Speaker 1: Technic Technology with tech Stuff from stuff Y everyone, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. This week we're going to continue
Speaker 1: our story of Nintendo. These are episodes that Chris Bilette
Speaker 1: and I recorded back in two thousand eleven. Last week
Speaker 1: we talked about the story Nintendo Part one, where we
Speaker 1: look at the origin of the company and how it
Speaker 1: got started. In Part two, we talked more about video
Speaker 1: game consoles and what the company did to really set
Speaker 1: itself apart from other competitors in the space. So I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this episode, and remember we're gonna have
Speaker 1: a part three coming up, a brand new episode that
Speaker 1: I am going to record very very soon. It'll be
Speaker 1: the next episode to Aero. Talk more about that after
Speaker 1: this class episode, So see in a bit. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're going to do the the whole catch you up,
Speaker 1: um if you're just tuning in previously on Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Nintendo started out as a playing card company in nine
Speaker 1: gradually diversified then got out of several other businesses, including
Speaker 1: the toy market, but that did give them the idea
Speaker 1: that possibly this whole video game thing might be an idea,
Speaker 1: and they started creating video game consoles that were only
Speaker 1: able to play a game or maybe sit up to
Speaker 1: six games, but you know, kind of like the old
Speaker 1: Odyssey system and that it was very limited. It was
Speaker 1: all hardwired into the system. You could not put a
Speaker 1: cartridge in there was it was not cartridge cartridge based.
Speaker 1: At that point, also created the game and Watch, which
Speaker 1: was the portable variation of that, but again, single game,
Speaker 1: that's all was on that system. Meanwhile, the arcade craze
Speaker 1: is taken off all over the world and Nintendo finds
Speaker 1: itself with a complete bomb and asks a young designer, Miyamoto,
Speaker 1: Shigeru Miyamoto, to give it a shot. Can you come
Speaker 1: up with something that we can use in the video
Speaker 1: game market? And he thinks a storyline would sell games,
Speaker 1: so he creates a simple story about a giant gorilla
Speaker 1: who hauls off a a woman named Pauline to the
Speaker 1: top of a skyscraper and challenges a young plumber well
Speaker 1: actually he was just a guy with a big mustache
Speaker 1: and overalls named Jumpman to come get her. And it
Speaker 1: defies just about everybody in the company's expectations by becoming
Speaker 1: a huge hit, inspiring several uh several follow up titles
Speaker 1: and licensing agreements. With these different console manufacturers to bring
Speaker 1: them into homes. Because home video games are becoming popular
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties, late seventies and early Nintendo
Speaker 1: decides to get into that market. While the getting is good,
Speaker 1: I want me some of that action. They and they
Speaker 1: introduce the Nintendo Family Computer and they launch it in
Speaker 1: Japan on July fifteenth. Yeah, it's a great name for
Speaker 1: a console. Uh yeah, great name for the console, the Famicom.
Speaker 1: So if you're not familiar with the Famicom, that is
Speaker 1: what in America we referred to as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Speaker 1: It's gonna if you're not familiar with it, yes you are.
Speaker 1: It didn't immediately come over to America because at the
Speaker 1: same time as it was launching in Japan America, in
Speaker 1: North America there was the video game Crash. We talked
Speaker 1: about that. If you haven't heard it, go back and
Speaker 1: listen to it. There's an entire podcast about it. But
Speaker 1: to give you the short form of that, what happened
Speaker 1: was the video game market was doing really well. Uh
Speaker 1: so many players got into the system. Not not so
Speaker 1: many players. So many companies got into creating video game
Speaker 1: systems and video game titles that the market became saturated,
Speaker 1: and there were there were there were several really really
Speaker 1: good games, but there were way more crappy games and
Speaker 1: some of those, Yeah, we talked about some of those
Speaker 1: in our Worst Video Games of All Time podcast. There
Speaker 1: were some of the two big ones that leap to
Speaker 1: mind were the licensed version of pac Man for the
Speaker 1: AY and of course the number one game on everybody's
Speaker 1: list e T. The Extraterrestrial almost everybody's, but no, a
Speaker 1: lot of that. That was the thing. A lot of
Speaker 1: the game The idea was these games are a hit
Speaker 1: in the arcade, let's bring him to the home console.
Speaker 1: So you had games like pac Man and Donkey Kong,
Speaker 1: um stuff like Amadar Burger Time Reactor, and they tried
Speaker 1: so hard to make them work on home consoles immediately
Speaker 1: that they ended up being complete and under dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were just a was such a rush to get
Speaker 1: to the market with that quality. Was was really sacrificed
Speaker 1: in order to get sacrificed in favor of speed. Well,
Speaker 1: Nintendo ended up not launching in America right away because again,
Speaker 1: this video game crash was taking place mostly through and
Speaker 1: so it wasn't until October eighth five that the fam
Speaker 1: Con made its debut in the United States, and of
Speaker 1: course then it was known as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Speaker 1: And originally Nintendo took a very very controlled approach to
Speaker 1: introducing its system. It wasn't it wasn't like a a
Speaker 1: nationwide launch. In fact, you could originally only get an
Speaker 1: inn e ES if you were willing to go to
Speaker 1: New York City to get it. That was the limited
Speaker 1: market they introduced it to and it was something like
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand units and they sold out of ninety
Speaker 1: thousand of them in a heartbeat. Um in a New
Speaker 1: York minute, Yeah, in a New York minute. And the
Speaker 1: original in as when it first came out in New York,
Speaker 1: was loaded with extras in order to tempt people to
Speaker 1: buy it, because you gotta remember, at this point, the
Speaker 1: home video game market in the United States is toast.
