“Great book for Nintendo fans. I can’t say how people who didn’t grow up with Nintendo would feel about it because, well, Nintendo was like a second father to me. Actually, more like a first father. Nintendo, for all it’s dusty-cartridge issues, was still a lot more reliable than its biological competition for World’s Best Dad for most of the 90’s.
The thing I really love about this is that I think it points out some of the things that Nintendo has done that other game makers haven’t, or that they embraced later. One of my favorites was the story of the virtual boy. This was one of the more maligned Nintendo products, and if you want to know why, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsBOqpuM_Tw
Basically, you could only play it for about a half hour before getting a pretty bad headache. I recall it actually being packaged with a warning to that effect, and not a friendly warning like the Wii’s, “Hey, it’s a nice day outside, maybe we should not play so much Wii?” No, it was much more like a sign that you would see in a warehouse that warns how you will ABSOLUTELY BE CRUSHED BY THE BALER IF YOU STAND IN THIS SPOT AND NO ONE WILL MOURN YOUR PASSING.
It was a flop for a number of reasons, many which had to do with a lack of patience, such as being unwilling to wait for multicolor LED’s to come down in price.
However, Virtual Boy is credited as being the first console to have the gamepad that also featured dual joysticks, which is the absolute standard these days. PS3, Xbox360, all of them have the dual joysticks, and all of that started with Nintendo’s big flop.
Nintendo was always way ahead of the game. In fact, the Japanese version of the NES, which came out in the 80’s, was INTERNET-READY. Designers had wild ideas that people would do things like check stocks and access other forms of entertainment through their Nintendo. What a wacky idea…until maybe 30 years later when half the people I know were streaming movies one way or another.
What I also love about Nintendo, though, is that they have a true sense of care for the complete gaming experience. Probably my favorite tidbit from this book was that at one point Nintendo had to recall a bunch of consoles. They had the consoles shipped to them, then they were retrofitted with the right parts, and when consumers got their consoles back they were not only repaired, but that the stickers, which I guess a bunch of people stuck to their consoles, were replaced in the correct spots as well.
The book is full of little stuff like that. Okay, maybe one more.
When Mario was created, his creator, Miyamoto, purposely made him to be an average sort of guy. Nothing really special about him. He’s a mustachioed working man who even today still has a pot belly. But that humble beginning, it’s like a metaphor for the entirety of that company. It’s all about regular people who get to have incredible adventures.”