Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: head stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as always, is senior writer and
Speaker 1: jumpman Jonathan Strickland. Up left up, right right right down
Speaker 1: left up up. That's actually a lyric. If you can
Speaker 1: figure that one out, then you are a super fan.
Speaker 1: And if you can identify the problem with that lyric,
Speaker 1: you can tell us that too. Yeah. No, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll get plenty of people telling us the problem with
Speaker 1: that lyric if they figure out the source of it. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, So today we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: a company that is fairly well known in tech circles,
Speaker 1: the Nintendo, but did not start out as a tech
Speaker 1: company as many a tech company as especially the ones
Speaker 1: that have lasted as long as Nintendo. Yeah, some of
Speaker 1: the other, you know, video game companies also have their
Speaker 1: origin in something other than video games. I'm I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of Colico, Yeah, the Connecticut leather company. Yeah, Connecticut leather
Speaker 1: company that we've already made the joke about games coming
Speaker 1: out of the Connecticut Leather Company and Tandy also. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Nintendo is also one of those companies that and
Speaker 1: now they have their history in games, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: video games because in eight nine when the company was founded,
Speaker 1: video games didn't exist yet because television resolution was terrible
Speaker 1: as a non existent. Yeah, you had to actually uh stop,
Speaker 1: draw the next picture, all right, and then you know,
Speaker 1: oh and this is what happened next. Hold on, ye,
Speaker 1: it's time for this kind of like Dragon's Layer, but
Speaker 1: it's super slow speeds. Alright, So that's the one Nega hurt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so in order for you guys to understand we
Speaker 1: we really actually have to go back much further than
Speaker 1: even the founding of the company. Um, Chris, um, yes, no,
Speaker 1: I'm getting in that now. You got to man, all right,
Speaker 1: the way back machine is ready to go, going in there.
Speaker 1: I'm right behind you, Chris. Yeah. You know, sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: afraid he's gonna shove me in here and then shut
Speaker 1: the door. Yeah. Well it's bigger on the inside anyway. Alright,
Speaker 1: So let me just set this to U sixteen thirty
Speaker 1: three Japan. There were push the button, Frank, And here
Speaker 1: we are in sixteen thirty three Japan. Uh you say
Speaker 1: so the samurai right over there, that's uh watch out
Speaker 1: for the yakuza. Alright. So in sixte yeah, the Japanese. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: there was a decision may to close the borders of
Speaker 1: Japan to be from away from the outside world. And
Speaker 1: they shoved off and they pushed themselves out in the
Speaker 1: middle of the ocean. I'm kidding. It used to be
Speaker 1: Japan used to be located next to New Jersey. Uh No,
Speaker 1: that's not true, not true at all, imagining thousands of
Speaker 1: people rowing pats. Actually it's just one Godzilla pushing really hard.
Speaker 1: Um No. As it turns out, Japan had made this
Speaker 1: decision to Japanese government made decision to to essentially ostracize
Speaker 1: themselves from everybody else to too. There was very xenophobic
Speaker 1: era in Japan where the Japanese culture, which was very
Speaker 1: much centered on UH concepts that were UH based in
Speaker 1: things like family and honor and tradition. They saw the
Speaker 1: outside world as threats to that, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of contact was cut off from the outside world in
Speaker 1: Japan became inwardly focused. Well, at that time, the government
Speaker 1: banned the uh importation of all foreign playing cards. Part
Speaker 1: of the problem was that there was an issue with
Speaker 1: gambling in Japan that'll come up later too. So because
Speaker 1: of the issue of gambling, the Japanese government decided to
Speaker 1: to ban the the importation and sale of foreign playing cards. Now,
Speaker 1: this actually created a market for domestic playing card companies.
Speaker 1: Um that we're able to within certain parameters produced playing cards.
Speaker 1: Now we've set the scene, all right. For the rest
Speaker 1: of this, we'll just tell it from the present day.
Speaker 1: So let's get back in the way back machine. Come on,
Speaker 1: all right, assuming let me say this to present day,
Speaker 1: which was a late October, all right, and push the
Speaker 1: button rank and back into our cozy studio. Alright, so
Speaker 1: cozy seventeenth century Japan cuts off this these ties to
Speaker 1: the outside world. And then in eighteen fifty nine a
Speaker 1: a fellow by the name of Fusa Gio Yamachi was born.