Speaker 1: People are starting to move to personal computers. Video game
Speaker 1: consoles are looked at his things for kids, and it's
Speaker 1: and there's just no insistency and quality. So Nintendo had
Speaker 1: an uphill battle here. So when they launched it in
Speaker 1: New York, here's what he came with. This is a
Speaker 1: huge difference to the way you buy a video game
Speaker 1: console today. You got the console, you've got two games,
Speaker 1: you've got two game pads, you've got the Zapper light gun,
Speaker 1: and you got the Robotic Operating Buddy or rob one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five dollars. Wow, that would be about
Speaker 1: two fifty dollars in today's money. So it's still sort
Speaker 1: of affordable in terms. I mean, you think about the
Speaker 1: PlayStation three debuting it what six United States? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it was a pretty amazing deal
Speaker 1: at the time, and uh, it does very well, and
Speaker 1: then Nintendo starts to open up in other test markets
Speaker 1: places like Chicago and Los Angeles. Um, still very gradual
Speaker 1: until it goes nationwide pretty much in six uh and
Speaker 1: at that point, the h the price had moved up
Speaker 1: to a hundred and ninety nine dollars, so the d
Speaker 1: was kind of the introductory price to kind of get
Speaker 1: that word of mouth campaign going. And and once it
Speaker 1: went nationwide, they figured they could price it at one
Speaker 1: and that would be the right market value for then
Speaker 1: Intoo Entertainment System. I don't know, it might hot cakes, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: dead And in eighty six that was also when in Japan,
Speaker 1: Nintendo introduced a special disc system accessory in the Famicom,
Speaker 1: because I could remember in Japan it was it was
Speaker 1: built as a family computer system, not just a video
Speaker 1: game console, so it would allow you to actually use
Speaker 1: discs to uh play games on the Famicom. Back in Japan,
Speaker 1: you could even go and have you know, a disc
Speaker 1: made of a game or whatever at special vendors in Japan.
Speaker 1: Now and in the United States, we were not so
Speaker 1: fortunate as to get access to this, although I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are plenty of collectors out there who have the
Speaker 1: Japanese version of it. In America, that's always been a
Speaker 1: hot like underground market in the United States. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind too that in the late seventies, when
Speaker 1: or the mid seventies, when consoles were starting to come
Speaker 1: into the homes, all this stuff was hardwired into the
Speaker 1: console itself, as as Jonathan was just saying a minute ago,
Speaker 1: and they figured out that it was possible to make
Speaker 1: a connector slot so that all the ROMs would be
Speaker 1: actually in the cartridge itself and it would make a
Speaker 1: connection with that cartridge when you plugged it. You had
Speaker 1: to give it a firm push to get it snapped
Speaker 1: into the slot the right way. Also, you had to
Speaker 1: you had to breathe into the cartridge. That was that
Speaker 1: was required before you. That's what we always did, ye
Speaker 1: before you. Well, it's good to get the dust out
Speaker 1: of it. Of course, some of the Atari cartridges had
Speaker 1: a little flap they protected the guts. Not all of them,
Speaker 1: some of them, but yeah, they the Nintendo Entertainment System
Speaker 1: used similar cartridges too. They were they were wider than
Speaker 1: the the Atari cartridges of course, and and bigger. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they were using the same types of programmable rum chips
Speaker 1: that you would just snap into the game slot. Didn't
Speaker 1: have a disk like the game systems do now. So
Speaker 1: in eight six they also introduced some titles that became big.
Speaker 1: Commando huge in e S game, I think I heard
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, fun one too, Ghosts and Goblins one
Speaker 1: of the most difficult games ever. Also fun but hard.
Speaker 1: And then um there was came out in six If
Speaker 1: that's not confusing, that's a little weird. Uh. And in
Speaker 1: eight seven, two other big names in Nintendo franchises debuted, Castlevania,
Speaker 1: Yes and Metroid Yeah. So a lot of the games
Speaker 1: that would become sort of emblematic of Nintendo Entertainment System
Speaker 1: started to launch right around this time, and uh, the
Speaker 1: NES does incredibly well. Now, I never owned an in NES.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who lived down the street from
Speaker 1: me who did own an NES, and I used to
Speaker 1: go over to his house all the time and play.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I played one of the games that
Speaker 1: won the best Video Game of the Year for Nintendo
Speaker 1: now that that happened back in. That game was punch Out,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about the arcade game at that point,
Speaker 1: but man oh, the arcade game was a huge hit.
Speaker 1: I loved punch Out so much. That's one of those
Speaker 1: arcade consoles. Like you know, you always have that fantasy
Speaker 1: of some of us anyway of owning certain video game consoles,
Speaker 1: like having a special room that would just have video
Speaker 1: game consoles in it. Punch Out would be one of
Speaker 1: the consoles I would own punch Out. There there are
Speaker 1: two other titles I can think of right off the
Speaker 1: top of my head that I would have to own
Speaker 1: for that and on the one one would be the
Speaker 1: original Star Wars arcade game use the Forest Luke and
Speaker 1: also the Spy Hunter. Those are the so those would
Speaker 1: be the three Elevator Action maybe yeah, if I had room,
Speaker 1: but if I only had room for three, it'd be
Speaker 1: Spy Hunter, it would be Star Wars, and it would
Speaker 1: be punch Out. Forget those of you keeping scored home.
