Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

by Jeff Ryan

Overview

The definitive story of the rise of Nintendo.

In 1981, Nintendo of America was a one-year-old business already on the brink of failure. Its president, Mino Arakawa, was stuck with two thousand unsold arcade cabinets for a dud of a game (Radar Scope). So he hatched a plan.

Back in Japan, a boyish, shaggy-haired staff artist named Shigeru Miyamoto designed a new game for the unsold cabinets featur­ing an angry gorilla and a small jumping man. Donkey Kong brought in $180 million in its first year alone and launched the career of a short, chubby plumber named Mario.

Since then, Mario has starred in over two hundred games, gen­erating profits in the billions. He is more recognizable than Mickey Mouse, yet he’s little more than a mustache in bib overalls. How did a mere smear of pixels gain such huge popularity?

Super Mario tells the story behind the Nintendo games millions of us grew up with, explaining how a Japanese trading card company rose to dominate the fiercely competitive video-game industry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591845638
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/25/2012
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	282,938
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jeff Ryan, a lifelong gamer, has been featured on Salon.com and All Things Considered. He reviewed over 500 video games and covered four console launches as the games editor for Katrillion, a popular dotcom-era news and entertainment Web site. He lives in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Mario's Inside Story 1

Part 1 Arcade Fire 7

1 Baby Mario: The Birth of Nintendo of America 9

2 Mario's Artist: Shigeru Miyamoto and the Creation of Donkey Kong 19

3 Mario's Brawl: The MCA Universal Lawsuit 33

4 Mario's Early Years: The Video Game Crash of 1983 45

Part 2 Super 8 57

5 Mario's Island: Japan and the Famicom 59

6 Mario's Sunshine: Super Mario Bros. And the Nintendo Entertainment System 69

7 Mario's Bomb: The Lost Levels 81

8 Mario's Smash: Super Mario Bros. 3 89

9 Mario's Brothers: The Nes and the Game Boy 101

10 Mario's Drift: Sega, the Genesis, and a Very Fast Hedgehog 107

Part 3 Sweet 16 117

11 Mario's Clash: The Sonic-Mario Showdown 119

12 Mario's Galaxy: Spinoffs Galore 129

13 Mario the Juggler: Mario Paint 139

14 Mario's Advance: Nintendo's Discs 139

15 Mario's Kart (Ridge): Virtual Boy and Other Three-Dimensional Fun 159

Part 4 Third Prize Is You're Fired 173

16 Mario's World: The N64 175

17 Mario's Communication Kit: The Nintendo DD 185

18 Mario's Melee: The Gamecube 195

19 Mario's Time Machine: The Game Boy Advance 207

20 Mario's Saga: Sunshine and Darkness 213

Part 5 Wii are the Champions 227

21 Mario's Revolution: The DS 229

22 Mario's Princess: The Wii 239

23 Mario's Party: Three Days in The Life of Nintendo 251

24 Mario's Legend: The Future of Nintendo 265

25 Mario's Misfortune: How Nintendo Survived 2011 277

Thanks, Mario, But Our Notes and Acknowledgments are in Another Castle 293

Bibliography 297

Index 301

Editorial Reviews

Nintendo did not, alas, cooperate with this author. As a result, some of Ryan's anecdotes are left with an asterisk hanging by them in the reader's mind. Without a doubt, however, Super Mario is packed with enough strange—and confirmed—nuggets to please most fans…For the most part, the pages here turn as quickly as any of Mario's platform-jumping adventures.
—The Washington Post

Mike Musgrove

The history of how a Japanese video game featuring two Italian brothers became one of America's favorite pastimes is covered in exhaustive, enthusiastic detail by video game reviewer Ryan. The author takes readers through Nintendo's early business machinations; the story of Mario's eccentric creator, Shigeru Miyamoto; and the game-changing emergence of Nintendo's motion controller for the Wii, with a breezy journalistic style. At times the tone slips into the white hat–black hat morality employed in most video games, often painting Nintendo's business competitors or detractors with broad reductive strokes—"hardcore gamers sneer at Wii"—and paeans to new Nintendo releases get smattered with exclamation points, so that some pages read like Nintendo promo material. All of this is distracting but not fatal, and the book is a thorough history of Nintendo's victories, written by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable fan. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Nintendo’s thirty-year history in the gaming business is long and convoluted, and Ryan does a game job of narrowing it down while cramming everything into a single, readable tome.”

