I have relationships with dog trainers and I have serious conversations about what ‘dog’ means!” Two years later Nintendogs is a ‘surprise’ release. Recently he’s been nattering about puppets. ‘Marionette’ here we come…

Early ratings
Along with trademarks, Nintendo need games passed by classification boards - ESRB in the US and PEGI in Europe. By the time games are classified they’re close to release, so you’ll probably already know about them; but a few interesting snippets arise. Such as Dr. Mario rated for VC, but later retracted for a WiiWare release.

Big-mouthed actors
Not literally big-mouthed (we doubt Julia Roberts has any Nintendo beans to spill), but rather voice-over artists who can’t resist talking about recent projects. Many will post upcoming work on imdb - Alesia Glidewell’s Smash Bros. Krystal appearance is there - so look up the US voices behind your favourite characters for future hints. Take, for example, some of the Metal Gear cast confirmed for Smash Bros...

Conference call
Want to see Nintendo slip up? They’re most likely to during large press conferences - all those interviews take their toll on the tight-lipped ones, especially where the main players aren’t involved. Reggie can keep lip-zipped like a pro, but EAD man Katsuya Eguchi was heard mentioning online Animal Crossing Wii at E3 2006. Whoops.

Above: What's the buzz?

VC the future
Some conspiracy nuts think the Virtual Console is Nintendo's way of re-introducing old franchises that are set to appear in the future. For instance, Sin and Punishment was given a VC release just one month before protagonist Saki Amamiya was announced in Smash Bros. The truth is out there, and retro-flavoured. If the theory’s right, expect the next playable character to be, erm, Mario Picross.

Hidden dragon
Japanese third-party developers knew about the DS months before US/European third-parties; Nintendo shared early dev kits with Sega, Namco and Capcom. As such, it’s wise to keep an eye on rumblings from the Japanese press - www.famitsu.com is a good bet. Who cares what US PR-bots have to say when they’re kept well out of the Nintendo loop? We’d look at Bandai, Namco and Hudson Soft for premium blathering.

Ignore Nintendo
Isn’t this a bit counter-productive in our quest for secrets? Not really - they like to keep things so secret that they’ll create preview versions of games that don’t totally reflect the final project. All the E3 names changed in the final version of Galaxy, and the two-player co-op was jazzed up with a special jump. Similar pulling-of-wool-over-eyes was done with Metroid Prime 2 previews, with a level that wasn’t in the game.

Law and order
They’re a tad drier than the star-spangled imdb, but the US and Japanese Patent Office websites (www.uspto.gov and www.jpo.go.jp, respectively) hold all the trademarks that Nintendo register in the run-up to new games. Type in your favourite characters to see if anything’s brewing. It’s also good for a laugh at Nintendo’s mad old patents. Be wary: a few developers register false titles to fool you. Curse them!