Speaker 1: Punch Out is the only one that's a Nintendo game anyway. Yes,
Speaker 1: but there you go, that one of the three games
Speaker 1: would be a Nintendo game, because when most of us
Speaker 1: think of Nintendo, we don't necessarily think of the arcade
Speaker 1: games that much because they made such a huge name
Speaker 1: in the home console market. Now, Donkey Kong of course
Speaker 1: being like the big exception. Yeah, well that's how I
Speaker 1: think that's how Nintendo was able to sell the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Entertainment System was that they could say, hey, we were
Speaker 1: the guys behind Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. And
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers. Yeah, you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: us taking some sort of u uh well, especially when
Speaker 1: they were reporting games from the arcade to the console,
Speaker 1: you know, since it was the same company that was
Speaker 1: producing these hit games, so much more faithful. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and so they you know, that could be a message
Speaker 1: they send out to the market, is like, you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about some terrible port of our game,
Speaker 1: because we're the ones who made the Arcade game, We're
Speaker 1: the ones who made the console. You know that the
Speaker 1: console is gonna reflect the gameplay that you are familiar
Speaker 1: with in the Arcade. Well. One of the things that
Speaker 1: Jonathan touched on in the first episode, and again, if
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to it, will wait for you to
Speaker 1: come back and listen to that first. But one of
Speaker 1: the things he touched on was that the the CEO,
Speaker 1: the CEO at that time of Nintendo, insisted that everything
Speaker 1: go through him for approval. And that was important in
Speaker 1: a way because it ensured that there was going to
Speaker 1: be some quality in the stuff. They weren't just throwing
Speaker 1: it out the door like certain other companies that I
Speaker 1: can mention, I didn't mention. Well, that was part of
Speaker 1: the problem of Video game crash. Yes, So Nintendo had
Speaker 1: had taken the certification process, yes, and that that was
Speaker 1: a selling point from the Nintendo Entertainment system that the
Speaker 1: other consoles didn't have at that point. Because if a
Speaker 1: title was going to be on the NES, it had
Speaker 1: to meet certain criteria, it had to had to pass certification.
Speaker 1: It's frustrating for developers because the developer might have a
Speaker 1: great idea, but for some reason they run up against
Speaker 1: a barrier that to the developer seems arbitrary and then, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we see this today with developers who developed
Speaker 1: for Apple, for example, for for apps on the iPhone
Speaker 1: and the iPad. They're developers who say, I submitted this,
Speaker 1: I thought it was a great idea, and then I'm
Speaker 1: hitting a wall. And in some cases it may seem
Speaker 1: arbitrary to an outside observer, but to Apple it may
Speaker 1: seem like, no, this is not following our rules, and
Speaker 1: this the rules are there in order for us to
Speaker 1: ensure that the user has a good quality experience. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day, that was a Nintendo's approach
Speaker 1: to with the video games, and said they did not
Speaker 1: want to fall into the same trap that Attari and
Speaker 1: Collico had fallen into, where they started to put out
Speaker 1: and publish games that or they allowed third party publishers
Speaker 1: to publish games that just did not measure up. Now,
Speaker 1: that did not mean that Nintendo was free of bad games,
Speaker 1: but they weren't glutted with them like the Atari was
Speaker 1: towards the end of its days. Yeah, it killed both
Speaker 1: at and Calico. Yeah, and if you say yes, but
Speaker 1: it are still around it a different company. They purchased
Speaker 1: the name anyway. Anyway, Um, yeah, that was that was
Speaker 1: one of the selling points. Um. And the other was,
Speaker 1: in addition to good marketing, they had something that they
Speaker 1: could market around, and that was Miamoto's characters. Um. Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong had made a name, well not literally because his
Speaker 1: name wasn't his name at that point, but had a
Speaker 1: name character and Mario and they were able to use
Speaker 1: those characters in successive games and so uh, they basically
Speaker 1: had exclusivity. You didn't see Mario on games that weren't
Speaker 1: licensed by Nintendo. Nintendo was was uh, basically ensuring a
Speaker 1: future for itself by creating a storyline in its games
Speaker 1: that could be carried from game to game. Yah. They
Speaker 1: really started to protect their intellectual property. They were very
Speaker 1: protective of it. So still still are. Yeah, you still
Speaker 1: are not going to find Mario pop up on say
Speaker 1: an iPhone game, which that'll come into playing at the
Speaker 1: end of our conversation today. So Nintendo has taken this
Speaker 1: approach and it's working well for them now. In n
Speaker 1: uh So this is ninety nine years into the company's history.
Speaker 1: For those scores, ninety nine years in the company's history.
Speaker 1: Nintendo makes an agreement with another company called Sony. I
Speaker 1: think I've heard of them too. Yeah, they were going
Speaker 1: to work together and put out a new video game
Speaker 1: console system that would use optical disks instead of cartridges
Speaker 1: to store games. Hey, that seems like a great idea
Speaker 1: because Sony is really good with this electronics stuff here,
Speaker 1: as Nintendo doesn't take them off. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: Nintendo and Sony could not see eye to eye on
Speaker 1: many aspects of the deal, and ultimately the deal fell apart.
Speaker 1: Now this this collapse. Yeah, the collapse of this deal
Speaker 1: would later lead Sony to develop its own video game
Speaker 1: console system called the PlayStation. I think I've heard of
Speaker 1: that too. You may very well have heard of that.
Speaker 1: Nintendo wishes it had. Yeah, PlayStation ended up causing a
Speaker 1: big headache for Nintendo, particularly in Japan in a couple
Speaker 1: more years. But we'll get into that in so on
Speaker 1: the company's centennial, which is so hard to think up. Like,
Speaker 1: there's so many companies out there, and you're like, how
Speaker 1: many of them are a century old or older? Not many?
