| December 31,
2001... Psycho Santa, Ho Ho
Ho! |
Merry Christmas, guys. I know
this is late but I think you'll like what I got 'ya.
Well, I'm off to spend the new year
with Dick Clark!
(Yes, this is my update. You'd
make it short too if you spent the last few weeks writing
reviews...)
| December 14,
2001... Mr. Do! Does
Pachinko |
Since my opinion of Mega Man X6
apparently isn't valid until I've beaten it three times with
each of the characters, I decided to at least be open minded
enough to play Mega Man X2 for the Super NES, just to see if
the series has merit that I somehow overlooked (for the near
decade it's existed). My opinion of X6 for the
Playstation did improve after this, but only because X2
demonstrated that it could have been a whole lot more
sadistic. It's like the difference between being tied up
and whipped by a bondage babe and having your limbs chopped
off by an executioner who reeks of blood, sweat, and ale...
they're both painful, but some people might actually enjoy the
company of the dominatrix. If you get turned on by the
executioner, however, you're sick and beyond help.
In "just thought you'd like to know"
news, I found what could be the coolest gambling device ever
made shortly after I left work today. Remember Aruze,
the pachinko company that bought SNK? Wait, wait, put
down the torches! They actually created a terrific
product, rather than pulling existing ones off store
shelves. It's a slot machine named Duel Dragon, and it's
got a lot of great extras, including a joystick-like arm and
an LCD screen that looks suspiciously like the one in the
Neo-Geo Pocket. The best part, however, is that the slot
machine stars Mr. Do!, who runs around both playfields from
his old game and brand new vibrant backgrounds in the attract
mode. You can even play two kinds of slots
simultaneously, one with the windows near the top of the
machine and another, with EXTRA letters and other Mr. Do!
prizes, on the display. I wish I could have afforded
this... it was obviously a quality product, but even with the
pawn shop owner insisting that it was worth much more, three
hundred dollars is just too rich for my blood. If there
are other collectors in the mid-Michigan area that DO have the
money for this, you'd better get to Greenville fast... the guy
who's got it now is thinking of giving it to someone for
Christmas!
Anyways... just so you know, here's
what I've got planned for The Gameroom Blitz:
NOW: ALGEBRA FINALS (NO
UPDATES)
IN A WEEK: JOHN ROCHE REVIEWS,
PROFILE
AFTER THAT: GAME BOY ADVANCE PAGE
IN A
MONTH OR TWO: MANDI/JESS DUAL REVIEW, REVISION
2
(REVISION 1 CRASHED, UNRECOVERABLE)
END OF LINE,
DILLENGER.
| December 10,
2001... SNK Boss Syndrome in a Capcom
Game? |
Let's see... while I was gone visiting
a friend a couple days ago, I forgot to feed my cat*, and
something else that was more important. Oh yeah!
The web site. Sorry I forgot to publish my last post and
the submissions I received from Carl Schafer and John
Roche. I've got things taken care of now,
though.
The stay at Jeremy's was really cool,
though. We spent the day screaming at the freshly
released US version of Mega Man X6... and the next day
screaming at Capcom vs. SNK 2. The difference, however,
is that Capcom vs. SNK 2 was worth risking the
laryngitis. I was very happy with the Playstation 2
conversion of this game. It's just like the Dreamcast
version, which is to say, the best fighting game you can buy
on the system. Playing Capcom vs. SNK 2 on a Dual Shock
controller is a little uncomfortable, and it does make
performing super moves more difficult than I would have liked,
but you'll adapt eventually... heck, I was able to reach
Ultimate Rugal after a couple of games.
