June 6, 2025 • 42 mins
From Nintendo's history with the Yakuza to its dabbling in the seedy motel business, the House of Mario has a much longer and stranger history than you might guess. Find out what happened when the company tried to make knitting popular, how America's obsession with robots helped them nudge their way into retailers, and why a grabber called the Ultra Hand was the breakthrough the company needed. Featuring Ramsey Yount.
This episode originally aired on December 20, 2017.
Photo by Cláudio Luiz Castro via Unsplash. Thanks, Cláudio!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 2 (00:00):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well? All right, so I've had this fact waiting to
use it, and I think today's episode is the right one.
So did you know that Nintendo almost came out with
a knitting machine?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
No? No, was that in its earliest days? Are like
with the Wei No?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
No, Like in the nineteen eighties when they came out
with the original neees system. You remember this? Yeah? Yeah,
I found this old trade ad for it when they
were considering launching it. And here's how it reads. So
it says, now you're knitting with power. It's not a game,
not a toy, not something a young girl can outgrow
in three to six months or even a year. It
actually knits sweaters.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
That's so weird and sexist.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah kind of.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I mean the technology is kind of forward thinking, I guess.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I mean you could fashion your own patterns, yarn it up,
and have it knit for you. I guess I think
that's how it works. And the guy who was asked
to demonstrate it for Toys r Us, called it one
of his least genuinely enthusiastic demos and it basically got
zero demand. But reading about the Nintendo knitting machine made me,
wonder you know how long has Nintendo been around, and
(01:00):
how they survived for this long and such an incredibly
competitive market, and just how much running and swimming is
Mario doing in Super Mario Brothers. So that's what we're
going to find out. Let's dive in. Hey their podcast listeners,
(01:34):
welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend man gesh Hot
Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass
holding up a paper that says up down, up, down, left, right, left, right,
be a start. Wow, isn't that the Konami code from Nintendo.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, that's the secret code that gave you all those
extra lives in contra.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That is just how thoughtful he is sharing a top
secret industry code on the airways. It's our friend and
producer Tristan mc so we're talking Nintendo. Now. Everybody's familiar
with Nintendo and its flagship characters Mario, Luigi, Zelda, the
list goes on, but video games are only half of
the company's one hundred and twenty eight year history, actually
(02:14):
less than that. So with the holiday season upon us
and the new Nintendo Switch console topping all kinds of
hot toy and tech lists. We thought it'd be fun
to shed some light on the lesser known history of
the world's most recognizable video game maker, the Nintendo.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
You don't know, right, And I'll do the first admit
there's so much I didn't know about Nintendo. For example,
did you know the company actually won Emmy back in
two thousand and seven?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I thought Emmy's were just TV shows, So I had
a video game company wind up with an Emmy.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, so it was actually awarded in recognition of one
of Nintendo's most famous tech innovations, the D pad or
the directional pad. Uh huh, So I'm sure you know this,
but the dpad is the plus sign shape button that
you see on video game controllers nowadays. And Nintendo introduced
the new output method back in I think nineteen eighty two,
and it quickly became a standard in the industry over
(03:03):
the old joysticks, like you know, the ones where you
had to use your whole hand to move the controller
around instead of just a free thumb.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, I mean that makes sense. The deepad revolutionized gaming,
But that doesn't say how they got an Emmy. How
did they win an Emmy?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well, most video games are played on TVs, so there's
one connection there. But the real reason is that the
dpad got utilized by most of the remotes in your house,
whether for your DVD player or streaming device or the
TV itself.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
That's pretty crazy, all right. Well, it's clear Nintendo isn't
your typical video game company, and as I was saying earlier,
Nintendo actually predates video games themselves by almost one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So I've read a little of this before that. Nintendo
started out as a playing card manufacturer, and this was
back in eighteen eighty nine when a twenty nine year
old businessman named Fuzlajiro Yamachi. He saw the chance to
jumpstart this dormant industry. And as you might know, Japan
had cut most of its ties with the Western world
during the seventeenth century. It was like this highly protected
(03:56):
society and the royalty didn't want invading cultures to the
country's values and traditions. But as part of this isolationist stance,
there was this ban on all foreign playing cards, and
this was to curb the rise in the legal gambling
and when the Japanese devised their own card games in
the ensuing centuries, those two became used for gambling, and
the government banned those as well.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Pretty interesting art. So it's a bit of a game
of kind of whack a mole, now right. I mean,
games pop up, they get extinguished, then they pop up
somewhere else, and then they get extinguished again, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And so this back and forth rise and fall of
Japanese card games goes on for more than two hundred
and fifty years, and then in eighteen eighty six, a
new game called hanafuda and I'm going to mispronounce every
single Japanese word of this, but it's finally permitted by
the government. And this game loosely translates as flower cards,
and they used flowers and animal pictures instead of numbers.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
So it was a little harder to use for gambling, harder,
I'm guessing, but not impossible.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, that's right. So wiley gamblers still found ways to
make money playing Hanafuda. And I mean, the general public
isn't that interested in playing card games since it's had
such a bad rep for so long, but this new
game did catch on quickly among this group of near
duells known as the yakuza.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Wait, so it's just like an organized crime syndicate, is
it there? The early customers of Nintendo were they actually
like Japanese gangster or.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Something sort of. So the term yakuza actually started as
this reference to a losing hand in this game that
wasn't worth any points. And since the game was popular
mostly with unsavory types, Yakuza game slang for like useless individuals,
And we should do a whole episode on the Yukuza
down the road, But at this point, these useless individuals
are just kind of outcasts in society. And the wider
(05:37):
connection to organized crime that comes later. But the moniker
itself does have a connection to Nintendo, and specifically they're
Hanafuda cards.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Huh. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about
how Ourmanyamachi rises above this shady designation, and basically it
all comes down to design. The cards of the company
Nintendo produced included hand painted images, you know, made from
the bark of mulberry trees, and because they were so
ornate and super high quality and frankly just eye catching,
(06:06):
it it actually helped free the cards from that back
alley stigma, and it wasn't long before Nintendo became the
top card game company in all of Japan.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Absolutely so. Over the years and generations, as the government
relaxed their rules, Nintendo started releasing new types of cards
and card games. But it's only in the nineteen fifties,
when Yamuchi's great grandson took over the reins, that Nintendo
started experimenting with some odd ball ideas.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
So what did they do?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Well, there are a few smart things, like Hiroshi signed
this deal to feature Disney characters on the card decks,
specifically to market them to children and families. But he
also did a few super strange things as well, like
he dabbled in starting a taxi service and a line
of instant rice, and for a little while he even
invested in love hotels, where businessmen could rent rooms by
(06:51):
the hour, no questions.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Asked, Oh my gosh, card Shark, gangsters, CD motels. I mean,
I have to be honest, like this is not the
house mark.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Definitely not, definitely, not yet. And while none of those
ventures worked, they all went belly up quickly. Hiroshi knew
that playing cards and the playing card market had reached
the saturation, so if Nintendo was going to survive into
the nineteen seventies, they'd need to branch out well.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And also by this point they were already dabbling in
at least board games, right.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Mm hm, that's right. But toy companies like Tomy and Bandai,
Like do you even remember those?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I mean only vaguely?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, me too, So it's worth googling Tomy and Bandai
games from the nineteen seventies because the titles and photos
are amazing, like they've got one called the Hamburger Game
and Run Yourself Ragged and NATSI Tennis like, honestly are
so intricate and plastic, but they really look fun. But
Nintendo needed an inn and this they needed some sort
(07:47):
of new product to catch people's attention and help establish
it as like a place for fun, not just like
card and board games.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I love those names, and I was like, what even
is like NATSI Tennis run Yourself Ragged? Well, this is
the part of the Nintendo story that I really love
because you know, at first, you think, okay, all right,
here's where video games come in, and the company we
know starts to take shape. But no, you know, instead,
the company's first foray into the untapped toy market. It's
this wacky extending arm thing called the ultra Hand, and
(08:18):
there's nothing electronic about it. Basically, it's the invention of
Gunpay Yokoi. He's this low level Nintendo factory worker. He's
got a little bit of a background in engineering, and
it's kind of an innovation on Ben Franklin's long arm grabber,
you know, which he invented in his old age that
would help him get books high off of shelves.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah. So Ben Frank's version was obviously just this long
pull with the tiny gratty thing at the end of it, right.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeah, that's it. But Gunpay designed a prototype grabber claw
that frankly, you'd almost picture kind of like an inspector
gadget's hands or something like. It expanded out across the
room with sort of a metal crisscross pattern, but it
collapses to a tiny shape. And when Heirohi saw it,
he fell in love with the idea and got gun
Paid a mass produce a plastic version by the end
(09:03):
of that year, and the thing was dubbed the Ultra Hand,
as I mentioned, and the toy was a massive success
for Nintendo. They sold over a million of them between
nineteen sixty six and nineteen seventy and with that initial success,
Nintendo made the transition to toy manufacturer, and honestly, they
never looked back after that.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So I was just on my phone and I looked
up the box of the Ultra Hand and it is amazing.
There's like one version that's a cartoon box and it's
got two kids happily stealing some sort of money person
from businessman.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That's good marketing.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And there's this other that's like a real life pick
and it's got a boy in the background using this
ultrahnd to like maybe grab something off a top shelf,
while this girl in the foreground seems to be, I
don't know, passing a tomato across the room to her dad.