Speaker 1: Not many are still around. Nintendo is one of them. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nine the company introduces the game Boy. Now, the
Speaker 1: game Boy sold for eighty nine dollars in the United States,
Speaker 1: which is about a hundred and fifty dollars a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty six dollars today. Uh, and the game Boy sold
Speaker 1: very well, partially because it was marketed not just kids,
Speaker 1: but to adults who would spend time doing things like
Speaker 1: writing the train or the bus. If you were one
Speaker 1: of those people who are commuting on a system like that,
Speaker 1: then you would want something to occupy your time. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Chris is humming the theme song to the game that
Speaker 1: was packaged with the game Boy that became like it was.
Speaker 1: If you want to call about talk about a killer
Speaker 1: app or a killer title, this is like one of
Speaker 1: the top killer titles of all time. We're talking about Tetris,
Speaker 1: which was not a video game developed specifically by Nintendo.
Speaker 1: Actually came from a Russian developer. But Tetris was such
Speaker 1: a compelling puzzle game and still is today that it
Speaker 1: it was probably responsible for selling more Game Boy units
Speaker 1: than just about anything else. I played Tetris for so
Speaker 1: long on my game Boy that I could see when
Speaker 1: I turned off, you could tell this this is a
Speaker 1: good game. When you turn off the game and you
Speaker 1: close your eyes to go to sleep, and you're still
Speaker 1: seeing those little shapes drift into place. Or when you
Speaker 1: are moving and you're packing up the moving van and
Speaker 1: at the time you're going do do do do do
Speaker 1: do do crooked space piece, I don't I needed an
Speaker 1: L shape? Uh yeah, So why did I get that sectional? Um? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I spent many many hours with my game Boy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a very popular device, and that was my
Speaker 1: first Nintendo system. And game Boy also was developed by
Speaker 1: It was designed by gum Pay Yakoi, who we talked
Speaker 1: about in the last podcast. He was the fellow who
Speaker 1: was hired and had had turned Nintendo's fortunes around by
Speaker 1: introducing a toy that became the Ultra Hand, basically an
Speaker 1: extendable claw that would grip uh toy balls or you know,
Speaker 1: that was what came with it. But you could use
Speaker 1: it for all kinds of other games like harassing the
Speaker 1: family cat. But yeah, the often than not probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he was the fellow who designed the game Boy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, very popular design, very simple design, you know,
Speaker 1: unlike his first portable uh for a this was this
Speaker 1: was basically the hundred of portable games, because before that
Speaker 1: they were all hardwired, like the Mentel games with the
Speaker 1: little led s that would go you know yeah, and
Speaker 1: even even Nintendo's UH game games were all hard fed
Speaker 1: at that point. So this was the first cartridge based
Speaker 1: one that really started to take off. So in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: into No introduces the Super Famicom, which in the United
Speaker 1: States a year later in ninety one was known as
Speaker 1: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Yeah, the NES was starting
Speaker 1: to near the end of its life cycle, though it
Speaker 1: was still supported for a few years after this. UM
Speaker 1: and the NES was an eight bit video game system,
Speaker 1: the S and E S the Supernintendo was a sixteen
Speaker 1: bit game system, twice the bits, and at that time
Speaker 1: Nintendo boasted an ownership a market share of about eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the United States game industry and nine percent
Speaker 1: of the worldwide game industry, so truly a dominant company
Speaker 1: at this point. Also, this is a good time to
Speaker 1: mention the character designs that Miyamoto came up with. The
Speaker 1: reason why the characters look the way they do is
Speaker 1: because the eight bit gaming era was so low resolution
Speaker 1: that you had to pick a very simple yet iconic
Speaker 1: design to be able to show people what your character
Speaker 1: look like. So he has Mario has a giant nose,
Speaker 1: so you could see that he had a nose at all.
Speaker 1: Mario has a mustache because it was easier to see
Speaker 1: than a mouth. His his his overalls, his hat, all
Speaker 1: of that was designed because in order for him to
Speaker 1: show up well against multiple backgrounds, he had to have
Speaker 1: a very simple design. And we're done all the way
Speaker 1: back to the Donkey Kong days. So um yeah. Even
Speaker 1: in the sixteen BET the designs get updated, of course
Speaker 1: because now you've got higher resolution, but they're still based
Speaker 1: on that very simple premise and it was something that
Speaker 1: guided Miyamoto's design for for many years. Uh yeah. So now,
Speaker 1: right around the same time in Japan, Nintendo starts to
Speaker 1: face down lawsuits brought against it by competitors who are
Speaker 1: accusing Nintendo of fixing prices with retailers, so that essentially
Speaker 1: the Nintendo products would stay on store shell and and
Speaker 1: and keep selling, while the competitor peditors would end up
Speaker 1: getting pushed. Aside um, Nintendo was is no stranger to
Speaker 1: lawsuits century which makes sense. I mean, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're the dominant player, then the antitrust lawsuits are gonna
Speaker 1: start popping up, because really, for a while, Nintendo was,
Speaker 1: and no pun intended, the only game in town, or
Speaker 1: so it seemed. Now we're gonna I'm gonna skip ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit. So SNDS is really popular. A lot
Speaker 1: of really popular titles come out on the SNS. But
Speaker 1: I don't think I need to go into all of those. Um,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about one of Nintendo's major missteps, not
Speaker 1: the power Glove, which was its own problem. Nintendo hasn't
Speaker 1: always succeeded when it's come up with some innovative products,
Speaker 1: and one of those innovative products that really bombed by
Speaker 1: Virtual Boy. But what could be wrong with that Virtual
Speaker 1: reality was the wave of the future. We're all going
Speaker 1: to be walking around with these things on our heads
Speaker 1: that would show us these amaze immersed in a computer
Speaker 1: world that would be uh indistinguishable from our real world
Speaker 1: all around us, as long as our real world all
Speaker 1: around us is a monochromatic vector graphic. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: there's a glitch in the matrix. Yeah, so the Virtual
Speaker 1: Boy comes out. It's a head node display. It's actually
Speaker 1: on a little stand and you lean forward, it's almost
Speaker 1: like a pair of binoculars. You you lean your head
Speaker 1: forward and you have a screen for each eye, and
Speaker 1: it if only it didn't have to be hardwired into
Speaker 1: your neural network. It relied on something that we call parallax.