Ultimate Rugal, of course, is Capcom
vs. SNK 2's absurdly overpowered boss, that annoying fighting
game staple that was first brought to us by Midway in the
Mortal Kombat series, then found its way into SNK's fighters
and eventually, Capcom's. I'm convinced that EVERY
company is doing this now because it's doubled their revenue
in the last few years. Bastards like Rugal, Gill, and
Onslaught keep players dumping quarters into arcade games
because their foolish male ego can't handle losing, even
though their more rational side knows that these jerks are
impossible to beat. Ultimate Rugal isn't quite as brutal
as his counterparts in other fighters... but he WILL keep you
busy for a while. I used three of my best characters
against Ultimate Rugal, but Ken, Cammy, and Eagle fell over a
dozen times to his powerful Genocide Cutters. Each time
I fought him, however, Jeremy noticed that Rugal's life bar
got shorter and shorter at the end of the match. Sensing
a trend, he urged me to continue, and eventually, I was able
to drive a stake (or more accurately, Eagle's twin staffs)
into the fiend's heart. You can bet that this will be a
moment that I'll take pride in, and brag about, for many years
to come... or at least until Pat hands me my heiny in the next
Game Hits tournament. :D
Now Mega Man X6, on the other hand, is
something that I hope Capcom will consider an
embarassment. I never cared for the X series, but this
one piles on even more flaws, including an illogical, badly
translated plot and frustrating levels that each take a
single, almost clever idea and beat it to death. The
graphics, sound, and gameplay are (just barely) good enough,
but they certainly don't demonstrate everything Capcom learned
about the Playstation after they realized gamers demanded
better from them than the weak PSX conversions of Darkstalkers
and the original Street Fighter Alpha. There are a lot
of dithered, badly rendered backgrounds in many of the stages,
and the bosses have so little color you'd swear you saw them
before in Mega Man Xtreme for the Game Boy Color. The
music is generic, Japanese flavored heavy metal, just like in
the other X games... but Filmation fans will be happy to hear
the boss theme, which sounds just like it came from a Fat
Albert cartoon. Oops, there goes the consistent design,
right out the window! Finally, although the control is
fairly responsive, you'll die dozens of times anyway thanks to
the obnoxiously powerful bosses (High-Max sounds like a
redundant name, but trust me, there's a reason for it) and
those sadistic, repetitive levels. Is it fun to be
squashed dozens of times by a compactor the size of
Kentucky? No. Should you spend your money on this
abortion of a game? No. Should you save it and buy
a ton of clearance priced Dreamcast games at Electronics
Boutique instead? Yep, that's a big 10-4, good
buddy. Capcom, your first few Mega Man games were
classics, but these new ones under the X banner just feel so
forced. It's time to reveal all the secrets in this
spin-off (if anyone even cares) and just move on, to good Mega
Man games like Legends and Battle Network.
* No overweight kitties were harmed in
the making of this post.
| December 7,
2001... The Winback
Non-Controversy |
Well, here we go again. Another
video game has killed an innocent child, or so says the media,
who's apparently gotten tired of kicking around Osama bin
Ladin and have returned to their favorite target. At
least they've made a feeble attempt to make their latest
attack on this hobby sound original... this time, they're not
pointing fingers at Doom or Mortal Kombat but rather a stealth
action game that, until now, hid itself a little TOO
well. Really, those kids must have been the only ones
who bought Winback: Covert Ops instead of Metal Gear Solid
2... I can't even remember what system this was designed for
or who released it!
It's going to get a lot more
recognition now, that's for sure. It's not going to
outsell Metal Gear Solid 2, or even the original game on the
NES, but I imagine that everyone who did buy it are ready to
capitalize on the purchase faster than you can say, "Do not
pass Ebay... DO collect two hundred dollars." Sometimes
I wonder if the companies who produce these games are just
trying to prod their sales along with a little negative
publicity. I can still remember when Midway was picketed
by a religious organization who complained, as always, about
Mortal Kombat. What makes me suspicious is that this was
a couple of years ago, after the slapped together Mortal
Kombat Gold and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, which I'm
convinced hit the bargain bins BEFORE it was put on store
shelves. After those two games, Midway was probably
willing to do anything to get this once profitable series
noticed.
You don't need to come here to read
about this scandal, but here's one that you probably won't
read anywhere else. Several months ago, in the nearby
town of Lakeview, a humble arcade opened against the wishes of
the rather starchy town committee. They hated the place
from day one and did their absolute best to run it out of
business, putting pressure on the owners and sending police
cars downtown constantly in an attempt to make the clientel
nervous. Sure enough, the arcade eventually shut down,
but not without dire consequences to several members of the
committee and the chief of police. Their bullying went
TOO far when one of the officers had pulled over and searched
the car of an important Lakeview family. It didn't take
nearly as long for the family to remove everyone responsible
for office as it did for this newly created unemployment line
to purge Lakeview of the "evils" of public gaming.