It's amazing. Also, why would you get this for your kids?
Like it only encourages like theft and mischief.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I mean, but it does look kind of fun. Those
pictures are ridiculous though, But thankfully Nintendo brought Gunpay along
for the ride as they developed more and he was
promoted from this maintenance engineer to the head of product development,
and that's where he helped create all these different unusual toys,
and that includes Nintendo's first feature electronics, and that first
(10:16):
one was called the.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Love Tester, so I thought we were past the more
questionable bits of Nintendo's history.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Well, you know, although this was aimed at a slightly
older crowd, the Love Tester was a whole lot tamer
than those pay by the hour hotels you mentioned earlier.
That's just so discussing. Was this small device that kind
of looked like a vault meter with two wires sticking
out of it, and there was this small silver disc
at the end of each wire, and the idea was
that a couple would hold hands while each person held
(10:45):
one of the discs, and so they had this resulting
level of love that would then be displayed on the screen.
And it used the scale from zero to one hundred.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
So, I mean, it's clearly a cute, gimmicky item. But
when'd the love Tester actually test love Mango?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You don't believe this really worked. I mean, it was
most likely the electric conductivity of the couple. I don't know,
like if their palms were sweaty, it would affect it.
But you know, the specifics really didn't matter that much,
at least not to the target customers. There's this great
site I found as we were doing our research called
Before Mario, and it explains that dating culture in Japan
during the nineteen sixties was actually still pretty strict, so
(11:23):
really any excuse to hold hands and strike up conversation
was welcome.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That's interesting.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, yeah, And so that's why the Love Tester was
such a success. It was a really smart idea for
that time, and because it made Nintendo so much money,
the company continued to dabble in electronic toys, you know,
when video games were just starting to make their debut.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Sure, so, I mean we're talking about the late seventies here,
when our kids just started to take off.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
That's right. But you know, gun Pays an extraordinary thinker
because he actually had his sight set on a different market.
The one day, while riding a commuter train to work,
he noticed this other businessman playing with his calcul later
just to kind of keep himself busy, I guess, and
this gave Gunpay the idea for a new line of
handheld video games. You know that maybe would use the
same LCD screen and that display technology that a calculator
(12:12):
would use, except in this case the graphics would be
used to create characters and then maybe objects that could
be set against this pre printed background. Scene, and so
you'd have this built in controller buttons on either side
of the screen that would allow the player to move
a character around, you know, to complete basic task, I guess.
And so one early model of these Nintendo game and
watch systems had the player control this deep sea diver.
(12:35):
He just had to go from one side of the
screen to the other side of the screen and he
would claim a sunken treasure chest there and all the
while he was avoiding the moving tentacles of this grabby octopus.
How captivating is this game?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Though?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I mean, I actually vaguely remember those games as kids
and really wanting one, but they were so expensive. And
of course that actually brings us full circle because it's
actually these game and watch systems where the dpad was
used for the first time.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, that's right, although I just had a memory. Do
you remember when we took that computer science one oh
one class and we had to make a fish tank
where the fish would just go one side the other.
We're basically computer science geniuses, that's right. But back to
the D pad, you know, it was another little master
stroke from Gunpay, and he'd run into problems while trying
to adapt Nintendo's successful Donkey Kong arcade game for the
(13:22):
handheld market, and unlike most handheld games at the time,
which only had the player moving left to right, Donkey
Kong was pretty different because it had them moving along
both the X and the Y axis, which we both
understand what that means as computer science.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, I mean, it is funny, like you run along
the platforms, but you also have to climb the ladders
and reach the top where Donkey Kong's keeping your kidnapped girlfriend,
right right. But I went to a pizza place this
weekend with my kids in town here and they had
a few old school nesas setup while you're waiting, and
my four year old was actually trying to play Donkey
Kong and she had no idea what she was doing,
(13:58):
and she was really angry that this ape was like
tossing barrels.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That's pretty great, all right. Well, here's where I'm gonna
hand the baton off to you, because it sounds like
Gunpey was the guy at the forefront of electronic gaming,
but actually someone else came up with the games like
Donkey Kong and Mario and Zelda.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Right, Yeah, that's true. So credit for those goes to
Shigeru Miyamoto, also known as the father of modern video games.
Like his creativity and attention to detail was this massive
part of Nintendo's success when it transitioned into home consoles
in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
All right, well, we should definitely talk about what he
brought to the table and how it affected the video
game industry going forward from there. But before we do that,
why don't we take a quick break. You're listening to
(14:55):
Part Time Genius and we're talking about how Nintendo made
the transition from Playing card manifest to video game icon.
All right, Mango, So, Shagero Miyamoto is the mastermind behind
Super Mario Brothers and that whole series and really kind
of a gaming legend. But how did he wind up
working at Nintendo in the first place?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So, I mean, to be honest, there might have been
a little nepotism involved, because Miyamoto's father was able to
line up an interview for him right out of college
and he had some connections with Nintendo. But once Miyamoto
had his foot in the door, the young designer impressed everyone,
like he had all these great toy ideas, and he
started out as kind of a staff artist for the
company's planning department. And this was in nineteen seventy seven,
(15:36):
and he's still with the company today. I mean, that's
forty years since Nintendo hired him, and he's never worked
a single day for any other company. It's pretty incredible.
That is pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
And obviously he's an insane talent, and we'll find out
why the company wanted to keep him. But what kind
of stuff was he working on in those early days.
I mean, he couldn't have come up with Mario right
out of the gate.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Right well, I mean yes and no. So in the
early nineteen eighties, Nintendo tried to expand into the North
American arcade scene, but one of their earliest efforts, which
was this sci fi shooting game called Radarscope, it failed
to find an audience outside of Japan. So one of
Miyamoto's first assignments was to build a new, low cost
game using the existing tech and this engine of Radarscope.
(16:19):
And that way the company could you know, rejigger and
convert the thousands of arcade cabinets they already had into
something fresh. And Miyamoto was eager to prove himself, so
under the mentorship of gunpay. He came up with this
idea for Donkey Kong. Wow, and you should explain what
that has to do with Mario though, right, so nothing
at first. Originally the game was going to be based
(16:39):
on Popeye the Sailorman, but when the license for that
property fell through, Miamoto redesigned the game to include original characters.
So the British villain of Bluto became this gorilla named
Donkey Kong, their perpetual damsel in distress, Olive Oil, became
a woman named Pauline, and Popeye got turned into this
carpenter named Jumpman. And since Jumpman is the catchiest of
(17:00):
names today, he goes by Mario.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
And so it's the same character definitely.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
So according to the story, the president of Nintendo of
America noticed the similarity between the Italian landlord they had,
the one they'd been renting warehouse space from, and the
mustachio Jumpman, and the Nintendo crewe nicknamed the character Mario
in his honor, and by the time the carpenter turned
a plumber and was ready for his breakout role into
his own series, the nickname it stuck.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Oh that's pretty great, and it actually reminds me of
another story about early Nintendo, or at least the video
game phase. So apparently, Donkey Kong was a big hit
for the company, pulling in over one hundred and eighty
million dollars in just a year after its release. Eighty
million dollars then, I mean, that's a lot of money.
But with all that success came the attention of Universal Studios,
(17:45):
who now believed that the game was infringing on its
King Kong copyright, and the studio made some pretty tough demands,
insisting that Nintendo destroy all unsold copies of the game
and hand over every penny they had made along the way.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So I mean, I'm guessing Nintendo didn't go for any
of that.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
No, not so much. Instead, they lawyered up and proved
that not only did the game have nothing to do
with the events of the movie, but Universal's copyright had
long since expired. Anything that actually meant King Kong was
now in the public domain. How crazy is That's amazing
which we had snapped it up, But that isn't the
craziest part. Actually, it turns out that Universal had allowed
(18:21):
Tiger Electronics to create this game based on King Kong,
and it was actually kind of a knockoff of Donkey Kong.
So in the end, the court ruled in Nintendo's favor
and Universal was made to pay the company millions in damage.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah. So, actually, Nintendo's lawyer, John Kirby, he was given
this brand new sailboat as a thank you gift, and
of course he christened it the Donkey Kong. But that
name may sound familiar, because the best part is he
also got a character named after him, and that is
the character Kirby.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Oh I love that. I like that. Not only did
he get this new boat, but he also got video
game immortality.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
So I'm glad you mentioned knockoff games because that speaks
to something I don't think a lot of people remember,
and that's that America's video game industry was in really
bad shape in the early eighties. In fact, it was
almost on the verge of total collapse. So companies like
Calico and Atari, they've made a killing in their early days,
but their lack of foresight left them with no way
to keep unlicensed games from being designed and released for
(19:20):
the systems. So as a result, there were tons of cheap,
low quality software and games out there, and frustrated buyers
and all these parents and kids who were disappointed in
the quality of the products.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Well, and that had to be a huge headache for Nintendo, right,
I mean, they released their first home game console in
Japan in nineteen eighty three, so of course the next
logical step was bringing it to the Western market. But
then all of a sudden, the rug gets pulled out
from under them and it starts to look like video
games will never make it out of the arcade in
the US exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
But the company couldn't afford to let a whole market
fall by the wayside, so they came up with this
new battle plan. So first Nintendo developed a lockout chip
to prevent companies from releasing unauthorized games, and then they
redesigned the system itself to avoid any bad connotations that,
you know, home video game systems might have developed among consumers.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Wait, but so how do you make a video game
system not look like a video game system.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
By making it look more like a VCR Apparently? Oh okay, Yeah,
So in Japan, Nintendo's first system was known as the
Famicon or a family computer, and it loaded from the top,
so the games were inserted vertically. The way, you know,
you'd put a game in an old atari. But for
the US release, the system was given this like flip
up panel where cartridges would be inserted like a VHS tape.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
That's pretty interesting. Actually, it reminds me this is kind
of unrelated, but it's a little bit like how Subway
realized if you compared their sandwiches to other sandwiches, you've
got this mediocre proposition. But when you compare a sandwich
to other fast foods, suddenly it seems like you know,
this helped the idea exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
So they reframed this as modern family entertainment, and it
was also renamed as the Nintendo Entertainment System or the NES,
to further obscure its role as a piece of gaming hardware.