Speaker 1: And parallax we've talked about on this podcast before, but
Speaker 1: in general, parallax is the phenomena we experience because our
Speaker 1: eyes are not located in the exact same spot in
Speaker 1: our head, or else we'd all be cyclops. Uh we
Speaker 1: have vision, Yeah, yeah, there's a there's a difference between, uh,
Speaker 1: the way an object appears in your left eye and
Speaker 1: the way it appears in your right eye, and your
Speaker 1: brain assimilates the information from these two images, and that
Speaker 1: helps you judge things like depth. It's not the only
Speaker 1: thing that lets you judge depth. And there are people
Speaker 1: who have trouble with parallax who can still tell generally
Speaker 1: how far something is away. And of course the further
Speaker 1: away something is, the less parallax matters, because the the
Speaker 1: converging points become closer and closer to being parallel instead
Speaker 1: of converging on a single point. Um. But anyway, it
Speaker 1: used these two screens, one for each I to give
Speaker 1: the illusion of depth. And it was monochromatic and used
Speaker 1: red graphics, which mean you know, you were staring at
Speaker 1: a at a black screen with red graphics on it.
Speaker 1: I remember Warrio showed up in UH in Virtual Boy,
Speaker 1: and at first I thought Warrio was introduced in Virtual Boy,
Speaker 1: but that's not true. Warrior Warrio actually predates Virtual Boy
Speaker 1: by a few years, and he first appeared on a
Speaker 1: Game Boy title. But I remember there was a Warrior
Speaker 1: title on Virtual Boy and a friend of mine, um,
Speaker 1: no one, actually, I guess none of my friends actually
Speaker 1: owned a Virtual Boy. I remember testing it out in
Speaker 1: in various toy stores, toy stores, not toy stories. Um
Speaker 1: you got a friend in me, thank you? And it
Speaker 1: launched and around a hundred and eighty bucks when it
Speaker 1: came out in UH. It did not do well. People
Speaker 1: were disappointed in the graphics quality, They did not feel
Speaker 1: that it was particularly compelling, and there were a lot
Speaker 1: of reports of people suffering massive headaches while trying to
Speaker 1: play this thing. I can't imagine why, and there and
Speaker 1: there just weren't that many compelling titles either. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like a triple threat. Really, you had a
Speaker 1: system that just didn't feel like it was fully baked,
Speaker 1: You didn't have a lot of really great titles, and
Speaker 1: you had reports of people having headaches while playing it. So, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Virtual Boy ended up being a bomb, a non
Speaker 1: virtual bomb. Yeah. Um. And apparently I think eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand of them were produced, so they're now collector's items.
Speaker 1: There aren't that many that ever hit the wild. At
Speaker 1: least they didn't bury them in the desert. No, they
Speaker 1: didn't grind them up and bury them under the desert
Speaker 1: like a certain video game titles where so they didn't
Speaker 1: put them on top and I want to put them
Speaker 1: next to e t um Yes, So, how how do
Speaker 1: you recover from a flop like that? Well, they weren't.
Speaker 1: I would argue that that the company's name wasn't damaged
Speaker 1: to the point where Nintendo was hurting. But that was certainly,
Speaker 1: uh a thorn in its side. It wasn't like the
Speaker 1: Virtual Boy ruined their reputation entirely. It was just that
Speaker 1: it was not a success. But in nineties six they
Speaker 1: did bounce back quite a bit. They introduced their next
Speaker 1: video game console. Now this was during the you know,
Speaker 1: we we had the eight bit systems, we had the
Speaker 1: sixteen bit systems, a few thirty two bit systems came out,
Speaker 1: but Nintendo did not jump on that bandwagon. Instead, Nintendo
Speaker 1: bided its time for a sixty four bit system and
Speaker 1: surprise the world when the Nintendo sixty four came out,
Speaker 1: And I say surprised because they decided to stick with
Speaker 1: the cartridge based games as opposed to moving to an
Speaker 1: optical disc system. Yeah. So let's see who who were
Speaker 1: their competitors. Atari had basically uh, you know, they had
Speaker 1: come out with the links. Yeah, we had, it was
Speaker 1: not doing well. You had Sega, which we if you've
Speaker 1: listened to our podcast about Sega, you realized that Sega,
Speaker 1: although it was always an also ran when it came
Speaker 1: up against Nintendo, except Nintendo really kind of rebuilt the
Speaker 1: home digital video game market and uh and Sega came
Speaker 1: along about that time, and they gave they they were
Speaker 1: the the Apple to Nintendo's Microsoft in this world because
Speaker 1: they pushed Nintendo harder and we're a good competitor. And
Speaker 1: in fact, their marketing slogan was Sega does what Nintendo
Speaker 1: don't because they had Sonic. Sonic was designed to show
Speaker 1: off the speed of the Genesis UH system at home,
Speaker 1: and it did a great job of showing that off
Speaker 1: because he moved very quickly. The graphics sixteen bit system
Speaker 1: looked very nice. Um, and then you had Sony. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the PlayStation. Really In Japan, the Nintendo sixty four did
Speaker 1: not do so well, and it's because its main competitor
Speaker 1: was the Sony PlayStation, which just seemed much more compelling.
