WEBVTT - What's the Secret to Nintendo's Success? 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.280 Guess what, Mango, what's up? Well? All right, So I've 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:04.640 had this fact waiting to use it, and I think 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:06.920 today's episode is the right one. So did you know 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:10.560 that Nintendo almost came out with a knitting machine? No? No, 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.480 was that in its earliest days? Are like with we 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.120 not not like in the nineteen eighties when they came 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:18.280 out with the original A ne E S system. You 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:21.079 remember this? Yeah. I found this old trade ad for 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:23.200 it when they were considering launching it. And here's how 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:26.160 it reads. So it says, now you're knitting with power. 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:28.920 It's not a game, not a toy, not something a 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.200 young girl can outgrow in three to six months or 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:35.040 even a year. It actually knit sweaters. That's so weird 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:38.599 and sexist. Yeah, I mean the technology is kind of 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:40.920 forward thinking, I guess. Yeah. I mean you could fashion 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:43.280 your own patterns, yarn it up, and have it knit 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:45.680 for you. I guess I think that's how it works. 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:47.920 And the guy who was asked to demonstrate it for 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:50.480 Toys r Us called it one of his least genuinely 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:55.680 enthusiastic demos and it basically got zero demand. But reading 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:58.440 about the Nintendo knitting machine made me wonder you know, 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.120 how long has Nintendo been a round and how have 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:04.760 they survived for this long and such an incredibly competitive market? 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:08.199 And just how much running and swimming is Mario doing 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:11.039 in Super Mario Brothers. So that's what we're going to 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:34.480 find out. Let's dive in, y hey their podcast listeners, 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:37.000 Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.319 always I'm joined by my good friend man guest Ticketer 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:41.800 and on the other side of the soundproof glass holding 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:46.080 up a paper that says up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:50.040 be a start. Wow, isn't that the Konami code from Nintendo. Yeah, 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:51.800 that's the secret code that gave you all those extra 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.680 lives in contra. That is just how thoughtful he is 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.440 sharing a top secret industry code on the air with 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.000 that's our friend and producer Tristan mc neal. So we're 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:05.080 talking Nintendo. Now. Everybody's familiar with Nintendo and its flagship 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:09.600 characters Mario, Luigi, Zelda. The list goes on. The video 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.400 games are only half of the company's a hundred and 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.840 twenty eight year history, actually less than that. So with 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.600 the holiday season upon us and the new Nintendo Switch 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:21.760 console topping all kinds of hot toy and tech list. 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:23.800 We thought it'd be fun to shed some light on 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:28.080 the lesser known history of the world's most recognizable video GameMaker, 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:31.840 the Nintendo. You don't know, right, And I'll be the 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:34.359 first to admit there's so much I didn't know about Nintendo. 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.080 For example, did you know the company actually when Emmy 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.480 back in two thousand seven, I thought Emmy's were just 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:41.919 TV show, So I had a video game company wind 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.160 up with an Emmy. Yeah. So it was actually awarded 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.239 in recognition of one of Nintendo's most famous tech innovations, 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:50.320 the deep pad or the directional pad. So I'm sure 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.000 you know this, but the deep pad is the plus 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:55.000 sign shaped button that you see on video game controllers nowadays. 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.360 And Nintendo introduced the new output method back in I 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:02.200 think two and it quickly became a standard in the 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:05.000 industry over the old joysticks, like you know, the ones 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:06.520 where you have to use your whole hand to move 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:09.079 the controller around instead of just a free thumb. Yeah, 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.720 I mean that makes sense. The deep had revolutionize gaming, 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:13.840 But that doesn't say how they got an Emmy. How 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:15.880 did they want an Emmy? Well, most video games are 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.480 played on TV, So there's one connection there, but the 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:20.600 real reason is that the deep had got utilized by 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:22.760 most of the remotes in your house, whether for your 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.359 DVD player or streaming device or the TV itself. That's 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.079 pretty crazy, all right. Well, it's clear Nintendo isn't your 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:32.079 typical video game company, and as I was saying earlier, 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:36.440 Nintendo actually predates video games themselves by almost a hundred years. 