And then they played with the color scheme, so instead
of being like bright red and white like the Japanese
version was, they muted it down to this two tone
gray color scheme.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
So the strategy for the US was to kind of
make it duller. Did that end up working?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Yeah it did, but consumers were only part of the hurdle.
Like Nintendo also had to deal with retailers, and when
it was time to launch the NES, in nineteen eighty five,
most stores were hesitant to devote any shelf space to another,
you know, slow selling video game system. So to solve
that problem, Nintendo came up with this robotic accessory that
they dubbed ROB. It was the Robotic Operating Buddy, and
(21:42):
when the marketing push for the NES began, Rob the
Robot was front and center, helping to assure parents and
store owners that the NES was this worthy investment.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
I mean, it's kind of funny to think that this
physical toy robot being a selling point for a video game.
I mean, it's just the opposite. Now, most kids would
pick an eye iPad over an action figure any day.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
I would think, Yeah, I mean, that's definitely true. And honestly,
ROB was never a hot item, like the robot was
this last minute edition solely designed to move units, so
his interaction with the system was limited to a few
week titles that you know, hardly anyone remembers today, but
none of that really mattered. Like ROB was basically this
trojan horse. It was a way of sneaking a quality
(22:22):
video game system into American society without much notice, and
once he was there, people were able to play like
Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt and kid Icarus or whatever.
At that point, like nobody was complaining, and in fact,
the rules worked so well that by nineteen eighty eight,
over six million NES consoles and more than thirty three
million games had been sold in the US. And the
(22:44):
systems weren't cheap either.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Oh that's pretty crazy. Yeah, when you're talking about Duck Hunt,
these additions to the games. I remember playing that game
and just how close the gun would be to the
TV screen, like it was basically touching the screens. Cheating,
but it felt good, you know, to win. That was
That's the most experience I had with Hunting, but I
was pretty good. And when it gets out, but this
was definitely some smart strategy. And I guess robots were
(23:08):
super popular back then. I mean that's right around the
time when you know, Transformers and Voltron and short Circuit
we're popular.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Short Circuit two.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Short Circuit two was so good. But you know, I
do like how the story kind of shows Nintendo drawing
on its experience as a toy company, you know, because
I actually think there's a case to be made for
still thinking of Nintendo as a toy maker first, rather
than maybe it's a video game company.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Well, I mean, I think that's an interesting line of
thinking and I definitely want to hear more about what
you want to say about that. But uh, why don't
we take a little break first?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Okay, Mango, it's quiz time.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Are you ready?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Mm hm? Well, I guess we're not the ones that
really have to be ready. We're gonna we're gonna play
a quiz because we're talking Nintendo today, and we decided
to bring on one of our friends from here and
How Stuff Works, also the producer of the always brilliant
Tech Stuff Ramsey. You welcome to part time genius. Glad
to be here, all right, are you nervous about this quiz?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Very nervous?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
But before we do the quiz, you are a big
video game fan. So, so what's your go to console
and video game now?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It is actually a PlayStation four? Okay, but I grew
up playing pretty much most of the consoles. I still
have my Atari twenty six hundred console that still works
nice and collection of games for that. But it's definitely
not attached to television because it's a process.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Okay, but you had an original Nintendo as well?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Yes, yes, I did.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
All right, well that qualifies you to play this.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Game, right, Okay, all right, that's right.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
So mengo, what game are we playing with Ramsey today?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
It's called real unpopular Nintendo game or something we just
made up.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Okay, you're right. So we're going to give you the
name of a game and a quick description and you
just have to tell if it's real or if it's
something that we made up.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
And some of them are a Nintendo game, some of
them are Super Nintendo games.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Oh oh, before we get hate mail, all right.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Question number one baby Boomer, And here's the description. A
game where a baby escapes his crib and you have
to use the duck hunt gun to shoot birds, cobras,
and other annoyances out of the way. Is this a
real game or something we made up?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I'm gonna say it is a real game.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, it's a real game, just like real life. Or
use a gun to shoot things out of your baby's way.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I forgot that was your style.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Number two, TV Tag the game and here's the description.
This trivia slash skill game was set in a retirement
community where you wheeled around your grandfather in a game
of TV tag Whenever you got tagged, You answer TV
trivia to unfreeze yourself with the occasional help of your
daughtering grandfather. Is this real or something we made up?
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I'm gonna say that is something you made up?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
It sounds real.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Is real?
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Is shooting the things in the way of your baby?
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Yeah? All right?
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Number three? Oh this is good? All right? Bill Lambier's
Combat Basket Mango is La Lakers fans as kids like,
we couldn't stand okay, Bill Lambier's Combat Basketball. And here's
the description. This game is set in a dystopian future
where the Pistons player runs an ultra violet b ball
league where players use armor mines and spinning blades to
(26:26):
get to the hoop. Is this real or something we
made up?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
I'm gonna say yes. I think I remember seeing some
reat style basketball game, like you could pick weapons and
then go out and play basketball.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
It's curious why this wasn't a big seller, but it
might have something to do with the fact that Bill
Lambier was the start.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I couldn't stand Bill Lambier. Number four he is what
three out of three?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Three? Three?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
He got two left? Stuart the goat Herder And the
description In this game, Stuart, the terrible goat herder, tries
to prove his family wrong by hurting a flock of
goats through increasingly difficult challenges, from walking them one by
one across the river to trying to use various skills
to lure them away from a Pebo Bryson concert. Is
(27:14):
this real or something we made up?
Speaker 3 (27:16):
This sounds like the worst game ever. I'm going to
say it's something you made up because I'm hoping nor
last one.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
You got to get this for the big prize?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Okay, all right? Number five Home Improvement Power Tool Pursuit
and the description in this super nes game you shoot
dinosaurs and mummies with a nail gun while trying to
get through a giant TV studio? Is this real or
something we made up?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
I mean, if ten Allen's name was attached to it,
I imagine, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
It's true. It's a real game.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
No way, is this really?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
And the confusing game came with no instructions because real
men don't need instructions.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Are you serious? This is a super game?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Was it based off the TV show? Or I mean?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Ish?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:06):
All right, so Ramsey went what five for five?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Right?
Speaker 1 (28:09):
So what does that entitle him to.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
So Ramsey's going to get a part time genius official
Certificate of Genius, and we'll be delivering it along with
a hearty congratulations. Congratulations sounds great, Thank you, thanks so
much for joining us.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Okay, Well, so clue me in, why should we think
of Nintendo as a toy company instead of a video
game company? And if we do, why is that a
good thing?
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Well, the second part depends on who you ask. So
the gaming industry has gone through major changes since Nintendo's
heyday and the eighties and the early nineties, and adult
gamers make up a much larger portion of the market
than they once did, and both the types of games
being made and the gaming culture as a whole have
changed really to reflect that new demographic. So, for example,
(29:05):
a gamer in their early twenties who mostly plays these
realistic and third person shooter games like Call of Duty,
they might not think that Nintendo being a toy company
is such a positive thing.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, that's one thing I noticed a lot while researching.
Like the other big names and video games I'm talking about,
like Microsoft and Sony, they're largely known for their computing
power and that makes them really intense immersive gaming experiences,
but Nintendo is seen is almost like this quirkier, more playful,
almost this underpowered option.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, and the interesting thing to me is that the
difference you're noting is completely intentional.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Thanks to the video game bust in the mid eighties,
Nintendo had a clear playing field when they arrived on
the scene, but when Sega began releasing their own rival consoles,
soon to be followed by Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo quickly
found itself locked into a graphical arms race.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Really sure, so this is when the so called console
wars raging, and each company tried to outdo the other
with a faster, more powerful hardware that promised to like
redefine gaming. And after the Game Boys, something's like the
Super Nintendo, the N sixty four, more buttons on the controllers,
more immersive graphics. I mean, it seems like Nintendo kept
pace for a while, but in the end it was
(30:17):
just like a battle they couldn't win.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Well, I mean, that's kind of the thing. I don't
think Nintendo lost so much as it just bowed out.
I mean, it's almost like the company woke up one
day and remembered that it would just much rather be
playing games than fighting wars.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
So what prompted that epiphany, Well, the company was.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Forced to face some harsh truths back in the early
two thousands. Its latest console was the GameCube.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
If you remember, I had forgotten about the cube. I mean,
why were cubes so popularly? Like Apple came out with
the cube computer too, right, just.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
The shape I guess nobody had ever recognized before. I
really have no idea, but the Nintendo's GameCube definitely underperformed.