Speaker 1: And I would like to take this opportunity to apologize
Speaker 1: to any Japanese listeners for the way I will butcher
Speaker 1: names throughout the entirety of this podcast, because it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: I am non Japanese. I've never taken Japanese. Um So,
Speaker 1: if you will just extend me a a little slack,
Speaker 1: uh I would owe you and rigato um So in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, He's born, Machi is born and uh
Speaker 1: and and he would found the company in eighteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: He called it Nintendo Kopai and the company was making
Speaker 1: special playing cards uh out of out of bark actually
Speaker 1: for a game called Hanafuda. Now do you know what
Speaker 1: Nintendo means? What does Nintendo mean? It's it's it's translated
Speaker 1: frequently as leave luck to Heaven, which sort of goes
Speaker 1: along with, you know, playing cards, because you know, and
Speaker 1: you're talking about games, luck would be involved. Sure. And
Speaker 1: Hamafuda means flower cards. And these were cards that, instead
Speaker 1: of having numbers on them, which is what the gamblers
Speaker 1: were using, um had flowers on them, pictures of flowers
Speaker 1: hand painted actually when they first came out, and they
Speaker 1: became really really popular and uh and the company saw
Speaker 1: a lot of early success. Uh And In eighteen eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, the same year that Nintendo was founded, uh
Speaker 1: the Japanese government began to relax some of the restrictions
Speaker 1: that they had placed around the whole industry of playing
Speaker 1: cards in the first place, so it was perfectly positioned,
Speaker 1: and so Nintendo Capie began to UH to expand very
Speaker 1: quickly because everyone thought that the artwork on the cards
Speaker 1: was really beautiful and so they were desirable to have.
Speaker 1: And then the restrictions at the same time, we're started
Speaker 1: to slack a bit. Uh the company saw a lot
Speaker 1: of early success, and that was really what it focused on,
Speaker 1: was producing playing cards. Now, in nineteen twenty nine, Fusagiro
Speaker 1: retired and he handed over the control of his company
Speaker 1: to his son in law, Uh SAKIROA and Uh, who
Speaker 1: then took the family name, the Yamauchi family name. And
Speaker 1: in fact, all Nintendo CEOs with the exception of the
Speaker 1: current one, were related to UH Fusagro in some way,
Speaker 1: either by actual blood or by marriage. Um really by
Speaker 1: marriage when you get down to it. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, that's when the company changed its name to
Speaker 1: Yamauchi Nintendo and Company. So they dropped the KAPI at
Speaker 1: that point and they created a a second company, a
Speaker 1: card game distributor company called Marofuku Company Limited, and both
Speaker 1: of those companies at that time saw great success. So
Speaker 1: again Nintendo is already doing really really well. Uh, and
Speaker 1: of course video games are not anywhere near the picture
Speaker 1: at this point. Yeah. So in nineteen nine, Securio suffered
Speaker 1: a stroke and he was no longer able to control
Speaker 1: the company, and so he handed over the company to
Speaker 1: his grandson, Hiroshi. Now this caused a lot of concern
Speaker 1: within Nintendo because Hiroshi was very young. He was twenty
Speaker 1: one at the time when he was given the company,
Speaker 1: and he was a law school student. He wasn't a
Speaker 1: business student, so he was starting to become a lawyer.
Speaker 1: He dropped out of college, out of law school in
Speaker 1: order to to take over this company, and some of
Speaker 1: the the employees of Nintendo really objected to him becoming
Speaker 1: the new head of the company, so much so that
Speaker 1: there was actually a factory strike m m. He. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, he uh, he went down in
Speaker 1: history for uh firing a lot of those employees. That
Speaker 1: was not a popular move within the company. Yeah, Hiroshi was.
Speaker 1: He kind of showed everyone who was boss. He took
Speaker 1: He introduced at corporate culture. He had the Darth Vader
Speaker 1: method of of management, and that if you if you
Speaker 1: thought that he was his decisions were not good ones,
Speaker 1: then he didn't want you working for him anymore. Yeah. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: uh I. Part of my research was done from a
Speaker 1: book called All Your Base or Belonged to Us UM
Speaker 1: by Harold Goldberg. He has a chapter on It's a
Speaker 1: it's a history of video games, but he has a
Speaker 1: chapter on Nintendo, which is which is pretty fascinating. And
Speaker 1: they said that that he was a really serious guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they you know, watching him crack a smile,
Speaker 1: you'd have to wait because he didn't do it very frequently.