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:38.600 So I've read a little of this before that. Nintendo 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:41.320 started out as a playing card manufacturer, and this was 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.520 back in nine when a twenty nine year old businessman 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.960 named Fusia Zero Yamachi. He saw the chance to jump 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.320 start this dormant industry. And as you might know, Japan 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:53.480 had cut most of its ties with the Western world 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:56.600 during the seventeenth century. It was like this highly protected 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:00.200 society and the royalty didn't want invading cultures that the 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:04.280 country's values and traditions. But as part of this isolationist stance, 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:07.480 there was this ban on all foreign playing cards, and 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:09.840 this was to curb the rise in the legal gambling, 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:12.640 and when the Japanese devised their own card games in 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.640 the ensuing centuries, those two became used for gambling and 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.560 the government banned those as well. Pretty interesting art. So 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:20.680 it's a bit of a game of kind of whackam ale, 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.240 now right, I mean, games pop up, they get extinguished, 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:25.080 then they pop up somewhere else, and then they get 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.240 extinguished again, exactly. And so this back and forth rise 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:30.200 and fall of Japanese card games goes on for more 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:34.159 than two fifty years, and then in six a new 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.880 game called hanafuda and I'm gonna mispronounce every single Japanese 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.200 word of this, but it's finally permitted by the government. 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.760 And this game loosely translates as flower cards, and they 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:47.640 used flowers and animal pictures instead of numbers, so it 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.320 was a little harder to use for gambling, harder, I'm guessing, 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.520 but but not impossible. Yeah, that's right. So whiley gamblers 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:57.520 still found ways to make money playing hana fuda, and 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.320 I mean, the general public isn't that interested in playing 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:02.520 card games since it's had such a bad rap for 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.039 so long, but this new game did catch on quickly 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.960 among this group of near duells known as the yakuza. Wait, 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.600 so it's just like an organized crime syndicate, is that 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.440 they're the the early customers of Nintendo where they actually 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.680 like Japanese gangster or something sort of. So the term 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:20.480 yakuza actually started as this reference to a losing hand 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.560 in this game that wasn't worth any points. And since 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.920 the game was popular mostly with unsavory types, Yakuza game 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.279 slang for like useless individuals, And we should do a 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.000 whole episode on the Yukuza down the road, But at 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:36.000 this point, these useless individuals are just kind of outcasts 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:38.680 in society. And the wider connection to organized crime that 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.919 comes later, But the moniker itself does have a connection 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:46.120 to Nintendo, and specifically they're Hanafuda cards. All right, Well, 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:48.080 let's talk a little bit about how our man Ya 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:51.640 Manchi rises above this shady designation and and basically it 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:55.039 all comes down to design. The cards of the company 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.560 Nintendo produced included hand painted images, you know, made from 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.680 the bark of mulberry trees, and because they were so 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:06.080 ornate and super high quality and and frankly just eye catching, 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.679 it it actually helped free the cards from that back 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:12.040 alley stigma. And it wasn't long before Nintendo became the 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:15.200 top card game company in all of Japan, absolutely so 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.800 over the years and generations as the government relaxed their rules, 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.840 Nintendo started releasing new types of cards and card games. 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:25.800 But it's only in the nineteen fifties, when Yamuchi's great 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:29.280 grandson took over the reins, that Nintendo started experimenting with 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.080 some oddball ideas. So what did they do. Well, there 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:34.080 are a few smart things, like hiro she signed this 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:36.960 deal to feature Disney characters on the card decks, specifically 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.440 to market them to children and families. But he also 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:42.080 did a few super strange things as well, like he 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.159 dabbled in starting a taxi service and a line of 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.479 instant rice, and for a little while he even invested 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:52.080 in love hotels where businessmen could rent rooms by the hour. 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:57.560 No questions asked, Oh my gosh, card Shark, Gangsters, CD motels. 