Speaker 1: The graphics seemed better, um, and they were using an
Speaker 1: optical disc system, which meant that the games could be
Speaker 1: far more complex. Cartridge had a limited amount of space
Speaker 1: that you could hardwire a game onto, and also it
Speaker 1: meant that there were limitations with a cartridge based game
Speaker 1: that you didn't necessarily have with an optical system game. However,
Speaker 1: there were also positive sides to go with cartridge based
Speaker 1: the big one being that you didn't have to worry
Speaker 1: about loading times. Yes, and you also don't have to
Speaker 1: worry nearly as much about ruining the cartridge as you
Speaker 1: did about scratching it, and it's much more robust than
Speaker 1: the disc was. But yeah, the big one being loading times,
Speaker 1: because you know, with an optical based one, the laser
Speaker 1: had to find the right track on the CD in
Speaker 1: ordered for it to start playing the right information and
Speaker 1: then load that information into the the console's memory so
Speaker 1: that you could start playing, whereas with a cartridge bass system,
Speaker 1: it just because everything's hardwired, it's never changing. It goes
Speaker 1: straight to where it needs to go, and you didn't
Speaker 1: have to have these loading screens. And Nintendo thought that
Speaker 1: was an advantage. And uh, in the United States, it
Speaker 1: did quite well. In fact, some of the best games,
Speaker 1: some people would argue of all time came out during
Speaker 1: the Nintendo sixty four era. But that controller. I liked
Speaker 1: the controller. I actually enjoyed that controller. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: was the first one to have a thumbstick in Nintendo's history. Uh,
Speaker 1: not the first, not the first one to have a
Speaker 1: thumbstick ever, but the first one for Nintendo before they
Speaker 1: were using the D pad. Yeah. So yeah, that, like
Speaker 1: Gold and I, came out for the Nintendo sixty four
Speaker 1: and that was a big hit. That was a big hit,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the games that people still
Speaker 1: will refer to as one of the best video games
Speaker 1: of all time. Um. Oddly enough, I think it's probably
Speaker 1: arguably more favorite of people, uh than the actual movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's just personal observation, not based on anything other
Speaker 1: than that. So Don't write Me, and and there were
Speaker 1: other games like Mario sixty four really kind of reinvented
Speaker 1: Mario quite a bit. Um. People thought that was pretty innovative.
Speaker 1: I was a huge fan of the wrestling games that
Speaker 1: came out for the Nintendo sixty four. They were very deep,
Speaker 1: They allowed incredible customization. You could create your own wrestler. Um.
Speaker 1: There were phenomenal games, and the Japanese games were even
Speaker 1: more robust than the American ones. I had all the
Speaker 1: American titles because I didn't have the Japanese system. You
Speaker 1: couldn't play Japanese games on an American system unless you
Speaker 1: had an adapter um or in Japanese, you know, or
Speaker 1: you just went ahead and bought a Japanese game system. Right.
Speaker 1: Two systems were not compatible. They were region locked for
Speaker 1: the you know, that's the easiest way of saying it.
Speaker 1: But I loved a lot of the games in the
Speaker 1: in sixty four. In sixty four does well in the
Speaker 1: United States, doesn't do so well in Japan. And two
Speaker 1: thousand one, uh Hit they introduced the Game Boy Advance,
Speaker 1: but they also introduced them into No Game Cue Ube. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there's a five years have passed since the sixty
Speaker 1: four debut nine six and sixty four comes out two
Speaker 1: thousand one. You get the game the GameCube, and this
Speaker 1: is when Nintendo moves to the optical disks, except they
Speaker 1: don't use the big optical disks the same size as
Speaker 1: a CD or DVD. No, these are smaller. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of part of that is a d r
Speaker 1: M thing. But anyway, it was one of those things
Speaker 1: where where people were, oh, so, now Nintendo is getting
Speaker 1: on the the disc train as opposed to cartridge is
Speaker 1: on the train. They did not look back from that
Speaker 1: point forward. Uh, Nope. They had removable storage and uh
Speaker 1: and a very nice game controller. Actually, the GameCube was
Speaker 1: my first Nintendo home console, not counting the game Boy
Speaker 1: because that's a portable and it also had some compatibility
Speaker 1: stuff with game Boy Advance. So you started to see
Speaker 1: some convergence here where you could you could have the
Speaker 1: two systems interact with one another, which I like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of cool. And then in two thousand two, uh,
Speaker 1: Satoru Iwata becomes the first Nintendo CEO who was not
Speaker 1: related to the founder Yamachi um by marriage or by blood,
Speaker 1: so he was the first time was the first time,
Speaker 1: Nintendo had a CEO that was not part of this legacy,
Speaker 1: and he took over at that point. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Nintendo introduced the game Boy Advanced sp which was a
Speaker 1: thinner and lighter version of the game Boy Advance and uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand five and two thousand six, Nintendo starts
Speaker 1: to launch their DS line, which interestingly looked a lot
Speaker 1: like some of the old the old game and watch
Speaker 1: um systems that had the clamshell designed to double screens,
Speaker 1: but in this case they included a touch screen with stylus,
Speaker 1: and so that was kind of a differentiator in the
Speaker 1: home or the handheld market at the time, because remember
Speaker 1: in two thousand five and two thousand six, smartphones and
Speaker 1: not really become a thing in the United States, and
Speaker 1: games for smartphones were pretty much unheard of at that point, yes,
Speaker 1: at least in the US. UM and then the Nintendo
Speaker 1: launches the d S I in April two thousand six,
Speaker 1: and then we have to you know, the WE also
Speaker 1: comes out in that around that time, the WE console,
Speaker 1: which is the current Nintendo console on the market, introduces
Speaker 1: the Wei remote where you've got the motion gaming, and
Speaker 1: Nintendo kind of surprises people by taking aim at the
Speaker 1: casual gaming market. Yeah. See um, if you'll remember, at
Speaker 1: that point, Microsoft had released the Xbox and the Xbox
Speaker 1: three six UM, and Sony and the PlayStation three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they PlayStation two was a huge success. H.