Speaker 1: Was a very very no nonsense sort of fellow, but
Speaker 1: very business like, exactly kind of like the cliche idea
Speaker 1: we have of the Japanese businessman, you know, very formal
Speaker 1: and very serious. Um. And he also instituted a policy
Speaker 1: that would become something that sort of resonates throughout Nintendo
Speaker 1: for years to come, which was that he demanded that
Speaker 1: all products that Nintendo was going to produce be cleared
Speaker 1: through him personally before the company would move on it.
Speaker 1: So you think about that, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: CEO of a company. Now most companies, the CEO is
Speaker 1: directing the company, you know, since he's got a hands
Speaker 1: on involvement with the company. But you don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: every single product cleared through your CEO and every company.
Speaker 1: There are a few companies that, did you know, Apple
Speaker 1: being another famous company. Yeah, so Apple is another famous
Speaker 1: company where that where the CEO had a real hands
Speaker 1: on approach. Well, Hiroshi felt the same way, and and
Speaker 1: this is a strategy that would pay off for Nintendo
Speaker 1: further down the line. Not necessarily that the CEO had
Speaker 1: to clear everything before it went through, but Nintendo decided
Speaker 1: having this real focus on product quality that would become
Speaker 1: very important when Nintendo would enter the video game market. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: company diversified quite a bit. Yeah, well yeah, well, first
Speaker 1: of all, ninety three they started to produce plastic playing cards,
Speaker 1: which was that was the first big move as far
Speaker 1: as technologically speaking goes, because but up to that point
Speaker 1: they were using paper or would cards. So in this
Speaker 1: case they're they're moving to plastic cards, and they even
Speaker 1: started to practice with some other stuff. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: they had they signed a big licensing agreement with another
Speaker 1: huge company. Do you know which company I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: Was it the on with the mouse with the big ears? Yes,
Speaker 1: it was Disney. So in ninety nine they become uh,
Speaker 1: Nintendo and Disney form a partnership through licenses that allowed
Speaker 1: a Nintendo to print playing cards with Disney characters on it,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if you know this, if you're not,
Speaker 1: if you've never been to Japan and you don't know
Speaker 1: a lot about Japanese culture, you may not be aware
Speaker 1: of this. But Disney was enormous in Japan, still is.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was one of those things that
Speaker 1: really resonated with the Japanese people, and so these cards
Speaker 1: were insanely popular. Um, and then they did try to
Speaker 1: diversify because the playing card business, even at that point,
Speaker 1: Nintendo could see that that the business was starting to
Speaker 1: slow down, and so they started looking into other ways
Speaker 1: of making money. Now, you did you have a couple
Speaker 1: that you wanted to particularly mention Um, there's one I'm
Speaker 1: sort of debating mentioning was the hotel. Yes it was
Speaker 1: the hotel. It's a very special kind of hotel. Yes,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a regular hotel. It was a hotel
Speaker 1: that didn't have windows. Well, of course not it's a Nintendo.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, never mind, all right, No, so while we're
Speaker 1: dancing around here, is that and is this was gonna
Speaker 1: be something that's shocking to people who think of Nintendo
Speaker 1: as this family friendly sort of video game company. Um,
Speaker 1: it was a hotel that didn't have windows. It was
Speaker 1: meant for people who wanted a discreet place to whisk
Speaker 1: away to and have a romantic interlude. Yes see, that's
Speaker 1: that was very that was that was way of putting it.
Speaker 1: And they had a taxi company, yeah, yeah, which they
Speaker 1: it did have windows because it turned out that if
Speaker 1: you had a taxi with no windows, it was very
Speaker 1: dangerous to drive on the road. Yes, so anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: so they Nintendo, by the way, was not the only
Speaker 1: company that tried this whole hotel, this love nest hotel thing. Um,
Speaker 1: there were many other companies that tried it as well.