Better yet, the arcade owners and suppliers are suing the town
for loss of revenue, so they WILL make money from it one way
or another.
I just have to wonder... was this the
kind of harassment that led to the closing of Lakeview's
previous arcade, the dearly missed Castle Pizzaria? More
importantly, does this happen often in other small cities, and
if so, what's got the people of these towns so worried?
If you've got stories similar to this, please either E-mail me
or post them on the forum. It's time to find out if this
country's already threatening videophobia is getting even
worse.
(Special thanks to Brian Deuel for the
news, who personally faught the bigots in Lakeview's town
council, and, on a side note, wrote a killer Sinistar driver
for MAME several years back)
| December 1,
2001... RIP George
Harrison |
I heard the news today... oh boy.
I wasn't a rabid Beatles fan, but I did
enjoy the music they produced after they outgrew their boy
band phase, and George Harrison's I Got My Mind Set On You was
pretty catchy. I guess the best way to pay tribute to
this late but great artist is to listen to his last single,
released earlier this year. If it's as good as his work
from the 80's, I'll be satisfied with it.
However, out of the four Beatles, Ringo
Starr is still my favorite. I know, I know, he was
basically the band's paperweight, but he's just so likable,
unlike the reclusive George or the painfully whiny John.
He appreciates his fans more than the other Beatles (maybe
because he has a lot fewer of them?), and like William
Shatner, he's got a kitsch factor that he's not afraid to
exploit. Ringo was happy to star on The Simpsons, and
even be drawn with an enormous nose, well before the other
Beatles considered it. He was even the host of a popular
children's show and had a Beanie Baby (the toys that look like
plush roadkill) named after him... the man's got charisma that
even kids can't resist!
Anyway, that Game Boy Advance section
that I've been promising for so long is almost complete... I
just need to write a few more reviews, create a "wanted" table
(for games that should be translated to the system), and shake
an opinion of Advance Wars out of one of my new
contributors. It's also worth mentioning that the review
of Rockman and Forte for the Wonderswan is half
finished. I just need to hand it over to Mandi Paugh so
she can add her opinions. I've split an article before,
when I interviewed Chris Bieniek in my old print fanzine, and
that went pretty well... it read like a real conversation even
though I've never actually met Mr. Bieniek. I'm hoping
that this review will have that same feel.
Speaking of reviews, I've got to get
around to writing a synopsis of the Harry Potter film.
Yes, I saw it, and no, I'm not ashamed of myself for doing
it. The movie was great, I've heard the books are great,
and amazingly, even the GAMES are well done. Harry
Potter and the Sorceror's Stone on the Game Boy Color has been
getting perfect ratings on video game sites like
GameFAQs and the Euro-Asian GameBoy page. If you're
taking notes, that's PERFECT ratings, on the Game Boy
COLOR. It's pretty obvious that J.K. Rowling demands top
quality products from the Harry Potter franchise, and there's
no reason to be embarassed by that.
| November 19,
2001... Thank 'Ya, Thank 'Ya Very
Much |
Well, it's almost Thanksgiving, so
allow me to talk a little about the things I'm thankful for
this year...
* I'm thankful that, while almost
anyone can get a sitcom, it takes a talented comedian and good
writers to keep it. See you on the Food
Network, Emeril!
* I'm thankful that, in this
conflict with Afghanistan, we've got the bigger bombs.
^^;;;
* On a serious note, I'm thankful
that the Afghani people have rights now. I watched
footage of a man in Kabul having his Taliban enforced beard
shaved off and I almost cried... it wouldn't have been
more dramatic and uplifting if he had ripped iron shackles
from his wrists and ankles.
* I'm thankful that Ellen is
funny again.
* I'm thankful for my cute Manx
cat Squeak, who... hey! What the heck are you
doing?! Stop shredding the recliner! OK, well, I'm
not as thankful for him right now.
* I'm thankful for that great
Thanksgiving dinner I'll have at my parents' house. My
mom's a fine cook and she always makes everything I
like.
