Nintendo’s Rise - A Reflection on Game Over

Today, I finally finished reading Game Over: Press Start to Continue – The Maturing of Mario, a newer edition of David Sheff’s Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children. Functionally, it serves as a dramatic retelling of Nintendo’s history up to 1993. Sheff received extensive access to dozens and dozens of employees at Nintendo and other companies in the video-game industry in the early ‘90s for the purpose of this book. These employees ranged from the developers whose sweat actually created the games all the way up to the heads of Nintendo and its subsidiaries.

Sheff delves deep into the rise of Nintendo as a toy and later a video game company, and as the original title of the novel suggests, it’s all framed in the context of how much of the United States saw Nintendo as an invader looking to steal the U.S. economy for itself. It’s an interesting perspective that to me seems to be leaned into strictly in order to sell more books. However, was this for profit, or was it meant to draw in people who were warry of Japanese businesses in order to tell Nintendo’s true story? I imagine it’s a little from column A and a little from column B. It seems pretty clear that Sheff doesn’t view Nintendo in this light, leading me to believe the intention was to show Nintendo a business just like any other in the western world. After all, Nintendo of America (NOA) has its own story, its own characters, its own ambitions, its own employees (many of whom were American at the start).

Without any question, the stars of the book are former president of NOA Minoru Arakawa, former chairman and legal representation of NOA Howard Lincoln, and former chairman and president of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi. Sheff used these three liberally as lenses to view the building of Nintendo’s companies as video game juggernauts. However, he doesn’t forget to touch on the perspective of Nintendo from outsiders: other companies, the consumers, other countries, and the government.

I feel one of the most integral scenarios that’s touched on is Hiroshi Yamauchi’s attempt at gaining a majority stake in the Seattle Mariners; it’s a perfect exemplification of the U.S.’s dichotomous view of Nintendo. The baseball team was being sold, and this likely would mean a relocation to Florida. Yamauchi made an offer on the team, supposedly to keep them in Seattle as repayment to the city (as it is the location of NOA’s headquarters). This offer was met with cheers from Seattle locals and boos from Major League Baseball. No rich Japanese businessman was getting his hands on American baseball!…

Of course, Yamauchi became an owner of the team and would be until he passed away in 2013. Was there every really any doubt that money would win out in the west? Is it beautiful or sad that money can make racism go away? On one hand, it shows that racism is so flimsy that a bit of money can turn someone’s tune very quickly. On the other hand, it’s sad that the world can often be so corrupted by money that enough of it will wash away any values (bad or good) that people have. Anyway, I digress.

The point is the push and pull of Nintendo making its way to the U.S. and into American homes. Another aspect of the push was the state of the gaming industry during Nintendo’s most significant growth. NOA was founded in 1980 as a Nintendo subsidiary to push Nintendo arcade games and home video games in North America, and just a few short years later, the industry completely crashed. Yet somehow, Nintendo flourished when other companies floundered.

For the better part of the 1980s, people (particularly retailers) were skeptical of the video-game industry, refusing to hop back on the passing “fad.” Nintendo had to make great efforts to advertise things like the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) as both toys and general electronics. This can be thought of as the source of many people’s views of video games as being for children up until and even into the 21st century. That view seems to have largely gone away with many studies showing that adults are by far the more avid gamers, but at the time, marketing to the kids was a necessity. Video games were seen as dead on arrival, but the toy industry was booming. Nintendo’s marketing of the NES as a prolific toy that is also designed to fit in with other electronics like a VCR or a fax machine was brilliant. While even Atari (the company synonymous with video games through the ‘70s) sank, Nintendo slowly and then very rapidly found themselves owning upwards of 90% of a market worth billions of dollars.

I would say my favorite parts of Sheff’s book revolved around the legal cases that Nintendo fought in. The legal fighting between Nintendo and others like Universal, Atari, Mirrorsoft, and Russia were painted expertly by Sheff and his sources. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for a courtroom drama. I do love A Few Good Men, Liar Liar, The Social Network, and The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Perhaps that’s just a genre that tickles my fancy.

I suppose I like seeing justice. When Universal gets smacked down for trying to sue Nintendo over a copyright that Universal didn’t even own? Justice. When Atari illegally acquires Nintendo patents to stick it to them and then gets the old “screw you” from the legal system? Justice. When Atari also goes after Nintendo for legally acquiring a license that Atari thought (incorrectly) it had and fails? Justice. Unfortunately, Nintendo has developed a terrible rap sheet of sticking it to the little guy in the courts, so it’s hard to root for them, but it’s still good to see these legal cases handled in a way that’s best for developers.

I wouldn’t go anywhere near calling Game Over one of my favorite books, but it was a fascinating read. Nintendo’s unrelenting power in an industry that it essentially had a monopoly over is inspiring. It inspires both passion for the saving of an industry that was nearly dead and was brought back to life as well as fear for times when there isn’t enough competition in the industry.