Speaker 1: So Nintendo tried that and the taxi service, as well
Speaker 1: as producing foods essentially foods that you would buy at
Speaker 1: a supermarket. But none of these lines of business really
Speaker 1: panned out, and these were all failures for Nintendo, and
Speaker 1: Hiroshi had sort of a black eye for kind of
Speaker 1: pushing the company into these areas. But as it turns out, um,
Speaker 1: it was important for for the company to try and
Speaker 1: diversify because in nineteen sixty four, the the game card
Speaker 1: industry in Japan crashed. Just like you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: about the three video game question. We'll talk about it
Speaker 1: again in a in a little bit, but we've talked
Speaker 1: about that in the past. The same sort of thing
Speaker 1: happened in Japan with playing cards, and oddly enough, it
Speaker 1: was for the same reasons are largely the same reasons,
Speaker 1: and one of the big reasons was saturation. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you got to a point where these cards were really
Speaker 1: really popular for a really long time, so everyone owned them.
Speaker 1: But if everyone owns them, why would you go out
Speaker 1: buy another one. You've already got them. You don't need anymore.
Speaker 1: So because of that, the whole industry started to suffer
Speaker 1: because you know, no one needed to buy more cards. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was right around the same time that Tokyo
Speaker 1: was hosting the Olympics. So it was weird because you
Speaker 1: had this huge influx of money coming into the country,
Speaker 1: but you also had this industry failed, this this historically
Speaker 1: relevant industry failing. Yes, at the same time, but not
Speaker 1: to know, manages to skirt the shoals of bankruptcy. Uh
Speaker 1: to quote money python. Um, well, they got into toys
Speaker 1: for a while too. Yeah, Well, in nineteen five they
Speaker 1: hired a guy named gun pay Ya Koi, and gun
Speaker 1: pay was a fellow who was very inventive. Um. He
Speaker 1: worked in one of the playing card factories, and there
Speaker 1: he happened to be working there on a day when
Speaker 1: Hiroshi came through and Hiroshi sees gun pay playing around
Speaker 1: with something that he had invented that was essentially do
Speaker 1: you remember those in in cartoons that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: There's a character that picks up a a boxing glove
Speaker 1: that's on like an accordion hand, uh, accordion sort of
Speaker 1: lattice thing. Then if you pull a trigger, it extends
Speaker 1: out and punches someone who's twenty feet away. So one
Speaker 1: of those at home, that's well, that's essentially what gun
Speaker 1: pay had invented. He had invented this thing that was
Speaker 1: a claw on the end of one of those so
Speaker 1: you would, uh, you know, you pull these two levers
Speaker 1: together and it would extend out this accordion arm, and
Speaker 1: at the end of the accordian arm was a claw.
Speaker 1: And the very last action is that claw would close,
Speaker 1: so it allows you to pick stuff up that was
Speaker 1: slightly inconvenient for you to get up and pick up
Speaker 1: yourself and um and Hiroshi came to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: perhaps what Nintendo could do is diversify and get into
Speaker 1: the toy business. Yes, and that that invention should be
Speaker 1: came the ultra hand m that's uh, you know, very
Speaker 1: typical and in my head Japanese name for something like that,
Speaker 1: I'm probably thinking of ultraman at that point, so UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it actually came with uh with some plastic
Speaker 1: balls that you could pick up um. You know, well
Speaker 1: anything like that you got to include the thing to
Speaker 1: pick up. So they did that for a little while.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the only thing they didn't. They didn't really,
Speaker 1: from my research, get into toys wholesale, like where you know, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what we're gonna do in the future. It
Speaker 1: was more like a um, a trial thing that they
Speaker 1: sort of experimented with for a little bit. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there were other I mean, there were several examples of
Speaker 1: toys that they got into, UM, some of which gave
Speaker 1: a hint at what they would be doing in the future.
Speaker 1: Like they had a love tester, yes, the old the
Speaker 1: old love testers, which you know, just sort of measure
Speaker 1: the um the your compatibility with another person you hold
Speaker 1: a little handle and it tells you how red hot, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: or or a cold fish I remember cold Fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: used to have those stuckies. Stuckies. Oh man, that's taking
Speaker 1: me back to a comedy album anyway. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: the Yeah, I was just looking at looking it up,
Speaker 1: and it's a little slower to do this in uh,
Speaker 1: in a non electronic format. But Goldberg the Dead Tree.