* I'm not just thankful... I'm
ecstatic about the games coming soon for the Game Boy
Advance. Guilty Gear X? King of Fighters
Neo-Blood? Spyro the Dragon? An enhanced version
of Street Fighter Alpha 3? And the first Sonic game
that's worth playing since the original Sonic Adventure for
Dreamcast? It's overwhelming. The Taco Bell can
keep its X-Boxes... with my trusty Game Boy Advance handy, I
don't need one.
* Speaking of the X-Box, I'm
thankful that people aren't as excited about this system as
the media seems to be. Game magazines have been pushing
this system down their customers' throats... and they're
coughing it right back up. If we're lucky, the X-Box
will bomb so miserably that Bill Gates won't even CONSIDER
another hostile takeover of the video game industry.
Take your rehashed PC hardware and your oversized controllers
and go home.
* I'm downright surprised that
GameNow! turned out pretty well. As the editors
intended, it's light reading, but the reviews seem more real
and honest than the stuff in GamePro. I'm also thankful
that Chris Bieniek still sends me Tips & Tricks every now
and then. The new picture puzzle section is pretty
clever, too... I get the feeling that it's a sly way to
introduce kids to the concept of video game graphics
design.
* I'm thankful that people are
using my forums, even when they're doing it to call me a
hypocrite.
* I'm thankful that Dreamcast
games are on clearance now... there's a rumor that Wal-Marts
are selling most of them for five dollars a piece!
That's cheaper than buying burns from, ahem, less reputable
dealers.
* Finally, I'm thankful that I
have a job again now. Boy, did I need one... my budget
was getting uncomfortably tight and I hated to ask my parents
to bail me out of every one of my financial
crunches.
| November 10,
2001... Kabul!: An Adventure in 2600 Game
Hacking |
Remember that parody on the 2600 page
about a rerelease of Kaboom! called Kabul? Well, it's
more than just a parody now! I've finished hacking the
game, changing the bomber into Osama bin Laden and the
Activision logo at the bottom of the screen into the new
title. I didn't think I was going to be able to do it,
since the programs I'd downloaded from Atari Age allow you to
easily find game graphics but not colors. However, I
improvised a little... since I knew that the bomber's shirt
was striped, I started looking for that pattern in the ROM and
changed it a little when I thought I found it. Lucky for
me, the bit of code I'd changed turned out to be exactly what
I was looking for, and with about an hour of tweaking I made
the Osama character look BETTER than the mock picture on The
26 Hunter. A cool added bonus was that I was able to
take this code and transfer it directly to the 5200 version...
even though that game was much larger and for a different
system, the graphics and colors were exactly the
same.
I just need to hunt down the text code
in the 5200 version and change that, and presto! It'll
be finished and ready for distribution as well. In the
meantime, you can settle for the 2600 version of Kabul!, which
should be on Atari Age along with a dozen other hacks by other
designers. Man, this is great... I love hacking these
ancient games. I'd enjoy DESIGNING them even more, but
I'll wait until I've taken a C++ class at the local college
and better understand Daniel Bienvenu's ColecoVision
programming tools before I try to make them. I can't
wait... the ColecoVision could really use a translation of
Bust-A-Move and I'd love to be the person who creates
it.
So, who's up for some new
articles? I've finished the ColecoVision Collector's
List, responded to some ballots in Fighter's Misery, and added
a review of Fighting Street that was originally printed in my
old fanzine. In a few weeks, I'll fix that pesky
archives page (I have no clue what's going on with that...),
review the Wonderswan version of Rockman and Forte with Mandi
Paugh, and maybe even talk about the King of Fighters '99
tournament I hosted a few months ago. I guess I can look
back at it and laugh now. :P
| October 29,
2001... Club Mario, Where Art
Thou? |
I want to apologize for taking so long to update
the site. I just haven't been feeling well lately...
shortly after the whole K-Mart fiasco, I came down with a
kidney infection, and I'm just starting to get over
it.
