Game Over
Gradually Americans have become aware that the game is over: The Japanese have already landed. A Trojan horse has been smuggled into one out of every three American living rooms by our children. Through its video-game system, Nintendo has dominated a growing industry, projected to be worth $6-$7 billion in the United States in 1993, and has transformed itself into one of the world's most successful and influential corporations. As Nintendo Co. Ltd., ruled by its formidable chairman, Hiroshi Yamauchi, racks up huge profits, people in the electronics industry are wondering why American companies have such a small market share of this field. In Washington, congressmen, meeting in closed-door sessions (which they follow with self-serving press conferences), have charged that Nintendo alone is responsible for almost 10 percent of our trade deficit with Japan. These are the most obvious results of the Nintendo invasion, but there are more. "Q" ratings, which indicate the popularity of politicians, movie stars, and other public figures, showed that by 1990 the Nintendo mascot, Super Mario, was more familiar to American children than even Mickey Mouse. To some this is an outrage that symbolizes the next phase of this insidious invasion. Japan has already captured American wallets; the country's minds, beginning with those of its children, appear to be next. Fads have come and gone before, but this one is different.
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What Hacker News says
- By far the most compelling telling I've seen of the "How BPS and Nintendo got the Tetris rights" story is in chapters 13 and 14 of David Sheff's book "Game Over". The whole book is a good read if you're into game history (apart from the Atari chapter, which leans too hard on Nolan Bushnell as a source), it's basically the only time people at Nintendo talked at length with a reporter.
Meanwhile the Tetris film was awful. The Tetris rights negotiations were all about the various sides wrestling for power and the Soviets trying to play them against each other. The film basically goes "nah that's too boring for our target audience" and tries to make it into a Cold War spy thriller, but the hamfisted modifications to the events that transpired make the plot nonsensical (especially for general audiences that would be unfamiliar with what actually happened).
- If this is interesting to you, I recommend the book Game Over by David Sheff.
- Lots of classic stories on gamasutra. But I agree, more documentation of historical work is needed.
There are some great reads out there about gamedev and gaming history, though:
- Blood, Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreier
- Masters of Doom by David Kushner
- The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent was required reading for me in college
- Game Over by David Sheff
- Dungeon Hacks by David Craddock
- Game Over by David Sheff. An older book about the early days of Nintendo and specifically focused on how Nintendo came to the U.S. with the N.E.S. Lots of interesting anecdotes and well told. I am always surprised more people haven't read this one!
- If you can, try to get ahold of 'Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World' book by David Sheff. I got it eons ago as a freebie along with 'Arcade' magazine and proceeded to read it as I had nothing better to do at the time. It has to be one of the best game-oriented (industry) book I've read.
- There is a very good description in this book: "Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World" http://www.amazon.com/Game-Over-Nintendo-Conquered-World/dp/...