Speaker 1: I actually had the Dead Tree edition. Whine checked it
Speaker 1: out from the library. Um. Apparently they sold about one
Speaker 1: point two million Ultra hands. So and the The Love
Speaker 1: Tester came out in nine nine, but both of them
Speaker 1: we're going with UH with the company's philosophy of because
Speaker 1: YOKOI apparently said, and this is a quote, the Nintendo
Speaker 1: way of adapting technology is not to look for the
Speaker 1: state of the art, but to utilize um, mature technology
Speaker 1: that can be mass produced cheaply. Yeah. I feel like
Speaker 1: this is going to come up again. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a very it was a very responsible way
Speaker 1: of doing things because it enabled them to put something
Speaker 1: together using existing technology, no R and D. But at
Speaker 1: the same time it's sold very well, So that's that's
Speaker 1: a good way to make money. Yeah, in fact, the
Speaker 1: toys really turned Nintendo around. Without without that that serendipitous
Speaker 1: uh discovery where Hiroshi saw Yakoi's work, Really the company
Speaker 1: may not have survived because that the playing card industry
Speaker 1: was in such such a such dire straits, and uh,
Speaker 1: the other attempts of Nintendo to diversify had failed pretty
Speaker 1: dramatically that without that, it may not have been able
Speaker 1: to stay afloat long enough to get into the video
Speaker 1: game era. But moving ahead a couple of years, in
Speaker 1: nineteen three, Nintendo developed a technology called the Laser Clay
Speaker 1: Shooting System, which was clay shooting system. It was it
Speaker 1: was a light gun game. Okay, because I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what laser clay was, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it was a skeet shooting system. The skeet shooting game.
Speaker 1: Like if you've ever been to one of those giant
Speaker 1: arcades that has like the rifle that's really a light gun,
Speaker 1: and then you're firing at the image of a of
Speaker 1: a clay pigeon. Duck hunt. Yeah, yeah, like duck Hunt
Speaker 1: eventually would become, but in this case, it was stuff
Speaker 1: that was projected on the wall. It wasn't necessarily it
Speaker 1: wasn't like a screen screen. Um, they installed these and
Speaker 1: old bowling alleys that had gone out of business. So
Speaker 1: this was kind of creating an entertainment destination. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: There's still a little too early for the arcade era.
Speaker 1: We're talking nineteen seventy three here. In the arcade era
Speaker 1: really started to take off in the late seventies. It
Speaker 1: was heading into that period though. Yeah, that's when you
Speaker 1: started seeing them pop up. And of course in Japan
Speaker 1: arcades are still incredibly popular. In in the United States,
Speaker 1: they are a rare breed. Uh So. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: Nintendo formed a partnership and arranged to become the distributor
Speaker 1: in Japan of the Magna Vox Odyssey. I yes, I
Speaker 1: remember it well unfortunately. Yeah, so the Honesty was a
Speaker 1: a home video game console, very limited. We talked about
Speaker 1: it on our home video Games podcast, The Crash of
Speaker 1: the Video Game. Yeah, so this is one of the
Speaker 1: the first actually it was the first video game home
Speaker 1: video game console that really reached wide distribution, and so
Speaker 1: Nintendo became the the Japanese distributor for this. Now, Nintendo
Speaker 1: did not develop the Odyssey, but they the company saw
Speaker 1: the the potential for that in Japan and actually it
Speaker 1: did very well. And then in uh moving up, over
Speaker 1: the next few years, Nintendo started to market its own
Speaker 1: game consoles. The game and Watch oh that was one
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, the game that was the first portable
Speaker 1: system that was back that that I officially launched the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty but just before that, in the seventies, Nintendo
Speaker 1: had some game consoles that were similar to the Odyssey,
Speaker 1: and that they were not. It wasn't the kind of
Speaker 1: game console where you would put a cartridge in and
Speaker 1: play a game. It was had had games hardwired onto
Speaker 1: the console, so you couldn't switch between games or you could,
Speaker 1: you know, if there were like multiple games on that console,
Speaker 1: you could, but you couldn't put a new game into it. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and and that really endeared Nintendo to Magnavox. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and by endeared, I mean completely ticked off and inspired lawsuits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because again Nintendo had become the distributor of this device
Speaker 1: and then starts to come out with its own competing products,
Speaker 1: and Magnavox says, hey, but Nintendo didn't stump Nintendo. They
Speaker 1: had lost the lawsuit and had to pay licensing, but
Speaker 1: they they put out their own version of games like
Speaker 1: ponged uh and this is also yeah Pong and you
Speaker 1: know in in nineteen seven, that's also when Nintendo hired
Speaker 1: a certain young artist who would become instrumental in the
Speaker 1: company's success, Shighetto Miyamoto. Yes, a famous name in video games.