I mean, it had to compete with Sony's PlayStation two
and Microsoft's Xbox. And it was during this time that
new leadership came to Nintendo in the form of Saturo Iwata,
and he was the first Nintendo president who actually wasn't
(31:06):
a member of the founding Yamachi family. So a lot
of shook things up by placing the focus on software
rather than hardware. Instead of building the most powerful console
they could and then working backwards to figure out what
kind of games would take advantage of that power. A
lot of encourage designers to think up fun and unique
game concepts first and then create the console to run them,
(31:27):
which is just a very different way of thinking about it. Yeah,
so that shift in perspective led to brand new toys
and to the way video games were played. You think
about things like the Nintendo DS, which really was built
off the Game Boy but had this dual touch screen system,
or maybe the motion controlled home console, the Nintendo Wii,
and then you have the WE fit so several new
(31:48):
ideas well.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I mean, we all know how that worked out for them,
right like that. We was such a smash hit with
just about everybody. And I remember seeing all these Weimbledon
tournaments at retirement homes and folding tournaments too. It was
really built for everybody.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, we made video games accessible to this wider audience,
and much wider than it had ever been before. And
it did so by returning the focus to these simple
joys of play. So suddenly you've got families gathering in
their living rooms to play video games together, and not
just kids, but parents and grandparents. Like you mentioned, this
is what Awata described as a blue ocean, which was
(32:24):
this new market free of rivals. The idea was that
if the offerings were innovative enough, it could spark the
interest and enthusiasm of anyone looking to have fun. Yeah.
I actually love that me too. And apparently there were
a lot of people looking to have fun because the
We became Nintendo's best selling home console to date actually
sold over one hundred million units in its lifespan.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
That's pretty incredible. Okay, so clearly Nintendo went its own
way in terms of creative and business models. But how
does that make them more of a toy company than
a video company? And how do you see the difference?
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Well, I really think it comes down to the intention
behind the product. I mean, when Nintendo changed direction and
became a toy company in the sixties and seventies, there
was this sense of freedom and discovery to their products,
and I think it's because they were experimenting. You know,
they were dreaming up weird ideas and turning them into
silly gadgets that were appealing not just because they were
(33:17):
using the latest and greatest technology, but because they were
just fun to play with a lot to help the
return the company to that mindset and the one they
had when they were just a toy company.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, that's interesting, and it makes sense that a company
with that kind of history would have a completely different
culture and ethos than other video game giants. I mean,
Sony is really a consumer electronics company first, and it's
a video games as a new revenue stream. And Microsoft
is this like, you know, digital PC and electronics company first,
and they figured, we already made computers. What's a game
(33:50):
console if not a specialized computer. But what's cool is
that it sounds like Nintendo is leaning into those differences now.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Oh, definitely. So I found this speech that Miamoto and
say we should devote an episode to just Miamoto because
he's such a genius and how he came up with
Mario and Zelda and so many other games over Nintendo's
lifespan is definitely worth exploring. But back to the talk.
He was giving a talk to a group of investors
a few years back, and there's one that really shows
(34:17):
how the company is playing to its strengths. So he said,
Nintendo is known as a video game company, but in
fact it's also a toy company. Toys make consumers feel
a sense of wonder. When it comes to video game hardware,
companies tend to take the similar and rather unified course
of aiming to beef up the machines functionalities in our
(34:37):
efforts to differentiate our hardware from others. I believe it's
important that users experience that feeling that they have played
with a new toy.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Well, speaking of that sense of wonder that comes from
a new toy, have you heard about the secret tribute
to Iwata that Nintendo hid in its.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
New console in the Switch or what is it?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah? So, unfortunately, the man who helped Nintendo return to
its roots passed away in twenty fifteen. He had complications
from her tumor. But it was especially tough because Iwata
helped shepherd the new Switch console through its development, and
suddenly the company was faced with this grim prospect of
launching it without him. But earlier this year, it was
discovered that the Nintendo team had actually done something a
(35:16):
little sneaky. They secretly embedded this digital copy of an
old nes Golf game within the firmware of every Switch console,
and the only way to access the game is by
holding a controller in each hand and replicating a signature
hand gesture that Iwata used to use in his promotional
videos for the company.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Oh that's pretty sweet and a little bit odd. I
guess why did they choose a golf game?
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Well, the nes Golf was one of the first games
a Wata program for Nintendo, so it kind of held
a special significance. And more broadly, it's possible the game
was meant as this omamori, which is it's kind of
like the special charm that's traditionally left that Japanese shrines
to offer protection to departed spirits. So, as one gamer
put it, Nintendo embedded Iwata's game. I did to watch
(36:00):
over every unit.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Are you trying to make me tear up over a video.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Game right now? But it really does go back to
what we've been saying about Nintendo, right It's not your
typical company. It's got this long and weird and complicated history,
and the childlike approach to game design that it's adopted
has made sure of that. And the result of it
is that you end up, whether you call them toys
or video games, Nintendo products have a level of sincerity
(36:25):
and heart that separates them from everything else.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Well. I don't know about you, but all this talk
of gaming has made me feel kind of competitive, honestly,
So what do you say we go head to head
and a little two player backed up?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
I'm in.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Well, for all the talk of Nintendo's sweetness and sincerity,
they didn't always abandon their gambling or yakuza rude. So
did you know that in nineteen ninety one, they tried
to bring online gambling into homes. According to Kataku, they
teamed up with the state of Minnesota to create this
gaming system and a cartridge that you could spend ten
dollars a month for this subscription gambling service. They sort
(37:11):
of gamified the lottery with the system. But Nintendo quickly
realized that maybe creating this gambling game that kids might
access it wasn't a great idea for their brand, and
they decided to kill the project before political and religious
groups could voice their opinions about it.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
That's pretty wild. Did you know that Shigeru Miyamoto is
considered so valuable to the company that it's in his
contract that he's not allowed to bike to work. I mean,
the sixty something designer used to love Viking, but as
Business Insider put it, the company's too afraid he might
go the way of Frogger.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
I did not know that. Well, do you know that
Nintendo used to own the Seattle Mariners. Apparently Nintendo's Japanese
CEO didn't really care about baseball, but when the team
was going to move to Saint Petersburg, Florida. Yumochi decided
to buy the team as a goodwill gesture to the
city of Seat. Nintendo's American operation is located not far
from there in the city of Redmond.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of amazing. And it was
apparently super controversial at the time because people were worried
about a foreign entity owning an American baseball team, which
is crazy.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Did you know the original Super Mario Brothers was all
drawn on graph paper and it was all colored in
and when the designers were happy with a certain level,
that's when they'd send it off to code. Eventually, the
team started using this internal software to design the games,
but their tool became so fun to play with that
that's actually what they released to the public as Super
Mario Maker.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Well, speaking of Mario, rpal Nick Green figured this out
and I love this so much, so he wanted to
figure out how much Mario runs and swims in Super
Mario Brothers. If you take out all the bonuses and shortcuts,
and if you run from the start all the way
to the castle, he only does about three point four miles.
And as for the swimming, if you isolate that he
(38:55):
only actually does about seven and a half laps and
an Olympic sized pool.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I mean, Nickorean's a genius, but I do think he's
discounting how many turtles he's jumping over and how much
parkore he basically has to do along the way.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So he's got that six pack.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
So Tristan held up the Konami code in the beginning
of the show, and I've been waiting to talk about this.
It's obviously used in pop culture. I mean you find
it on Archer The Family Guy as an inside joke,
but from time to time you find it as an
easter egg on various sites. So a while back, when
you fired up the code into Google Reader, a bunch
of cartoon ninjas would pop out onto your screen. I
don't know if you remember this. It was really fun
(39:30):
to watch. And when the code was used on ESPN
dot com, it would bring up all these sparkly unicorns.
Basically it was a unicorn infestation, and whenever you clicked
a new sparkle pony would pop up up. That's pretty great,
But the craziest to me was when Newsweek got in
on the action, because if you typed in the code.
The lead article was about zombies attacking parts of the
East Coast, but I also had these tips for the
(39:51):
zombie apocalypse, like aim for their heads. And Newsweek only
partially owned the correction, like a spokesperson said, now we've
all had laugh, we will be removing it right own
up to that one.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
All right, well, I feel like we can't finish an
episode without talking about Nintendo Power. You know, the magazine
and all the tips about games and hyped up the
new games. And I know we were both subscribers at
one point, but they also published high scores, and apparently
Steve Wozniak, you know, the co founder of Apple.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Was a huge fan.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
He used to keep submitting his scores for Tetris month
after month, and eventually the magazine had to ask him
to stop submitting because they couldn't keep printing his name.
So he finally agreed to it, but not before sending
in one last entry, Avet's canezo w or his name backwards.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
That's pretty great. I mean that the WAWS was like
and subscriber to Nintendo Power is just so insane. Yeah,
you've got to take the crown for that.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
All right, Well, thank you so much, and thank you
guys for listening. That's it for today's episode. If we
forgot any of your favorite facts about Nintendo or anything
related to video games, feel free to send those to us.
We'd love to hear those facts. You can always email
us part Time Genius at HowStuffWorks dot com or call
our twenty four to seven fact hotline. That's one eight
four four pt Genius. It is still twenty four to
(41:13):
seven mangos That right, Yes, Okay, that's excellent news. You
can also hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks
so much for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part Time
(41:34):
Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Jerry Roland does the exact producer thing.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Gabe Luzier is our lead researcher, with support from the
research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams
and Eve.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job,
Eves if.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
You like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe. If
you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
A good review for us. Do we forget Jason?