I've got to tell you, though, things
would have been a lot more miserable for me if it hadn't been
for the support of my friends and family. My mother
deserves a lot of credit for giving me both emotional and
financial support over the past month, and I really
appreciated Pat Reynolds and his wife letting me drop by last
weekend. I've got to give a hand to Jeremy Parish and
Russ Perry, Jr. for sending me their respective fanzines...
and speaking of Russ, I'd like to thank him and everyone else
who sent in comments about my mod of the 2600 version of
Galaxian. Finally, I'm grateful to Atari Age for posting
the ROM on their site, and for telling me about the editing
tools I used to (re)make it.
The only people I don't feel indebted
to right now are the yutzes running, and ruining,
Nintendo. Remember Club Mario, the quality assurance
team assembled to defend the Game Boy Advance from T*HQ's
onslaught of crummy license-based games? Well, they're
history now, and so is any chance of the system's software
library staying at its once consistently high quality.
Now, the store shelves are filling with Rugrats and Men in
Black titles, and the company who claimed to have our best
interests in mind has broken their promise to gamers for the
sake of a fleeting, short-term profit. What Nintendo
doesn't realize is that compromising the reputation of the
Game Boy Advance so soon after its release could be a
financially devastating mistake in a few years. After
all, it's possible that the Game Boy Advance could become
Nintendo's flagship system if the Game Cube fails... and let's
not kid ourselves, this is a definite possibility if the X-Box
is a success. Right now, the Game Boy Advance is
Nintendo's only sure thing, and they simply can't afford to
risk its reputation on rotten software people will buy but
won't actually play. Atari learned this the hard way in
1984... no matter how deep they buried those copies of E.T.,
there was nothing they could do to keep them from coming back
to haunt them.
I guess Nintendo will just have to find
this out for themselves. So hey, here's what I've
written for this update... a couple of N64 reviews, and half
of a ColecoVision resource that should be useful to those of
you out there who collect or just play games for that
system. Back to the N64 for a minute, though... I bought
a beat up unit a while ago for about $15. All that's
really wrong with it is that it looks like someone tried to
chew through the reset button, so it was a honey of a
deal.
You know, as much as I like to bash the
N64, I have to admit that I don't regret buying one. I'm
having a great time with Paper Mario, and I can't wait to get
my hands on a few of the other games for the system when I can
afford 'em. It'll be nice to actually see the replays in
Mario Tennis for a change, because my friends always skip them
as quickly as possible to get to the next serve. I even
want to try Superman, just to see if it's really as awful as
everyone says... I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.
^^;
| October 16, 2001... Not
a Webcomic, Jess! Turn Back While You Still
Can! |
I'm pretty depressed right now, but I
guess I should probably post something, huh? Well, I'll
let you know about a couple of projects I'm working on that
are more or less unrelated to The Gameroom Blitz. The
first is Zoo Logic, a furry gaming comic that's a joint
venture between myself and an old friend, Josh Lesnick of
Cutewendy fame. Despite the association with Josh (whose
own comic is one of the hottest properties on Keenspot), Zoo
Logic isn't really as good as I'd like it to be, but I'm
working on making it better. I need to learn some better
scanning and editing techniques first... if you publish full
color artwork on the Internet, drop me a line and explain to
me how you do the voodoo that you do so well, because I could
really use the help.
Past that, there's the edit of Galaxian
for the 2600 that I just finished. There was a guy on
the web site AtariAge who inspired me to do this... Phillip
Frey, or Rhindle the Red, as he calls himself on the AtariAge
message boards, redesigned the graphics in Mario Bros. with a
software toolkit, making them less stiff and blocky than they
were in the original game. I downloaded the toolkit
myself and tested it out with Galaxian, and it didn't take
long for me to improve the game's graphics. Before, the
aliens looked vaguely like teddy bears, but in my mod they're
much closer to the interstellar insects in the arcade
game. Due to the terms of use at Emulation World, I
can't post the modded ROM here, but you should be able to find
it at AtariAge in a few days. Who knows? Maybe
I'll even hook up with the guy who runs Hozer Video and start
selling cartridge versions.