Speaker 1: If you do not know who Miyamoto San is, then
Speaker 1: you are not a not a Nintendo fan. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's safe to say that if if there is
Speaker 1: a polar opposite to the company's CEO, Miyamoto San would
Speaker 1: have been that guy. Miyamoto is like a rock star,
Speaker 1: and he really is treated like a rock star. Well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't at first thing. When he was first hired,
Speaker 1: he was just an artist, a no name artist. And
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, he uh he got the
Speaker 1: job because of his parents connections. Um yeah, this again
Speaker 1: is according to uh Goldberg's book. But apparently, um, he
Speaker 1: he had his uh he he wanted to be a
Speaker 1: manga artist. Um, and his parents happened to know. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, when your parents know the CEO of a company, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know there they they may very well try to
Speaker 1: get you a job, which is what happened in this case.
Speaker 1: And Uh, it wasn't. It wasn't like it was a
Speaker 1: high level job. Now he was a basic artist for
Speaker 1: this company. Yeah, basically. Uh. During the interview process, you
Speaker 1: Mantu was asking him questions like why should I hire you?
Speaker 1: Um and and and told him, you know, if I
Speaker 1: hire you, it won't be because I know your parents,
Speaker 1: It'll be because you're good enough to work here. Uh
Speaker 1: here Again, he's a no, no nonsense kind of guy.
Speaker 1: He's a real business person. Um. But he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: okay fine, uh and hired him after about a month
Speaker 1: of waiting, and uh came on as a just as
Speaker 1: a uh card artist. He actually asked him if he
Speaker 1: he had an idea for a revolutionary card game. We're
Speaker 1: looking for something that's gonna revolutionize the card game industry.
Speaker 1: What do you got? You got the next Pokemon? Well
Speaker 1: not yet, but at the time he was really looking
Speaker 1: for something big. He said, well, okay, fine, you can
Speaker 1: work as an artist, and that's what he did for
Speaker 1: a couple of years. And and Miamoto is the guy
Speaker 1: who would eventually launch some of Nintendo's most popular series,
Speaker 1: including the Mario series UH and the legend of Zelda,
Speaker 1: Star Fox. Lots of those, not all of them. Do
Speaker 1: a barrel roll. Uh, there's yeah, a lot of the
Speaker 1: games that became the big, big sellers and still the
Speaker 1: big names. I mean, you know Nintendo and Mario. That's
Speaker 1: that's Mario is like the Nintendo mascot. So Miamoto is
Speaker 1: the man who responsible for the creation of that character.
Speaker 1: And in fact, like I said, now, when he appears
Speaker 1: at UM at conferences and stuff, he's treated like like
Speaker 1: rock star, like they're standing ovations when he comes up
Speaker 1: on stage, which is a pretty phenomenal. So so the
Speaker 1: question is, how does a guy from the mail room,
Speaker 1: not literally, how does a guy from the mail room
Speaker 1: end up being the rock star of the company. Please explain, Well,
Speaker 1: we've got the book. Well yeah, that's but because um
Speaker 1: they had started trying to get into the arcade game business. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: they're one of their earliest. In fact, their very first
Speaker 1: arcade game was the sexily titled computer Othello, which never
Speaker 1: got outside of Japan. Um I was produced in nine
Speaker 1: But we know that love those games and saying not
Speaker 1: not not terribly exciting. Uh, And like Chris was saying,
Speaker 1: the game and watch portable games came out and those
Speaker 1: were pretty popular. Yeah, those were games that, like the
Speaker 1: video game consoles we were talking about, those played a
Speaker 1: specific game. It's not like a game system where you
Speaker 1: could play multiple games. But some of them, some of
Speaker 1: the game and watched actually looked like the later Nintendo
Speaker 1: DS system. So it's interesting because if you look at
Speaker 1: some of those old game and watch games, you can
Speaker 1: see where the design elements that would later come into
Speaker 1: the Nintendo d S would come into play. And Yakoi,
Speaker 1: uh Gonna pay Yukoi was the guy who was responsible
Speaker 1: for those the line of games, so he his influence
Speaker 1: lasted far beyond just the game and Watch series and um,
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about him in a in a later podcast.