0:06:57.600 --> 0:06:59.040 I mean, I have to be honest, like this is 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:03.160 not the house mark. Definitely not, definitely not yet. And 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.119 while none of those ventures worked, they all went belly 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.440 up quickly. Hiroshi knew that playing cards and the playing 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.840 card market had reached the saturation, so if Nintendo was 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:15.280 going to survive into the nineteen seventies, they need to 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:18.080 branch out well. And also, by this point they were 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:21.480 already dabbling in at least board games, right, that's right. 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.560 But toy companies like Tomy and Bandai, Like do you 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.680 even remember those? I mean only vaguely? Yeah, me too, 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.600 So it's worth googling Tony and Bandai games from the 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.640 nineteen seventies because the titles and photos are amazing, like 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.840 they've got one called the Hamburger Game, and Run Yourself 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:42.520 Ragged and Nutzi Tennis like honestly are so intricate and plastic, 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:45.960 but they really look fun. But Nintendo needed an inn 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:48.480 and this They needed some sort of new product to 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.880 catch people's attention and helped establish it as like a 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:54.960 place for fun, not just like card and board games. 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:57.200 I love those names, and I was like, what even 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:01.720 is like Nutzi Tennis run Yourself Ragged. Well, this is 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:03.760 the part of the Nintendo story that I really love 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:05.880 because you know, at first, you think, okay, al right, 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.160 here's where video games come in and the company we 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.800 know starts to take shape. But no, you know, instead, 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.120 the company's first fora into the untapped toy market. It's 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:19.200 this wacky extending arm thing called the Ultrahand, and there's 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:23.560 nothing electronic about it. Basically, it's the invention of gun Pay. 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.800 Your kois this low level Nintendo factory workers has got 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.480 a little bit of a background and engineering, and it's 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.840 kind of an innovation on Ben Franklin's long arm grabber 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:34.800 you know, which he invented in his old age that 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.800 would help him get books high off of shelves. Yeah. 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.480 So Ben Franks's version was obviously just this long pole 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:42.960 with the tiny gratty thing at the end of it, right, Yeah, 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:45.840 that's it. But but Gunpay designed a prototype grabber claw 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.680 that that frankly, you'd almost picture kind of like an 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.040 inspector gadgets hands or something like. It expanded out across 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.320 the room with sort of a metal crisscross pattern, but 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:59.040 it collapses to a tiny shape. And when Hiroshi saw it, 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:00.960 he fell in love with the idea and got gun 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:03.640 paid a mass produced a plastic version by the end 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:06.719 of that year, and the thing was dubbed the Ultrahand, 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.280 as I mentioned, And the toy was a massive success 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:12.640 for Nintendo. They sold over a million of them between 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:16.720 nineteen sixty six and nineteen seventy and with that initial success, 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:20.200 Nintendo made the transition to toy manufacturer and and honestly, 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.280 they never looked back after that. So I was just 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:25.240 on my phone and I looked up the box of 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:28.240 the Ultra Hand, and it is amazing. There's like one 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:30.560 version that's a cartoon box and it's got two kids 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.880 happily stealing some sort of money purse from businessman. That's 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.560 good marketing. And there's this other that's like a real 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:38.880 life pick and it's got a boy in the background 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.400 using this ultrahand to like maybe grab something off a 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:45.440 top shelf, while this girl in the foreground seems to be, 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.120 I don't know, passing a tomato across the room to 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:52.600 her dad. It's amazing. Also, why would you get this 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:55.199 for your kid? Like it only encourages like theft and 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.160 missif I mean, but it does look kind of fun. 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.800 Those pictures are ridiculous, though, But thankfully Nintendo brought gun 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:04.640 Pay along for the ride as they developed more and 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.719 he was promoted from this maintenance engineer to the head 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.960 of product development, and that's where he helped create all 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.360 these different unusual toys and and that includes Nintendo's first 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:18.560 feature electronics, and that first one was called the Love Tester. 