So, why the long face? Well, I
was "let go" (aka shitcanned) from K-Mart less than a month
after I started. I was starting to get the hang of the
job, but the store manager, a sawed off tyrant who the rest of
the employees secretly referred to as a "living Ken doll",
apparently had a bad day and decided to take it out on
me. He seemed intent on starting a war of words with me,
and even though I held my temper as best I could, I guess it
wasn't enough. Naturally, the manager didn't have the
balls to tell me I was "dismissed" (aka fired like a satellite
into orbit)... I found out a week later from the personnel
department, who first told me that I wasn't getting any hours
due to budget cuts. Well, thanks, guys. That was
one week I could have spent looking for new
employment.
It's a shame... I had no problem with
the other employees, and the store was definitely better than
your average K-Mart. Unfortunately, this Big K was
supervised by a Big A, and I became the victim of his nasty
temper and easily bruised ego.
So, if you're a fan of this site, I'd
like you to do me a favor. Stay away from K-Mart for a
week. There are thousands of great stores in the United
States, and I'd bet that half of them don't treat their
employees like a disposable resource, branding them with
numbers and whipping them in the ass like a herd of cattle
being led to the nearest slaughterhouse.
| October 13, 2001... Ten
Thousand Maniacs |
Ok... I'm no longer as worried about
Shigeru Miyamoto's sanity as I am yours, Chris.
Anyhoo, here's an honest to goodness,
brand new update for The Gameroom Blitz. Not only have I
changed the banner to reflect a new milestone for the site
(10,000 hits! Keep 'em comin', guys!), but I've written
another review for Fighter's Misery and, gasp and swoon, added
new content including a cartoon and an introduction to The 26
Hunter. You should also be able to download the Pac-Mon games
now, although I'll probably have them together in the same ZIP
file. What the heck, if you want to play one of those games
you're probably gonna to be interested in both of
them.
I'm thinking of finally starting that
Game Boy Advance page so I can add it to the site in about a
month... but I'm not sure what I should include. For instance,
should I add pictures to every review or just leave the page
text-based? Either way, the content will be the same... the
Advance page will be filled with short reviews of games for
the Game Boy Advance, similar to my other system dedicated
pages but with a unique (perhaps even controversial) new
approach to rating each title.
Still haven't read The First Quarter
yet? You should. Later on in the book the author details just
how petty and cruel (and jealous of Hercules... no, wait,
scratch that last part) the major game companies can be...
there were allegations that Nintendo, upset about the success
of the original Mortal Kombat on the Genesis, ignited the
congressional hearings that threatened the entire industry's
rights of free expression. Worse still, Sega had a debut party
for the 32X with obnoxious rap music and plenty of 32X
kiosks... and the press members that were invited there were
essentially held hostage ("Oh, the buses? They won't be back
until 11PM. In the meantime, why don't you play a few rounds
of Kolibri?"). Trapped in a building with thunderously loud
rap music and nothing to play but the 32X? Man, that's my
definition of hell right there.
| October 9,
2001... Extreme
Annoyance |
I don't think Jeremy's ever going to
let me live down the fact that the next Grandia game is going
to have the word "Xtreme" in the title. Man, you'd think
they'd finally just put that catchphrase to rest, but seven
years after Micronet/Bignet changed its name to Extreme
Entertainment, it's still popular... and overused. I've
seen it on a third of the toys in my store, including a WWF
playset which proclaims, "Xtreme isn't a mood... it's a
LIFESTYLE!" I doubt Vince McChucklehead even knows what
extreme means, and I don't think any of the other corporations
who've beat it into the ground have any idea either.
They just like that the word convinces trendy morons to
purchase their mediocre products. I'd like to see how
far companies can take this... maybe we'll see Xtreme Charmin,
complete with flecks of broken glass embedded in the fibers of
the toilet paper. Then they can get rid of the British
chick from Dear John and make Dan Cortese the voice of the
rolling buttwipe in their ads. "Look, d00dz! You
can either wipe the boring old fashioned way, or take your ass
to new limits with Xtreme Charmin!"
But oh yeah. About Grandia
Xtreme... as ignominious as the name change is, I'll just have
to accept the ignominy and ignominiously part with the fourty
dollars it'll cost. Then I can play it and decide if
it's the name or the game itself that's full of
ignominiousness. Or better yet, I can avoid the
ignominiosity of buying a Playstation 2 and just buy a copy of
Grandia 2 for the Dreamcast. I played that before and I
know I wouldn't feel too ignominomininny-whatever about
purchasing it.
