"Blue car, I choose you!"

Nintendo is clearly an influential company in the realm of video gaming, but we're just beginning to see exactly how far-reaching its inflience has been.

Last week, we reported that Sony's WipEout was inspired by Super Mario Kart, and today we've learned that Xbox 360 favourite Forza Motorsport can count Pokémon as its muse.

Speaking to SPOnG, Turn 10 (the company responsible for the super-realistic racer) creative director Dan Greenawalt revealed:

I knew that I wanted this car-collecting element to be implemented into the game. What game, especially back in 2002, had inspired collecting more than Pokémon?

It did collecting using a rarity system - through different coloured versions - with a sense that everything felt very natural. And actually, there’s a really natural sense of rarity in cars. So in Forza 1, the cars had a rarity meter, and you had to pick your region - much like choosing Pokémon Sapphire or Ruby - and that made certain cars more or less rare in the game. That was directly inspired by Pokémon.

You really do learn something new every day.

[source spong.com]