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.160 So I thought we were past the more questionable bits 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.560 of Nintendo's history. Well, you know, although this was aimed 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.040 at a slightly older crowd, the Love Tester was was 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.120 a whole lot tamer than that was paid by the 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.320 hour hotels you mentioned earlier. That's just so disgusting. It 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.319 was this small device that kind of looked like a 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:38.480 voltmeter with two wires sticking out of it, and there 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:41.280 was this small silver disc at the end of each wire, 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:43.880 and the idea was that a couple would hold hands 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:47.120 while each person held one of the disks, and so 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.040 they had this resulting level of love that would then 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:52.120 be displayed on the screen. And it used the scale 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:56.000 from zero to one hundred. So, I mean, it's clearly 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:59.200 a cute, gimmicky item. But when the love tester actually 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:02.360 test love Mango, you don't believe this really worked. I mean, 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.520 it was most likely the electric conductivity of the couple. 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:07.760 I don't know, like if their palms were sweaty it 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.800 would affect it. But you know, the specifics really didn't 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:13.400 matter that much, at least not to the target customers. 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:15.520 There's this great site I found as we were doing 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.320 our research called before Mario, and it explains that dating 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.559 culture in Japan during the nineteen sixties was actually still 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:26.040 pretty strict. So really any excuse to hold hands and 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.840 strike up conversation was was welcomes interesting. Yeah. Yeah, And 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:32.319 so that's why the Love Tester was such a success. 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:36.160 It was a really smart idea for that time, and 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:38.920 because it made Nintendo so much money, the company continued 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:41.560 to dabble in electronic toys, you know, when video games 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.920 were just starting to make their debut. Sure, so I 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:47.040 mean we're talking about the late seventies here, when our 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.600 kids just started to take off, that's right. But you know, 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:52.960 gun Pays an extraordinary thinker because he actually had his 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.760 sight set on a different market. The one day, while 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:58.400 riding a commuter train to work, he noticed this other 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.000 businessman playing with his cow it later just to kind 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.960 of keep himself busy, I guess, And this gave gun 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:07.080 Pay the idea for a new line of handheld video games. 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:09.640 You know that maybe would use the same LCD screen 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:13.360 and that that display technology that a calculator would use, 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:15.880 except in this case, the graphics would be used to 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.720 create characters and then maybe objects that could be set 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:22.080 against this pre printed background scene. And so you'd have 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:24.520 this built in controller buttons on either side of the 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:26.959 screen that would allow the player to move a character around, 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:30.000 you know, to complete basic task, I guess. And so 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.920 one early model of these Nintendo game and watch systems 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:35.720 had the player controlled this deep sea diver. He just 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:37.559 had to go from one side of the screen to 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:39.920 the other side of the screen and he would claim 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.720 a sunken treasure chest there and in all the while 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.960 he was avoiding the moving tentacles of this grabby octopus. 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.840 How captivating is this? kN I mean, I actually vaguely 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:51.880 remember those games as kids and really wanting one, but 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.520 they were so expensive. And of course that actually brings 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.360 us full circle because it's actually these game in watch 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:00.280 systems where the dpad was used for the first time. Yeah, 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:02.040 that's right, although I just had a memory. Do you 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.680 remember when we took that computer science one oh one 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:06.640 class and we had to make a fish tank where 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:08.640 the fish would just go one side for the other. 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:13.240 We're basically computer signed genius, that's right. But back to 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:15.600 the D pad, you know. It was another little master 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.959 stroke from Gunpay, and he'd run into problems while trying 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:22.280 to adapt Nintendo's successful Donkey Kong arcade game for the 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.880 handheld market. And unlike most handheld games at the time, 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.600 which only had the player moving left to right, Donkey 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.040 Kong was pretty different because it had them moving along 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:34.000 both the X and the Y axis, which we both 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:38.360 understand what that means as computer sciences. Yeah, I mean, 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:40.360 it is funny, like you run along the platforms, but 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:42.200 you also have to climb the ladders and reach the 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.920 top where Donkey Kong's keeping your kidnapped girlfriend. Right, right. 