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Jason who
Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 2 (00:00):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well? All right, so I've had this fact waiting to
use it, and I think today's episode is the right one.
So did you know that Nintendo almost came out with
a knitting machine?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
No? No, was that in its earliest days? Are like
with the Wei No?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
No, Like in the nineteen eighties when they came out
with the original neees system. You remember this? Yeah? Yeah,
I found this old trade ad for it when they
were considering launching it. And here's how it reads. So
it says, now you're knitting with power. It's not a game,
not a toy, not something a young girl can outgrow
in three to six months or even a year. It
actually knits sweaters.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
That's so weird and sexist.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah kind of.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I mean the technology is kind of forward thinking, I guess.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I mean you could fashion your own patterns, yarn it up,
and have it knit for you. I guess I think
that's how it works. And the guy who was asked
to demonstrate it for Toys r Us, called it one
of his least genuinely enthusiastic demos and it basically got
zero demand. But reading about the Nintendo knitting machine made me,
wonder you know how long has Nintendo been around, and
(01:00):
how they survived for this long and such an incredibly
competitive market, and just how much running and swimming is
Mario doing in Super Mario Brothers. So that's what we're
going to find out. Let's dive in. Hey their podcast listeners,
(01:34):
welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend man gesh Hot
Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass
holding up a paper that says up down, up, down, left, right, left, right,
be a start. Wow, isn't that the Konami code from Nintendo.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, that's the secret code that gave you all those
extra lives in contra.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That is just how thoughtful he is sharing a top
secret industry code on the airways. It's our friend and
producer Tristan mc so we're talking Nintendo. Now. Everybody's familiar
with Nintendo and its flagship characters Mario, Luigi, Zelda, the
list goes on, but video games are only half of
the company's one hundred and twenty eight year history, actually
(02:14):
less than that. So with the holiday season upon us
and the new Nintendo Switch console topping all kinds of
hot toy and tech lists. We thought it'd be fun
to shed some light on the lesser known history of
the world's most recognizable video game maker, the Nintendo.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
You don't know, right, And I'll do the first admit
there's so much I didn't know about Nintendo. For example,
did you know the company actually won Emmy back in
two thousand and seven?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I thought Emmy's were just TV shows, So I had
a video game company wind up with an Emmy.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, so it was actually awarded in recognition of one
of Nintendo's most famous tech innovations, the D pad or
the directional pad. Uh huh, So I'm sure you know this,
but the dpad is the plus sign shape button that
you see on video game controllers nowadays. And Nintendo introduced
the new output method back in I think nineteen eighty two,
and it quickly became a standard in the industry over
(03:03):
the old joysticks, like you know, the ones where you
had to use your whole hand to move the controller
around instead of just a free thumb.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, I mean that makes sense. The deepad revolutionized gaming,
But that doesn't say how they got an Emmy. How
did they win an Emmy?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well, most video games are played on TVs, so there's
one connection there. But the real reason is that the
dpad got utilized by most of the remotes in your house,
whether for your DVD player or streaming device or the
TV itself.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
That's pretty crazy, all right. Well, it's clear Nintendo isn't
your typical video game company, and as I was saying earlier,
Nintendo actually predates video games themselves by almost one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So I've read a little of this before that. Nintendo
started out as a playing card manufacturer, and this was
back in eighteen eighty nine when a twenty nine year
old businessman named Fuzlajiro Yamachi. He saw the chance to
jumpstart this dormant industry. And as you might know, Japan
had cut most of its ties with the Western world
during the seventeenth century. It was like this highly protected
(03:56):
society and the royalty didn't want invading cultures to the
country's values and traditions. But as part of this isolationist stance,
there was this ban on all foreign playing cards, and
this was to curb the rise in the legal gambling
and when the Japanese devised their own card games in
the ensuing centuries, those two became used for gambling, and
the government banned those as well.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Pretty interesting art. So it's a bit of a game
of kind of whack a mole, now right. I mean,
games pop up, they get extinguished, then they pop up
somewhere else, and then they get extinguished again, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And so this back and forth rise and fall of
Japanese card games goes on for more than two hundred
and fifty years, and then in eighteen eighty six, a
new game called hanafuda and I'm going to mispronounce every
single Japanese word of this, but it's finally permitted by
the government. And this game loosely translates as flower cards,
and they used flowers and animal pictures instead of numbers.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
So it was a little harder to use for gambling, harder,
I'm guessing, but not impossible.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, that's right. So wiley gamblers still found ways to
make money playing Hanafuda. And I mean, the general public
isn't that interested in playing card games since it's had
such a bad rep for so long, but this new
game did catch on quickly among this group of near
duells known as the yakuza.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Wait, so it's just like an organized crime syndicate, is
it there? The early customers of Nintendo were they actually
like Japanese gangster or.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Something sort of. So the term yakuza actually started as
this reference to a losing hand in this game that
wasn't worth any points. And since the game was popular
mostly with unsavory types, Yakuza game slang for like useless individuals,
And we should do a whole episode on the Yukuza
down the road, But at this point, these useless individuals
are just kind of outcasts in society. And the wider
(05:37):
connection to organized crime that comes later. But the moniker
itself does have a connection to Nintendo, and specifically they're
Hanafuda cards.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Huh. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about
how Ourmanyamachi rises above this shady designation, and basically it
all comes down to design. The cards of the company
Nintendo produced included hand painted images, you know, made from
the bark of mulberry trees, and because they were so
ornate and super high quality and frankly just eye catching,
(06:06):
it it actually helped free the cards from that back
alley stigma, and it wasn't long before Nintendo became the
top card game company in all of Japan.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Absolutely so. Over the years and generations, as the government
relaxed their rules, Nintendo started releasing new types of cards
and card games. But it's only in the nineteen fifties,
when Yamuchi's great grandson took over the reins, that Nintendo
started experimenting with some odd ball ideas.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
So what did they do?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Well, there are a few smart things, like Hiroshi signed
this deal to feature Disney characters on the card decks,
specifically to market them to children and families. But he
also did a few super strange things as well, like
he dabbled in starting a taxi service and a line
of instant rice, and for a little while he even
invested in love hotels, where businessmen could rent rooms by
(06:51):
the hour, no questions.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Asked, Oh my gosh, card Shark, gangsters, CD motels. I mean,
I have to be honest, like this is not the
house mark.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Definitely not, definitely, not yet. And while none of those
ventures worked, they all went belly up quickly. Hiroshi knew
that playing cards and the playing card market had reached
the saturation, so if Nintendo was going to survive into
the nineteen seventies, they'd need to branch out well.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And also by this point they were already dabbling in
at least board games, right.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Mm hm, that's right. But toy companies like Tomy and Bandai,
Like do you even remember those?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I mean only vaguely?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, me too, So it's worth googling Tomy and Bandai
games from the nineteen seventies because the titles and photos
are amazing, like they've got one called the Hamburger Game
and Run Yourself Ragged and NATSI Tennis like, honestly are
so intricate and plastic, but they really look fun. But
Nintendo needed an inn and this they needed some sort
(07:47):
of new product to catch people's attention and help establish
it as like a place for fun, not just like
card and board games.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I love those names, and I was like, what even
is like NATSI Tennis run Yourself Ragged? Well, this is
the part of the Nintendo story that I really love
because you know, at first, you think, okay, all right,
here's where video games come in, and the company we
know starts to take shape. But no, you know, instead,
the company's first foray into the untapped toy market. It's
this wacky extending arm thing called the ultra Hand, and
(08:18):
there's nothing electronic about it. Basically, it's the invention of
Gunpay Yokoi. He's this low level Nintendo factory worker. He's
got a little bit of a background in engineering, and
it's kind of an innovation on Ben Franklin's long arm grabber,
you know, which he invented in his old age that
would help him get books high off of shelves.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah. So Ben Frank's version was obviously just this long
pull with the tiny gratty thing at the end of it, right.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeah, that's it. But Gunpay designed a prototype grabber claw
that frankly, you'd almost picture kind of like an inspector
gadget's hands or something like. It expanded out across the
room with sort of a metal crisscross pattern, but it
collapses to a tiny shape. And when Heirohi saw it,
he fell in love with the idea and got gun
Paid a mass produce a plastic version by the end
(09:03):
of that year, and the thing was dubbed the Ultra Hand,
as I mentioned, and the toy was a massive success
for Nintendo. They sold over a million of them between
nineteen sixty six and nineteen seventy and with that initial success,
Nintendo made the transition to toy manufacturer, and honestly, they
never looked back after that.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So I was just on my phone and I looked
up the box of the Ultra Hand and it is amazing.
There's like one version that's a cartoon box and it's
got two kids happily stealing some sort of money person
from businessman.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That's good marketing.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And there's this other that's like a real life pick
and it's got a boy in the background using this
ultrahnd to like maybe grab something off a top shelf,
while this girl in the foreground seems to be, I
don't know, passing a tomato across the room to her dad.
It's amazing. Also, why would you get this for your kids?