Speaker 1: This is actually gonna be a two parter, by the way,
Speaker 1: because we're coming up on twenty seven minutes and we
Speaker 1: still haven't even introduced the first true video game console.
Speaker 1: But don't worry, we're gonna cover all of Nintendo. We
Speaker 1: just we knew from the start it was gonna be
Speaker 1: a two parter um. So now that they've introduced the
Speaker 1: computer Othello, they've decided that they want to get into
Speaker 1: this the arcade atmosphere is really exploding. Worldwide arcades are
Speaker 1: just that's the place to be. So in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: Nintendo develops a video game that would become one of
Speaker 1: the most popular video games out there. It's right up
Speaker 1: there with Space Invaders and Pac Man. Yes, but the
Speaker 1: problem was in eight and then this if they're linked
Speaker 1: haha linked? Um, Sorry, it was a Nintendo Joe Zelda choke. Um.
Speaker 1: They came out with a game in nineteen eighty that
Speaker 1: was just the opposite of a hit. It was called
Speaker 1: Radar Scope and it did really, really badly. So if
Speaker 1: you don't know about it, there's a reason. Um. And
Speaker 1: the thing is, um Yamachi knew that Miamoto had good ideas.
Speaker 1: He could see that you know well, I mean, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have hired him if he didn't think he was.
Speaker 1: He had promise. Um, he was good at identifying talent
Speaker 1: and bringing it into the company. Um, you could argue.
Speaker 1: And the thing is he came up to, uh, to
Speaker 1: Miamoto and said, what do you do you like video games?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, yeah, you know I've I've played
Speaker 1: Breakout and I've played Ponged and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: like him just fine. He's like, we'll do something with this,
Speaker 1: because they had all this this hardware and these cabinets
Speaker 1: that they had built for Radar Scope, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to do something else. And he said one of the
Speaker 1: problems was, and again this is gonna come up again.
Speaker 1: Miamoto said, there's no story here. The game needs a story.
Speaker 1: He wanted it to tell a story. See, he was
Speaker 1: fascinated with stories and it still is, and with nature
Speaker 1: and animals and plants and things, and he said, this
Speaker 1: is this is something that will help. So um. The
Speaker 1: game that Jonathan was talking about, the one that came
Speaker 1: out in was built on the failure of Radar Scope.
Speaker 1: And they said, okay, well we've got this hardware, let's
Speaker 1: what can we do with this? And most of the
Speaker 1: people in Nintendo didn't like what Miamoto sign came up with, yeah,
Speaker 1: which was of course the classic arcade game Donkey Kong,
Speaker 1: oh man, and uh yeah, how many quarters? I don't
Speaker 1: you know how much of my parents money I squandered.
Speaker 1: Our Donkey Kong probably have bought a house. Uh I
Speaker 1: probably did buy a house just for someone else. But
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong, of course, was that the story is that
Speaker 1: our hero jump Man as he was known at the time.
Speaker 1: Actually he was Mr Video to Mr Miamoto. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: he would eventually become Mario. But right now, at the
Speaker 1: time Donkey Kong came out, he was jumped Man. A
Speaker 1: matter of fact, it was in the Ends instructions. He
Speaker 1: was the hero who was rescuing his girlfriend. Do you
Speaker 1: know the girlfriend's name. It wasn't Princess Peach at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean she's known that way now. Pauline Pauline he
Speaker 1: had to rescue from from Donkey Kong, who was, of
Speaker 1: course a giant ape gorilla my dreams, Donkey Kong essentially
Speaker 1: means stubborn gorilla. Yeah that the name still doesn't make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. So of course to take off
Speaker 1: a film studio, yeah, nothing like taking off King Kong anyway.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Donkey Kong, you all you Your job was
Speaker 1: to try and rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong, and Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong would try and stop you by throwing barrels at you.