Wired.com

A fascinating read. While much of the information may be known to those who have read other gaming history books, in Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America, it is all brought together and more detail added to give you a full timeline of events…If you have any interest in Nintendo, then this is certainly a book to add to your collection…And following reading it I’ll guarantee your first desire will be to pick up a Mario game and start playing.”

Geek.com

Fascinating…Jeff Ryan’s Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America delivers illuminating details…It’s almost surprising that the chronology of a Japanese video game company could be this entertaining, but Ryan makes it so.”

Fortune

Ryan explores the history of Nintendo and the evolution of video games through the iconic Super Mario. Ray Porter has a great voice for this production since he sounds largely like the primary demographic: a twenty- or thirty-something male with a passion for video games. Ryan argues that the success of Nintendo is not the power of its graphics but the fun factor, made explicit through the icon of Super Mario and his appearance in many great games. Porter’s delivery is lively and enthusiastic; he maintains a good energy throughout the reading. His strong projection helps navigate the sometimes ridiculous game descriptions as well as punctuates Ryan’s insights. Porter’s joviality makes one wonder if he himself has also been a fan of Nintendo.”

AudioFile

Ryan explores the history of Nintendo and the evolution of video games through the iconic Super Mario. Ray Porter has a great voice for this production since he sounds largely like the primary demographic: a 20- or 30-something male with a passion for video games. Ryan argues that the success of Nintendo is not the power of its graphics but the fun factor, made explicit through the icon of Super Mario and his appearance in many great games. Porter’s delivery is lively and enthusiastic; he maintains a good energy throughout the reading. His strong projection helps navigate the sometimes-ridiculous game descriptions as well as punctuates Ryan’s insights. Porter’s joviality makes one wonder if he himself has also been a fan of Nintendo. L.E. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2011 - AudioFile

A gaming journalist retraces Nintendo's unlikely shaping of video-game history through a pudgy Italian plumber named Mario.

In his debut, Ryan chronicles the surprisingly riveting history of Japanese video-game empire Nintendo, from their early coin-operated arcade-game days to recent innovations in game-system technology. More specifically, though, the author follows the professional career of Nintendo's mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto and the often-riveting story behind the genesis of now-legendary pixilated plumber Mario, and the improbable success of Mario's star-vehicle, Donkey Kong, whose oddball name came about from a happy accident in Japanese-to-English translation.For anyone who grew up in the '80s with quarter-arcade games like Donkey Kong, the first half of Ryan's book is an endlessly fascinating nostalgia trip. Placing Miyamoto's creation in its cultural and chronological context, the author not only gives Nintendo's full history, but also a detailed accounting of Nintendo's early field of competition, especially with one-time giant Atari and later Sega, with its irreverent anti-Mario stance. Nintendo's rise to importance would also be marked by big lawsuits, namely by Universal, who claimed they owned the rights to King Kong, and thus, Donkey Kong. It's this historical element that Ryan thrives on, as well as the biographical aspects of Nintendo's eccentric Japanese founding fathers. The author drives home the notion of Nintendo's success being mostly due to its uncanny sense of resourcefulness. In the later chapters, however, the narrative slows, as Ryan gets too caught up in gamer shop talk. In his coverage of the '90s and beyond, the author seems more concerned with the technological minutiae behind every new gizmo that Nintendo is responsible for and can't retain the dramatic buildup that had given such heft to earlier chapters.

Late stumbles aside, an effective and entertaining overview of the video-game industry's history and Nintendo's essential role in shaping it.

Kirkus Reviews