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:48.120 But I went to a pizza place this weekend with 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:50.120 my kids in town here and they had a few 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:52.760 old school n s set up while you're waiting, and 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:55.360 my four year old was actually trying to play Donkey Kong, 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.320 and she had no idea what she was doing, and 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.680 she was really angry. That's this ape was like tossing barrels. 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.360 That's pretty great. All right. Well, here's where I'm going 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:08.920 to hand the baton off to you, because it sounds 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:12.120 like Gunpay was the guy at the forefront of electronic gaming, 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.520 but actually someone else came up with the games like 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:19.240 Donkey Kong and Mario and Zelda. Right, Yeah, that's true. 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.760 So credit for those goes to Shigeru Miyamoto, also known 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.239 as the father of modern video games, like his creativity 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.160 and attention to detail was this massive part of Nintendo 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:32.440 success when it transitioned into home consoles in the eighties. 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:34.960 All right, well, we should definitely talk about what he 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:37.200 brought to the table and how it affected the video 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.240 game industry going forward from there. But before we do that, 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:55.400 why don't we take a quick break. You're listening to 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.120 Part Time Genius and we're talking about how Nintendo made 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:02.080 the transition from playing card manifest Acture to video game icon. 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.200 All right, Mango, So, Shiguero Miamoto is the mastermind behind 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.440 Super Mario Brothers and that whole series and really kind 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.160 of a gaming legend. But how did he wind up 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:15.200 working at Nintendo in the first place? So, I mean, 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:17.720 to be honest, there might have been a little nepotism involved, 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:20.720 because Miamoto's father was able to line up an interview 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:23.000 for him right out of college and he had some 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.200 connections with Nintendo. But once Miamoto had his foot in 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:29.440 the door, the young designer impressed everyone like he had 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:31.760 all these great toy ideas, and he started out as 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:34.520 kind of a staff artist for the company's planning department. 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.640 And this was in and he's still with the company today. 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:42.720 I mean that's forty years since Nintendo hired him, and uh, 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:44.760 he's never worked a single day for any other company. 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.480 It's pretty incredible, is pretty incredible, And obviously he's an 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.240 insane talent, and it will find out why the company 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.480 wanted to keep him. But what kind of stuff was 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:54.280 he working on in those early days. I mean, he 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:57.400 couldn't have come up with Mario right out of the gate, right, well, 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:00.000 I mean yes and no. So in the early nineteen 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.680 eighties and Nintendo tried to expand into the North American 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:05.640 arcade scene. But one of their earliest efforts, which was 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:09.320 this sci fi shooting game called Radar Scope, it failed 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:11.680 to find an audience outside of Japan. So one of 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:15.040 Miamoto's first assignments was to build a new, low cost 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.560 game using the existing tech and this engine of Radar Scope. 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:22.160 And that way the company could you know, rejigger and 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.120 convert the thousands of arcade cabinets they already had into 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:29.040 something fresh. And Miamoto was eager to prove himself, so 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:31.480 under the mentorship of Gunpay, he came up with this 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.800 idea for Donkey Kong Oh and you should explain what 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.600 that has to do with Mario though, right, so nothing 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:39.760 at first. Originally the game was going to be based 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:42.640 on Popeye the Sailor Man, but when the license for 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.800 that property fell through, Miamoto redesigned the game to include 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:49.240 original characters. So the brutish villain of Bluto became this 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:53.200 guerrilla named Donkey Kong, the perpetual damsel in distress Olive 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:56.360 Oil became a woman named Pauline, and Popeye got turned 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:00.160 into this carpenter named Jumpman. And since Jumpman is the 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:03.040 catchiest of names today, he goes by Mario, and so 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.160 it's the same character definitely. So according to the story, 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:09.440 the president of Nintendo America known as the similarity between 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.359 the Italian landlord they had, the one they've been renting 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:16.720 warehouse space from and the mustachio Jumpman, and the Nintendo 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.520 crew nicknamed the character Mario and his Honor, And by 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:21.920 the time the carpenter turned a plumber and was ready 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:24.439 for his breakout roll into his own series, the nickname 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.000 it stuck. That's pretty great and and it actually reminds 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:29.480 me of another story about early Nintendo, or at least 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.520 the video game phase. So apparently Donkey Kong was a 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.000 big hit for the company, pulling in over a hundred 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.119 eighty million dollars in just a year after its release. 