Speaker 1: The Xbox was a huge success, and basically Nintendo was
Speaker 1: taking it on the chin with the GameCube. Although the
Speaker 1: GameCube was sophisticated um, and it had again the the
Speaker 1: uh brilliant licensing maneuvers of Nintendo by keeping Mario and
Speaker 1: the Zelda franchise and some of the others Metroid uh
Speaker 1: alive on the console and locked into the Nintendo console
Speaker 1: the fans of the franchise. Again, Miamoto's thinking that there
Speaker 1: should be a story is playing into Nintendo's success because
Speaker 1: without that storyline and the fans want the storyline, Um,
Speaker 1: Nintendo probably. I think you could argue, um that Nintendo
Speaker 1: may not have survived past that because uh, there was
Speaker 1: an onslaught from Sony and Microsoft and they needed again
Speaker 1: they needed something to differentiate them from the mark and
Speaker 1: from the rest of the market. And the we did that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was when the Week came out, it really
Speaker 1: did make a big splash. I mean, it had huge
Speaker 1: sales figures, and it was leading the video game console
Speaker 1: sales in the United States for for ages. I mean
Speaker 1: for the longest time. It was uh, the question wasn't
Speaker 1: who's in the lead, it was who's in the second place,
Speaker 1: because you knew that Nintendo was in the lead. But
Speaker 1: Nintendo sales have slowed down more recently because we well
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons. The game consoles several years old now,
Speaker 1: and um as are the Xbox in the PlayStation models
Speaker 1: the current models. But Nintendo also has the problem of
Speaker 1: it aimed for casual gamers, and casual gamers don't tend
Speaker 1: to be the kind of people who rush out and
Speaker 1: buy the next new title. Necessarily, they might be satisfied
Speaker 1: with just a few handful of titles because they gain casually,
Speaker 1: They're not that they're not as heavily invested in the
Speaker 1: system as a hardcore gamer is. Yeah, I mean, their
Speaker 1: gamers will replay games even on older consoles. They will
Speaker 1: keep older consoles and older computers around to play classic
Speaker 1: games that they really love. Case in point, the newer
Speaker 1: versions of Golden Eye, long after the movie franchise has
Speaker 1: moved on. Several films um Golden I is sticking around
Speaker 1: on newer consoles, and so you've got with the Nintendo we'
Speaker 1: you've got this issue with saturation again, just like with
Speaker 1: the video the playing cards back in the sixties, you've
Speaker 1: got uh, you know, the argument is just about everyone
Speaker 1: who wants a wee has a wee, and so there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of reason to go out and
Speaker 1: buy more. So of course sales figures are gonna start
Speaker 1: to falter. Plus I'm sorry, go ahead. Plus Microsoft now
Speaker 1: has to connect and Sony has the move, so now
Speaker 1: they're motion control is not as big a deal anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: And so also the smartphone revolution and the gaming on
Speaker 1: smartphones and social networks has taken a big bido Nintendo
Speaker 1: because Nintendo was taking aim at that casual gamer. Well
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and six when the Week comes out,
Speaker 1: the casual gamer wasn't really being catered to that way.
Speaker 1: But today you've got everything from phones to uh to
Speaker 1: uh you know, set top boxes in some cases, to um,
Speaker 1: you know, the social networks that all have these casual
Speaker 1: games that are available. Nintendo has no longer got a
Speaker 1: lock on that. So it's they're actually in a way,
Speaker 1: you could say their competition is way more fierce in
Speaker 1: that area than it would be if they were competing
Speaker 1: against Microsoft and Sony. Well, now I would argue that
Speaker 1: that Nintendo is finding itself at a crossroads. UM. It
Speaker 1: has announced the Wii U, which is the next version
Speaker 1: of the Wi. Um Yukoy had said, as you will
Speaker 1: recall from the last podcast, that Nintendo was the kind
Speaker 1: of company that takes mature technology and utilizes it to
Speaker 1: create new products, which is exactly what they did with
Speaker 1: the WI that enabled them to hit a lower price
Speaker 1: point out of the out of the gate um. And
Speaker 1: people criticize the hardcore gamers who liked the Xbox three sixty,
Speaker 1: who liked the PlayStation three because it had UH full
Speaker 1: on her high definition graphics UH, criticized the we because
Speaker 1: it only had the lower definition. Um, well, it's still
Speaker 1: high deaf, but it's UH DVD resolution, not the ten
Speaker 1: A DP. It was seven UM and or seven or
Speaker 1: seven twenty I away lines of resolution. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not top of the line. Yeah, And the we U
Speaker 1: is aimed at the high def market and it has
Speaker 1: a again, they've reinvented the controller. It has a it's
Speaker 1: a much bigger controller that has additional functionality has its
Speaker 1: own screen UM. But they're also like combining the d
Speaker 1: S I with the UM and some people really like it,
Speaker 1: some people really don't. We'll have to see when it
Speaker 1: actually gets out on the market whether it succeeds or not.