By the way, I just bought Super Mario
Kart Super Circuit the other day. Not only is it the
best game in the series, it's got a great stab at Hiroshi
Yamauchi at the end... he's represented as Bowser, the angry
turtle king who seems to get more and more beast-like every
time he pops up in a Mario game. In this one, he doesn't
even talk, opting instead to roar and growl like some kind of
shellbacked Godzilla. He seemed so much brighter and
more personable in the cartoons...
| October 1,
2001... The Mr. Burns of Nintendo (so is
Miyamoto Smithers?) |
Damn, it's October already. Gotta
think of a costume for Halloween... I've got it! I'll
dress up as Hiroshi Yamauchi, the most frightening man in the
video game industry!
I've been reading The First Quarter by
Steven Kent, and it seems like there's a surprise on nearly
every page... there was a lot of information about the
industry that I'd somehow missed, especially during the crash
of 1984 and the awkward transfer of power from Atari to
Nintendo. I was very young around that time, and my
mother had remarried the year the industry had collapsed, so I
guess I was either too distracted or uninformed to realize
that the hobby I loved so dearly had nearly been destroyed by
corporate greed and consumer neglect. I also didn't
understand that Nintendo had to sweat blood to revive the
video game market in the United States... I just assumed that
people would buy the NES because it was the best, most
strongly supported game system available at the time. It
turns out that many of them- especially retail store owners-
didn't even WANT to associate themselves with video games, and
Nintendo had to come up with a sneaky business strategy to
sell their products and eventually revive the market. I
always thought of ROB the video robot as one of Nintendo's
biggest mistakes, but Steven Kent describes it as a possible
key to the success of the NES, because it led people to
believe that the console was something other than a (gasp!)
video game system. Essentially, it was more of a shield
to defend Nintendo from the anti-gaming climate of the time
than a useful peripheral for NES owners. Once it served
its purpose and people started coming to their senses about
video games, Nintendo just chucked it in the garbage. I
suspect that people who'd purchased the NES for ROB felt a
little burned by this, but I'm sure they got over it once they
started playing the system for its games rather than to
"interact" with some useless toy.
Anyway, about Yamauchi. You
remember that episode of The Simpsons where FOX CEO Rupert
Murdoch refers to himself as a "billionaire tyrant"?
Well, I doubt Yamauchi would ever make the same admission, but
he definitely fits that description. In The First
Quarter, Steven Kent details a "meeting" (more like a shouting
match) between the presidents of Nintendo and Coleco.
Coleco made the mistake of designing an ADAM version of Donkey
Kong while Nintendo and Atari discussed releasing the game for
Atari's own line of computers. From what I read, it
didn't seem as though Coleco even realized it was infringing
on Nintendo's copyrights, but Yamauchi didn't care if it was
an honest mistake... the moment he saw the prototype version
of Donkey Kong for the ADAM, he started muttering angry
comments under his breath, then lept to his feet, stuck a
finger in the Coleco CEO's face, and screamed... well, Kent
never really describes what he'd said, but I'm guessing I
couldn't print it here even if it were in Japanese.
I have to wonder how Yamauchi even
became president of Nintendo in the first place, because this
isn't the kind of behavior you'd expect from a leader of an
international corporation, or for that matter, a native of
Japan. I guess one outburst would be understandable,
especially in the early 80's when video games were such a high
profit, high stress business, but according to Kent Yamauchi
acts like this ALL THE TIME. It kind of makes you wish
that Nintendo would have followed Namco's lead and hired its
best employees to run the company. I'm sure Shigeru
Miyamoto and Gumpei Yokoi (dead? Well, yes, but that may
not have happened if he'd taken Yamauchi's place after the
success of the GameBoy) would be a little more sympathetic to
their hardware and software designers than a firebreathing
thug like Hiroshi Yamauchi.
If any Nintendo fans, historians, or
better yet, employees, would like to debate or further discuss
my opinion of the company's Japanese management, please either
E-mail me or post your own opinions on the message
board. I know not everybody's going to agree with me
about this, and I'd like to see some other
viewpoints.