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:42.000 Eight million dollars then, I mean, that's a lot of money. 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.080 But with all that success came the attention of Universal Studios, 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:47.040 who now believed that the game was infringing on its 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.880 King Kong copyright, and the studio made some pretty tough demands, 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.280 insisting that Nintendo destroy all unsold copies of the game 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:58.600 in hand over every penny they had made along the way. So, 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:00.720 I mean, I'm guessing Nintendo it didn't go for any 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.359 of that. No, not so much. Instead, they lawyered up 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:05.600 and proved that not only did the game have nothing 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:08.560 to do with the events of the movie, but Universal's 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:12.680 copyright had long since expired. Anything that actually meant King 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.800 Kong was now in the public domain. How crazy is that? 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:18.920 Which we had snapped it up, But that isn't the 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:21.720 craziest part. Actually, it turns out that Universal had allowed 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.040 Tiger Electronics to create this game based on King Kong 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.000 and it was actually kind of a knockoff of Donkey Kong. 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:31.479 So in the end, the court ruled in Nintendo's favor 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:34.560 and Universal was made to pay the company millions in 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:39.639 damn it. That's amazing. Yeah. So, actually, Nintendo's lawyer, John Kirby, 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:41.680 he was given this brand new sail boat as a 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:43.879 thank you gift, and of course he christened it the 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.320 Donkey Kong. But that name may sound familiar, because the 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:50.200 best part is he also got a character named after him, 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:53.160 and that is the character Kirby. Oh, I love that. 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:55.160 I like that. Not only did he get this new boat, 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:57.919 but he also got video game immortality. Yeah, no kidding. 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:00.200 So I'm glad you mentioned knockoff games because is that 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:02.560 speaks to something I don't think a lot of people remember, 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:05.760 and that's that America's video game industry was in really 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:08.359 bad shape in the early eighties. In fact, it was 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.439 almost on the verge of total collapse. So companies like 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:15.000 Colico and Atari, they've made a killing in their early days, 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:17.560 but their lack of foresight left them with no way 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.480 to keep unlicensed games from being designed and released for 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.600 the systems. So as a result, there were tons of cheap, 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:28.080 low quality software and games out there, and frustrated buyers 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:30.760 and and all these parents and kids were disappointed in 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:32.879 the quality of the products well, and that had to 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:35.280 be a huge headache for Nintendo, right. I mean, they 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:39.320 released their first home game console in Japan and nine three, 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:41.919 so of course the next logical step was bringing it 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.200 to the Western market. But then all of a sudden, 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:46.119 the rug gets pulled out from under them and it 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:48.600 starts to look like video games will never make it 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.320 out of the arcade in the US exactly. But the 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:53.919 company couldn't afford to let a whole market fall by 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:56.680 the wayside, so they came up with this new battle plan. 0:19:57.080 --> 0:19:59.919 So first Nintendo developed a lockout chip to prevent company 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.919 from releasing unauthorized games, and then they redesigned the system 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:07.120 itself to avoid any bad connotations that you know, home 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.840 video game systems might have developed among consumers. Wait, but 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:13.520 so how do you make a video game system not 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:16.360 look like a video game system by making it look 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:20.160 more like a VCR? Apparently? Yeah. So, in Japan, Nintendo's 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:23.160 first system was known as the Famicon or Family Computer, 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:25.720 and it loaded from the top, so the games were 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:28.199 inserted vertically, the way you know you'd put it a 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:30.960