Like it only encourages like theft and mischief.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I mean, but it does look kind of fun. Those
pictures are ridiculous though, But thankfully Nintendo brought Gunpay along
for the ride as they developed more and he was
promoted from this maintenance engineer to the head of product development,
and that's where he helped create all these different unusual toys,
and that includes Nintendo's first feature electronics, and that first
(10:16):
one was called the.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Love Tester, so I thought we were past the more
questionable bits of Nintendo's history.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Well, you know, although this was aimed at a slightly
older crowd, the Love Tester was a whole lot tamer
than those pay by the hour hotels you mentioned earlier.
That's just so discussing. Was this small device that kind
of looked like a vault meter with two wires sticking
out of it, and there was this small silver disc
at the end of each wire, and the idea was
that a couple would hold hands while each person held
(10:45):
one of the discs, and so they had this resulting
level of love that would then be displayed on the screen.
And it used the scale from zero to one hundred.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
So, I mean, it's clearly a cute, gimmicky item. But
when'd the love Tester actually test love Mango?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You don't believe this really worked. I mean, it was
most likely the electric conductivity of the couple. I don't know,
like if their palms were sweaty, it would affect it.
But you know, the specifics really didn't matter that much,
at least not to the target customers. There's this great
site I found as we were doing our research called
Before Mario, and it explains that dating culture in Japan
during the nineteen sixties was actually still pretty strict, so
(11:23):
really any excuse to hold hands and strike up conversation
was welcome.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That's interesting.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, yeah, And so that's why the Love Tester was
such a success. It was a really smart idea for
that time, and because it made Nintendo so much money,
the company continued to dabble in electronic toys, you know,
when video games were just starting to make their debut.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Sure, so, I mean we're talking about the late seventies here,
when our kids just started to take off.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
That's right. But you know, gun Pays an extraordinary thinker
because he actually had his sight set on a different market.
The one day, while riding a commuter train to work,
he noticed this other businessman playing with his calcul later
just to kind of keep himself busy, I guess, and
this gave Gunpay the idea for a new line of
handheld video games. You know that maybe would use the
same LCD screen and that display technology that a calculator
(12:12):
would use, except in this case the graphics would be
used to create characters and then maybe objects that could
be set against this pre printed background. Scene, and so
you'd have this built in controller buttons on either side
of the screen that would allow the player to move
a character around, you know, to complete basic task, I guess.
And so one early model of these Nintendo game and
watch systems had the player control this deep sea diver.
(12:35):
He just had to go from one side of the
screen to the other side of the screen and he
would claim a sunken treasure chest there and all the
while he was avoiding the moving tentacles of this grabby octopus.
How captivating is this game?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Though?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I mean, I actually vaguely remember those games as kids
and really wanting one, but they were so expensive. And
of course that actually brings us full circle because it's
actually these game and watch systems where the dpad was
used for the first time.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, that's right, although I just had a memory. Do
you remember when we took that computer science one oh
one class and we had to make a fish tank
where the fish would just go one side the other.
We're basically computer science geniuses, that's right. But back to
the D pad, you know, it was another little master
stroke from Gunpay, and he'd run into problems while trying
to adapt Nintendo's successful Donkey Kong arcade game for the
(13:22):
handheld market, and unlike most handheld games at the time,
which only had the player moving left to right, Donkey
Kong was pretty different because it had them moving along
both the X and the Y axis, which we both
understand what that means as computer science.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, I mean, it is funny, like you run along
the platforms, but you also have to climb the ladders
and reach the top where Donkey Kong's keeping your kidnapped girlfriend,
right right. But I went to a pizza place this
weekend with my kids in town here and they had
a few old school nesas setup while you're waiting, and
my four year old was actually trying to play Donkey
Kong and she had no idea what she was doing,
(13:58):
and she was really angry that this ape was like
tossing barrels.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That's pretty great, all right. Well, here's where I'm gonna
hand the baton off to you, because it sounds like
Gunpey was the guy at the forefront of electronic gaming,
but actually someone else came up with the games like
Donkey Kong and Mario and Zelda.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Right, Yeah, that's true. So credit for those goes to
Shigeru Miyamoto, also known as the father of modern video games.
Like his creativity and attention to detail was this massive
part of Nintendo's success when it transitioned into home consoles
in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
All right, well, we should definitely talk about what he
brought to the table and how it affected the video
game industry going forward from there. But before we do that,
why don't we take a quick break. You're listening to
(14:55):
Part Time Genius and we're talking about how Nintendo made
the transition from Playing card manifest to video game icon.
All right, Mango, So, Shagero Miyamoto is the mastermind behind
Super Mario Brothers and that whole series and really kind
of a gaming legend. But how did he wind up
working at Nintendo in the first place?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So, I mean, to be honest, there might have been
a little nepotism involved, because Miyamoto's father was able to
line up an interview for him right out of college
and he had some connections with Nintendo. But once Miyamoto
had his foot in the door, the young designer impressed everyone,
like he had all these great toy ideas, and he
started out as kind of a staff artist for the
company's planning department. And this was in nineteen seventy seven,
(15:36):
and he's still with the company today. I mean, that's
forty years since Nintendo hired him, and he's never worked
a single day for any other company. It's pretty incredible.
That is pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
And obviously he's an insane talent, and we'll find out
why the company wanted to keep him. But what kind
of stuff was he working on in those early days.
I mean, he couldn't have come up with Mario right
out of the gate.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Right well, I mean yes and no. So in the
early nineteen eighties, Nintendo tried to expand into the North
American arcade scene, but one of their earliest efforts, which
was this sci fi shooting game called Radarscope, it failed
to find an audience outside of Japan. So one of
Miyamoto's first assignments was to build a new, low cost
game using the existing tech and this engine of Radarscope.
(16:19):
And that way the company could you know, rejigger and
convert the thousands of arcade cabinets they already had into
something fresh. And Miyamoto was eager to prove himself, so
under the mentorship of gunpay. He came up with this
idea for Donkey Kong. Wow, and you should explain what
that has to do with Mario though, right, so nothing
at first. Originally the game was going to be based
(16:39):
on Popeye the Sailorman, but when the license for that
property fell through, Miamoto redesigned the game to include original characters.
So the British villain of Bluto became this gorilla named
Donkey Kong, their perpetual damsel in distress, Olive Oil, became
a woman named Pauline, and Popeye got turned into this
carpenter named Jumpman. And since Jumpman is the catchiest of
(17:00):
names today, he goes by Mario.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
And so it's the same character definitely.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
So according to the story, the president of Nintendo of
America noticed the similarity between the Italian landlord they had,
the one they'd been renting warehouse space from, and the
mustachio Jumpman, and the Nintendo crewe nicknamed the character Mario
in his honor, and by the time the carpenter turned
a plumber and was ready for his breakout role into
his own series, the nickname it stuck.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Oh that's pretty great, and it actually reminds me of
another story about early Nintendo, or at least the video
game phase. So apparently, Donkey Kong was a big hit
for the company, pulling in over one hundred and eighty
million dollars in just a year after its release. Eighty
million dollars then, I mean, that's a lot of money.
But with all that success came the attention of Universal Studios,
(17:45):
who now believed that the game was infringing on its
King Kong copyright, and the studio made some pretty tough demands,
insisting that Nintendo destroy all unsold copies of the game
and hand over every penny they had made along the way.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So I mean, I'm guessing Nintendo didn't go for any
of that.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
No, not so much. Instead, they lawyered up and proved
that not only did the game have nothing to do
with the events of the movie, but Universal's copyright had
long since expired. Anything that actually meant King Kong was
now in the public domain. How crazy is That's amazing
which we had snapped it up, But that isn't the
craziest part. Actually, it turns out that Universal had allowed
(18:21):
Tiger Electronics to create this game based on King Kong,
and it was actually kind of a knockoff of Donkey Kong.
So in the end, the court ruled in Nintendo's favor
and Universal was made to pay the company millions in damage.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah. So, actually, Nintendo's lawyer, John Kirby, he was given
this brand new sailboat as a thank you gift, and
of course he christened it the Donkey Kong. But that
name may sound familiar, because the best part is he
also got a character named after him, and that is
the character Kirby.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Oh I love that. I like that. Not only did
he get this new boat, but he also got video
game immortality.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
So I'm glad you mentioned knockoff games because that speaks
to something I don't think a lot of people remember,
and that's that America's video game industry was in really
bad shape in the early eighties. In fact, it was
almost on the verge of total collapse. So companies like
Calico and Atari, they've made a killing in their early days,
but their lack of foresight left them with no way
to keep unlicensed games from being designed and released for
(19:20):
the systems. So as a result, there were tons of cheap,
low quality software and games out there, and frustrated buyers
and all these parents and kids who were disappointed in
the quality of the products.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Well, and that had to be a huge headache for Nintendo, right,
I mean, they released their first home game console in
Japan in nineteen eighty three, so of course the next
logical step was bringing it to the Western market. But
then all of a sudden, the rug gets pulled out
from under them and it starts to look like video
games will never make it out of the arcade in
the US exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
But the company couldn't afford to let a whole market
fall by the wayside, so they came up with this
new battle plan. So first Nintendo developed a lockout chip
to prevent companies from releasing unauthorized games, and then they
redesigned the system itself to avoid any bad connotations that,
you know, home video game systems might have developed among consumers.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Wait, but so how do you make a video game
system not look like a video game system.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
By making it look more like a VCR Apparently? Oh okay, Yeah,
So in Japan, Nintendo's first system was known as the
Famicon or a family computer, and it loaded from the top,
so the games were inserted vertically. The way, you know,
you'd put a game in an old atari. But for
the US release, the system was given this like flip
up panel where cartridges would be inserted like a VHS tape.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
That's pretty interesting. Actually, it reminds me this is kind
of unrelated, but it's a little bit like how Subway
realized if you compared their sandwiches to other sandwiches, you've
got this mediocre proposition. But when you compare a sandwich
to other fast foods, suddenly it seems like you know,
this helped the idea exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
So they reframed this as modern family entertainment, and it
was also renamed as the Nintendo Entertainment System or the NES,
to further obscure its role as a piece of gaming hardware.