Speaker 1: But the DS is competing with smartphones and other devices,
Speaker 1: and people have pointed out, and rightfully, so, why would
Speaker 1: I pay thirty dollars, which is sort of the price
Speaker 1: point for a new DS game, when I can get
Speaker 1: the same exact game for my smartphone for five dollars,
Speaker 1: And and my smartphone does stuff other than play games.
Speaker 1: So some people say that perhaps Nintendo should get into
Speaker 1: the smartphone business, or perhaps Nintendo should re reevaluate it's
Speaker 1: it's line on not licensing out it's it's prime core
Speaker 1: material to other companies. We should also point out the
Speaker 1: three D S, which launched in is another Nintendo slow starter.
Speaker 1: It has not done nearly as well in the market
Speaker 1: as they had hoped. That, of course, is the d
Speaker 1: S system, the handheld gaming system that has the glasses
Speaker 1: free three D effect, using essentially a variation on a
Speaker 1: lenticular display. If you'd like to see one. Taking apart
Speaker 1: you can see that on our website. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: we bought one specifically for me to demolish, and I did,
Speaker 1: and there was much wailing and nation of teeth. But
Speaker 1: the yeah, the three DS was sort of Nintendo's approach
Speaker 1: to try and combat the smartphone casual gaming market by
Speaker 1: introducing this new element three D, which was not available
Speaker 1: on most other systems. But it just has not taken off.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people who have enjoyed the three
Speaker 1: DS have told me this is anecdotal, but they have
Speaker 1: told me that they've just turned the three D off
Speaker 1: because it's just more of a problem than than Uh.
Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't enhance the gameplay for them. So
Speaker 1: the Xcel, however, has done reasonably well. It's as with
Speaker 1: a larger screen. Yeah, and uh, I we need to
Speaker 1: start wrapping up this, uh this episode. But I did
Speaker 1: want to point out one other thing. We've been talking
Speaker 1: about lots of different people, and I do have a
Speaker 1: kind of a tragic ending for one of the folks
Speaker 1: involved in this story. Um Yakoi, the guy who was
Speaker 1: the designer who came up with the game Boy design.
Speaker 1: He also designed the Virtual Boy, so not everything he
Speaker 1: touched turned to Gold, he decided to leave Nintendo in
Speaker 1: and he went to found his own company, but unfortunately, tragically,
Speaker 1: he died as a result of a car accident in
Speaker 1: he his car rear ended a truck on a highway
Speaker 1: and when he got out to inspect the damage, he
Speaker 1: was struck by another driver and died as a result.
Speaker 1: So that was something I thought I mentioned. It was
Speaker 1: a person who really was instrumental in the design of
Speaker 1: a lot of early Nintendo US and his design elements
Speaker 1: carried over into current generation Nintendo products, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was it was important to remember him. And Uh,
Speaker 1: it's sad, of course, the way, um, the way that
Speaker 1: all turned out, but I thought it was something that
Speaker 1: we should definitely touch on. So it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see what happens to Nintendo in the future. Recently, as
Speaker 1: of eleven, the company has been struggling financially. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: just it's one of those things where the video game
Speaker 1: console market saturation has caused problems. The three DS sales
Speaker 1: have caused problems, but the company has returned from setbacks
Speaker 1: in the past, so we can't we can't just discount
Speaker 1: Nintendo and say that they're out of the game. Like
Speaker 1: they're they're also ran. At this point, there's always the
Speaker 1: chance that they're going to reinvent the home video game
Speaker 1: market yet again. Yeah, and it's it. It's uh. Well,
Speaker 1: just before we recorded this a few days ago, they
Speaker 1: announced that their earnings were going to be less even
Speaker 1: than they had predicted before. UM, which is some mumblings
Speaker 1: of doom and gloom around the industry. But um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they could also end up as saga. Did
Speaker 1: you wonder what the creators of Mario and Link and
Speaker 1: and all those other characters Kirby and so many of
Speaker 1: the others that we love, UM would would do. I mean,
Speaker 1: Sega found as it got out of the video game
Speaker 1: console business that it still could make great video games,
Speaker 1: uh some not so great UM, but still sell them
Speaker 1: to uh markets and reach out through other people's hardware.
Speaker 1: And I think they've been somewhat successful in partnering with
Speaker 1: Nintendo UM to do that. Uh. So it is possible
Speaker 1: that even if Nintendo gets out of the hardware business,
Speaker 1: they could still end up making fantastic games around their
Speaker 1: their wonderful characters. UM. So hopefully, you know, if they
Speaker 1: find a way to UM that they'll find a way
Speaker 1: to continue one way or the other, but they're still
Speaker 1: not They're still not out of it yet. Oh Hi there,
Speaker 1: how are you? I hope you enjoyed that classic episode
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. Next week, I'm going to dive into what
Speaker 1: the company has been up to since two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot to talk about, things that are
Speaker 1: both fun and interesting and exciting and some very tragic
Speaker 1: UH situations as well, And I'm going to cover all
Speaker 1: of that in the next episode where we really dive
Speaker 1: into what Nintendo has been up to and what is
Speaker 1: the future of the company, what does that look like
Speaker 1: and can anyone really predict what's going to happen next?
Speaker 1: So that will be the focus of next week's episode.
Speaker 1: Make sure you joined to hear the exciting conclusion of
Speaker 1: a series that has been five years in the making
Speaker 1: as it turns out. If you have suggestions for future episodes,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a guest host that you think would
Speaker 1: be awesome to have on the mic with me, or
Speaker 1: someone I should interview in the future, please let me know.
Speaker 1: The email address is text stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com or draw me align on Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 1: to handle at both of those. Is text stuff hs
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again. Releases For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
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