#Nintendo64 is trending on Twitter and has been since Saturday evening. Nintendo fans across the world are taking the opportunity to share their favorite Nintendo 64 games, funny Nintendo 64 clips, or hopes regarding sequels or continuations of their favorite Nintendo 64 games and series. It's one of those opportunities to just have fun and be nostalgic, but a lot of participants in the Nintendo 64 trend are also wondering how it got started. The answer might be surprisingly underwhelming.
The #Nintendo64 hashtag trended worldwide around 10-11 pm PT Saturday night, though it started trending in the USA as early as Saturday around 8:00 pm PT. Usually, Twitter trends reveal their origins are easy enough to discover by looking at the tweets that started just before the trend began. That appears to be the case again, but in this instance, there's no single event, Youtube video, or newsworthy story. Rather, there's a single Twitter account that's very anxious to sell some Nintendo 64 games and a mishmash of other accounts randomly posting together around the same time.
The Twitter account DealDonkeyUS posts all manner of eBay video game sales. It's a bot that scrapes new eBay listings and automatically posts what it finds, using hashtags tied to the listing's categories and details. Since Saturday began, the account has posted over 140 different eBay sales for Nintendo 64 games.
Other examples of random tweets that came through on Saturday and contributed to Nintendo 64 trending include some oddities. One account celebrated the release of Excitebike 64 20 years ago. Another account shared news about a Nintendo 64 emulator running on the PS Vita, News about a leaked demo for an N64 game named Mirror House Cornflakes was shared on Youtube, and a Twitch streamer celebrated collecting 120 Stars in Super Mario 64. The posts are notable in not at all being viral.
While one account spamming a single hashtag isn't anywhere near enough to get it trending on Twitter, the mix of the sales posts and an amalgamation of other tweets seemed to have created a perfect storm during a time of the night when little else is trending. This is often all it takes. #Nintendo64 blipped onto the trending list in the USA and Nintendo fans made it go worldwide shortly thereafter. But, again, for the most part, it was just a bunch of eBay sales posted by DealDonkeyUS and a handful of other Twitter accounts.
What started the Nintendo 64 Twitter trend ultimately matters so much less than what's kept the hashtag trending. The outpouring of Nintendo fans celebrating the Nintendo 64 console and dozens of different games that have left a positive impact on their lives is tremendous. After all, the eBay scrawler was posting dozens of hashtags for other consoles too. Yet only Nintendo 64 picked up worldwide.
The #Nintendo64 trend is still going strong, at least in the USA.