And then they played with the color scheme, so instead
of being like bright red and white like the Japanese
version was, they muted it down to this two tone
gray color scheme.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
So the strategy for the US was to kind of
make it duller. Did that end up working?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Yeah it did, but consumers were only part of the hurdle.
Like Nintendo also had to deal with retailers, and when
it was time to launch the NES, in nineteen eighty five,
most stores were hesitant to devote any shelf space to another,
you know, slow selling video game system. So to solve
that problem, Nintendo came up with this robotic accessory that
they dubbed ROB. It was the Robotic Operating Buddy, and
(21:42):
when the marketing push for the NES began, Rob the
Robot was front and center, helping to assure parents and
store owners that the NES was this worthy investment.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
I mean, it's kind of funny to think that this
physical toy robot being a selling point for a video game.
I mean, it's just the opposite. Now, most kids would
pick an eye iPad over an action figure any day.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
I would think, Yeah, I mean, that's definitely true. And honestly,
ROB was never a hot item, like the robot was
this last minute edition solely designed to move units, so
his interaction with the system was limited to a few
week titles that you know, hardly anyone remembers today, but
none of that really mattered. Like ROB was basically this
trojan horse. It was a way of sneaking a quality
(22:22):
video game system into American society without much notice, and
once he was there, people were able to play like
Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt and kid Icarus or whatever.
At that point, like nobody was complaining, and in fact,
the rules worked so well that by nineteen eighty eight,
over six million NES consoles and more than thirty three
million games had been sold in the US. And the
(22:44):
systems weren't cheap either.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Oh that's pretty crazy. Yeah, when you're talking about Duck Hunt,
these additions to the games. I remember playing that game
and just how close the gun would be to the
TV screen, like it was basically touching the screens. Cheating,
but it felt good, you know, to win. That was
That's the most experience I had with Hunting, but I
was pretty good. And when it gets out, but this
was definitely some smart strategy. And I guess robots were
(23:08):
super popular back then. I mean that's right around the
time when you know, Transformers and Voltron and short Circuit
we're popular.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Short Circuit two.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Short Circuit two was so good. But you know, I
do like how the story kind of shows Nintendo drawing
on its experience as a toy company, you know, because
I actually think there's a case to be made for
still thinking of Nintendo as a toy maker first, rather
than maybe it's a video game company.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Well, I mean, I think that's an interesting line of
thinking and I definitely want to hear more about what
you want to say about that. But uh, why don't
we take a little break first?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Okay, Mango, it's quiz time.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Are you ready?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Mm hm? Well, I guess we're not the ones that
really have to be ready. We're gonna we're gonna play
a quiz because we're talking Nintendo today, and we decided
to bring on one of our friends from here and
How Stuff Works, also the producer of the always brilliant
Tech Stuff Ramsey. You welcome to part time genius. Glad
to be here, all right, are you nervous about this quiz?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Very nervous?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
But before we do the quiz, you are a big
video game fan. So, so what's your go to console
and video game now?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It is actually a PlayStation four? Okay, but I grew
up playing pretty much most of the consoles. I still
have my Atari twenty six hundred console that still works
nice and collection of games for that. But it's definitely
not attached to television because it's a process.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Okay, but you had an original Nintendo as well?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Yes, yes, I did.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
All right, well that qualifies you to play this.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Game, right, Okay, all right, that's right.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
So mengo, what game are we playing with Ramsey today?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
It's called real unpopular Nintendo game or something we just
made up.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Okay, you're right. So we're going to give you the
name of a game and a quick description and you
just have to tell if it's real or if it's
something that we made up.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
And some of them are a Nintendo game, some of
them are Super Nintendo games.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Oh oh, before we get hate mail, all right.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Question number one baby Boomer, And here's the description. A
game where a baby escapes his crib and you have
to use the duck hunt gun to shoot birds, cobras,
and other annoyances out of the way. Is this a
real game or something we made up?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I'm gonna say it is a real game.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, it's a real game, just like real life. Or
use a gun to shoot things out of your baby's way.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I forgot that was your style.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Number two, TV Tag the game and here's the description.
This trivia slash skill game was set in a retirement
community where you wheeled around your grandfather in a game
of TV tag Whenever you got tagged, You answer TV
trivia to unfreeze yourself with the occasional help of your
daughtering grandfather. Is this real or something we made up?
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I'm gonna say that is something you made up?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
It sounds real.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Is real?
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Is shooting the things in the way of your baby?
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Yeah? All right?
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Number three? Oh this is good? All right? Bill Lambier's
Combat Basket Mango is La Lakers fans as kids like,
we couldn't stand okay, Bill Lambier's Combat Basketball. And here's
the description. This game is set in a dystopian future
where the Pistons player runs an ultra violet b ball
league where players use armor mines and spinning blades to
(26:26):
get to the hoop. Is this real or something we
made up?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
I'm gonna say yes. I think I remember seeing some
reat style basketball game, like you could pick weapons and
then go out and play basketball.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
It's curious why this wasn't a big seller, but it
might have something to do with the fact that Bill
Lambier was the start.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I couldn't stand Bill Lambier. Number four he is what
three out of three?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Three? Three?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
He got two left? Stuart the goat Herder And the
description In this game, Stuart, the terrible goat herder, tries
to prove his family wrong by hurting a flock of
goats through increasingly difficult challenges, from walking them one by
one across the river to trying to use various skills
to lure them away from a Pebo Bryson concert. Is
(27:14):
this real or something we made up?
Speaker 3 (27:16):
This sounds like the worst game ever. I'm going to
say it's something you made up because I'm hoping nor
last one.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
You got to get this for the big prize?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Okay, all right? Number five Home Improvement Power Tool Pursuit
and the description in this super nes game you shoot
dinosaurs and mummies with a nail gun while trying to
get through a giant TV studio? Is this real or
something we made up?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
I mean, if ten Allen's name was attached to it,
I imagine, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
It's true. It's a real game.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
No way, is this really?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
And the confusing game came with no instructions because real
men don't need instructions.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Are you serious? This is a super game?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Was it based off the TV show? Or I mean?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Ish?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:06):
All right, so Ramsey went what five for five?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Right?
Speaker 1 (28:09):
So what does that entitle him to.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
So Ramsey's going to get a part time genius official
Certificate of Genius, and we'll be delivering it along with
a hearty congratulations. Congratulations sounds great, Thank you, thanks so
much for joining us.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Okay, Well, so clue me in, why should we think
of Nintendo as a toy company instead of a video
game company? And if we do, why is that a
good thing?
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Well, the second part depends on who you ask. So
the gaming industry has gone through major changes since Nintendo's
heyday and the eighties and the early nineties, and adult
gamers make up a much larger portion of the market
than they once did, and both the types of games
being made and the gaming culture as a whole have
changed really to reflect that new demographic. So, for example,
(29:05):
a gamer in their early twenties who mostly plays these
realistic and third person shooter games like Call of Duty,
they might not think that Nintendo being a toy company
is such a positive thing.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, that's one thing I noticed a lot while researching.
Like the other big names and video games I'm talking about,
like Microsoft and Sony, they're largely known for their computing
power and that makes them really intense immersive gaming experiences,
but Nintendo is seen is almost like this quirkier, more playful,
almost this underpowered option.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, and the interesting thing to me is that the
difference you're noting is completely intentional.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Thanks to the video game bust in the mid eighties,
Nintendo had a clear playing field when they arrived on
the scene, but when Sega began releasing their own rival consoles,
soon to be followed by Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo quickly
found itself locked into a graphical arms race.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Really sure, so this is when the so called console
wars raging, and each company tried to outdo the other
with a faster, more powerful hardware that promised to like
redefine gaming. And after the Game Boys, something's like the
Super Nintendo, the N sixty four, more buttons on the controllers,
more immersive graphics. I mean, it seems like Nintendo kept
pace for a while, but in the end it was
(30:17):
just like a battle they couldn't win.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Well, I mean, that's kind of the thing. I don't
think Nintendo lost so much as it just bowed out.
I mean, it's almost like the company woke up one
day and remembered that it would just much rather be
playing games than fighting wars.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
So what prompted that epiphany, Well, the company was.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Forced to face some harsh truths back in the early
two thousands. Its latest console was the GameCube.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
If you remember, I had forgotten about the cube. I mean,
why were cubes so popularly? Like Apple came out with
the cube computer too, right, just.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
The shape I guess nobody had ever recognized before. I
really have no idea, but the Nintendo's GameCube definitely underperformed.
I mean, it had to compete with Sony's PlayStation two
and Microsoft's Xbox. And it was during this time that
new leadership came to Nintendo in the form of Saturo Iwata,
and he was the first Nintendo president who actually wasn't
(31:06):
a member of the founding Yamachi family. So a lot
of shook things up by placing the focus on software
rather than hardware. Instead of building the most powerful console
they could and then working backwards to figure out what
kind of games would take advantage of that power. A
lot of encourage designers to think up fun and unique
game concepts first and then create the console to run them,
(31:27):
which is just a very different way of thinking about it. Yeah,
so that shift in perspective led to brand new toys
and to the way video games were played. You think
about things like the Nintendo DS, which really was built
off the Game Boy but had this dual touch screen system,
or maybe the motion controlled home console, the Nintendo Wii,
and then you have the WE fit so several new
(31:48):
ideas well.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I mean, we all know how that worked out for them,
right like that. We was such a smash hit with
just about everybody. And I remember seeing all these Weimbledon
tournaments at retirement homes and folding tournaments too. It was
really built for everybody.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, we made video games accessible to this wider audience,
and much wider than it had ever been before. And
it did so by returning the focus to these simple
joys of play. So suddenly you've got families gathering in
their living rooms to play video games together, and not
just kids, but parents and grandparents. Like you mentioned, this
is what Awata described as a blue ocean, which was
(32:24):
this new market free of rivals. The idea was that
if the offerings were innovative enough, it could spark the
interest and enthusiasm of anyone looking to have fun. Yeah.
I actually love that me too. And apparently there were
a lot of people looking to have fun because the
We became Nintendo's best selling home console to date actually
sold over one hundred million units in its lifespan.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
That's pretty incredible. Okay, so clearly Nintendo went its own
way in terms of creative and business models. But how
does that make them more of a toy company than
a video company? And how do you see the difference?
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Well, I really think it comes down to the intention
behind the product. I mean, when Nintendo changed direction and
became a toy company in the sixties and seventies, there
was this sense of freedom and discovery to their products,
and I think it's because they were experimenting. You know,
they were dreaming up weird ideas and turning them into
silly gadgets that were appealing not just because they were
(33:17):
using the latest and greatest technology, but because they were
just fun to play with a lot to help the
return the company to that mindset and the one they
had when they were just a toy company.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, that's interesting, and it makes sense that a company
with that kind of history would have a completely different
culture and ethos than other video game giants. I mean,
Sony is really a consumer electronics company first, and it's
a video games as a new revenue stream. And Microsoft
is this like, you know, digital PC and electronics company first,
and they figured, we already made computers. What's a game
(33:50):
console if not a specialized computer. But what's cool is
that it sounds like Nintendo is leaning into those differences now.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Oh, definitely. So I found this speech that Miamoto and
say we should devote an episode to just Miamoto because
he's such a genius and how he came up with
Mario and Zelda and so many other games over Nintendo's
lifespan is definitely worth exploring. But back to the talk.
He was giving a talk to a group of investors
a few years back, and there's one that really shows
(34:17):
how the company is playing to its strengths. So he said,
Nintendo is known as a video game company, but in
fact it's also a toy company. Toys make consumers feel
a sense of wonder. When it comes to video game hardware,
companies tend to take the similar and rather unified course
of aiming to beef up the machines functionalities in our
(34:37):
efforts to differentiate our hardware from others. I believe it's
important that users experience that feeling that they have played
with a new toy.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Well, speaking of that sense of wonder that comes from
a new toy, have you heard about the secret tribute
to Iwata that Nintendo hid in its.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
New console in the Switch or what is it?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah? So, unfortunately, the man who helped Nintendo return to
its roots passed away in twenty fifteen. He had complications
from her tumor. But it was especially tough because Iwata
helped shepherd the new Switch console through its development, and
suddenly the company was faced with this grim prospect of
launching it without him. But earlier this year, it was
discovered that the Nintendo team had actually done something a
(35:16):
little sneaky. They secretly embedded this digital copy of an
old nes Golf game within the firmware of every Switch console,
and the only way to access the game is by
holding a controller in each hand and replicating a signature
hand gesture that Iwata used to use in his promotional
videos for the company.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Oh that's pretty sweet and a little bit odd. I
guess why did they choose a golf game?
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Well, the nes Golf was one of the first games
a Wata program for Nintendo, so it kind of held
a special significance. And more broadly, it's possible the game
was meant as this omamori, which is it's kind of
like the special charm that's traditionally left that Japanese shrines
to offer protection to departed spirits. So, as one gamer
put it, Nintendo embedded Iwata's game. I did to watch
(36:00):
over every unit.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Are you trying to make me tear up over a video.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Game right now? But it really does go back to
what we've been saying about Nintendo, right It's not your
typical company. It's got this long and weird and complicated history,
and the childlike approach to game design that it's adopted
has made sure of that. And the result of it
is that you end up, whether you call them toys
or video games, Nintendo products have a level of sincerity
(36:25):
and heart that separates them from everything else.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Well. I don't know about you, but all this talk
of gaming has made me feel kind of competitive, honestly,
So what do you say we go head to head
and a little two player backed up?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
I'm in.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Well, for all the talk of Nintendo's sweetness and sincerity,
they didn't always abandon their gambling or yakuza rude. So
did you know that in nineteen ninety one, they tried
to bring online gambling into homes. According to Kataku, they
teamed up with the state of Minnesota to create this
gaming system and a cartridge that you could spend ten
dollars a month for this subscription gambling service. They sort
(37:11):
of gamified the lottery with the system. But Nintendo quickly
realized that maybe creating this gambling game that kids might
access it wasn't a great idea for their brand, and
they decided to kill the project before political and religious
groups could voice their opinions about it.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
That's pretty wild. Did you know that Shigeru Miyamoto is
considered so valuable to the company that it's in his
contract that he's not allowed to bike to work. I mean,
the sixty something designer used to love Viking, but as
Business Insider put it, the company's too afraid he might
go the way of Frogger.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
I did not know that. Well, do you know that
Nintendo used to own the Seattle Mariners. Apparently Nintendo's Japanese
CEO didn't really care about baseball, but when the team
was going to move to Saint Petersburg, Florida. Yumochi decided
to buy the team as a goodwill gesture to the
city of Seat. Nintendo's American operation is located not far
from there in the city of Redmond.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of amazing. And it was
apparently super controversial at the time because people were worried
about a foreign entity owning an American baseball team, which
is crazy.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Did you know the original Super Mario Brothers was all
drawn on graph paper and it was all colored in
and when the designers were happy with a certain level,
that's when they'd send it off to code. Eventually, the
team started using this internal software to design the games,
but their tool became so fun to play with that
that's actually what they released to the public as Super
Mario Maker.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Well, speaking of Mario, rpal Nick Green figured this out
and I love this so much, so he wanted to
figure out how much Mario runs and swims in Super
Mario Brothers. If you take out all the bonuses and shortcuts,
and if you run from the start all the way
to the castle, he only does about three point four miles.
And as for the swimming, if you isolate that he
(38:55):
only actually does about seven and a half laps and
an Olympic sized pool.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I mean, Nickorean's a genius, but I do think he's
discounting how many turtles he's jumping over and how much
parkore he basically has to do along the way.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So he's got that six pack.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
So Tristan held up the Konami code in the beginning
of the show, and I've been waiting to talk about this.
It's obviously used in pop culture. I mean you find
it on Archer The Family Guy as an inside joke,
but from time to time you find it as an
easter egg on various sites. So a while back, when
you fired up the code into Google Reader, a bunch
of cartoon ninjas would pop out onto your screen. I
don't know if you remember this. It was really fun
(39:30):
to watch. And when the code was used on ESPN
dot com, it would bring up all these sparkly unicorns.
Basically it was a unicorn infestation, and whenever you clicked
a new sparkle pony would pop up up. That's pretty great,
But the craziest to me was when Newsweek got in
on the action, because if you typed in the code.
The lead article was about zombies attacking parts of the
East Coast, but I also had these tips for the
(39:51):
zombie apocalypse, like aim for their heads. And Newsweek only
partially owned the correction, like a spokesperson said, now we've
all had laugh, we will be removing it right own
up to that one.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
All right, well, I feel like we can't finish an
episode without talking about Nintendo Power. You know, the magazine
and all the tips about games and hyped up the
new games. And I know we were both subscribers at
one point, but they also published high scores, and apparently
Steve Wozniak, you know, the co founder of Apple.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Was a huge fan.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
He used to keep submitting his scores for Tetris month
after month, and eventually the magazine had to ask him
to stop submitting because they couldn't keep printing his name.
So he finally agreed to it, but not before sending
in one last entry, Avet's canezo w or his name backwards.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
That's pretty great. I mean that the WAWS was like
and subscriber to Nintendo Power is just so insane. Yeah,
you've got to take the crown for that.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
All right, Well, thank you so much, and thank you
guys for listening. That's it for today's episode. If we
forgot any of your favorite facts about Nintendo or anything
related to video games, feel free to send those to us.
We'd love to hear those facts. You can always email
us part Time Genius at HowStuffWorks dot com or call
our twenty four to seven fact hotline. That's one eight
four four pt Genius. It is still twenty four to
(41:13):
seven mangos That right, Yes, Okay, that's excellent news. You
can also hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks
so much for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part Time
(41:34):
Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Jerry Roland does the exact producer thing.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Gabe Luzier is our lead researcher, with support from the
research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams
and Eve.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job,
Eves if.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
You like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe. If
you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
A good review for us. Do we forget Jason?
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Jason who
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