Speaker 1: And it's a very simple story. Climbed to the top
Speaker 1: to rescue the girl and as soon as you get
Speaker 1: to the top, he the the gorilla, gets angry, grabs
Speaker 1: her and takes off for the next floor. So you're
Speaker 1: gradually climbing up the uh construction of a giant building. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and which the construction takes different forms too, depending on
Speaker 1: the level. Yes, and considering you take down part of
Speaker 1: the construction, it's amazing that he could still climb up
Speaker 1: and get into that ruining the magic. Also also weird
Speaker 1: that parts of the upper part of the building are
Speaker 1: more complete than the lower parts. But that messing with it.
Speaker 1: This isn't This isn't about shoddy construction practices. This is
Speaker 1: about it was a brilliant construction practice on the part
Speaker 1: of Nintendo. Now, they said, a lot of the Nintendo people,
Speaker 1: we're thinking that this would never sell the idea. This
Speaker 1: is just too weird, especially for people in America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how wrong they were. Donkey Kong was an enormous hit everywhere,
Speaker 1: so much so that Nintendo immediately saw the potential once
Speaker 1: the figure started coming in, and they then went on
Speaker 1: to develop Donkey Kong Junior, which came out in so
Speaker 1: just a year later. How much money that I spent
Speaker 1: on that game? Ye, this one. You're playing Junior and
Speaker 1: your your job is to rescue Donkey Kong at this point,
Speaker 1: Mario has captured Donkey Kong and had in a cage.
Speaker 1: Mario is Mario at this point, yes he is, and
Speaker 1: so you have to rescue Donkey Kong from Mario. And
Speaker 1: then three they introduced Donkey Kong three, which had the
Speaker 1: other protagonist, Stanley the bug man oh and how much Money?
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I don't think I ever saw one of those. Man.
Speaker 1: I love Donkey Kong three. I love Donkey Kong three
Speaker 1: because it was a lot like Galaga. You know, instead
Speaker 1: of shooting uh in shooting, instead of shooting spaceships, you
Speaker 1: shot bugs that were coming down to steal flowers. And
Speaker 1: at the same time you had to manage how low
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong was getting on these this pair of vines,
Speaker 1: as Donkey Kong would gradually scoot lower and lower on
Speaker 1: the vines, and your job was to spray Donkey Kong
Speaker 1: frequently enough to push them up to the next level.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile you're also trying to fend off the bugs
Speaker 1: they're trying to steal your flowers. And I loved this game.
Speaker 1: I don't think I even saw it on Starcade. And yes,
Speaker 1: I used to watch that. I was really good at it. Well,
Speaker 1: right around nine eight three is when Nintendo's looking into
Speaker 1: getting into another related market, which is the home video
Speaker 1: game system market. Not just not just a console they
Speaker 1: can play a game, or two games or six games,
Speaker 1: but one that can play and uh indefinite number of
Speaker 1: games because you can interchange cartridges with the system. Again,
Speaker 1: we covered this in another podcast, but this was popular
Speaker 1: at this point. Atari was going gangbusters. They had competition
Speaker 1: from um, uh, from Mattel. They had competition from Colico,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Collico's launch of the Colico Vision game
Speaker 1: console came with Donkey Kong. Yeah. Um, they had licensed
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong to the other game manufacturers. I'm oversimplifying for
Speaker 1: the sake of hurrying this up, um, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was a hit for them. They they were
Speaker 1: realizing that this was possible and hey, maybe we could
Speaker 1: make money on the consoles ourselves. Yep. So that's when
Speaker 1: Nintendo decided to try and get into the video game market. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was funny because just as Nintendo was positioning itself
Speaker 1: to enter the video game market, the video game was
Speaker 1: market was starting to crash. But you know what, Originally
Speaker 1: I thought that we would get through a Nintendo in
Speaker 1: tainment system and then pick up from there. But I
Speaker 1: think this is a good place to stop for our
Speaker 1: first episode, and what we'll do is in the History
Speaker 1: of Nintendo Part two, we will pick up with the
Speaker 1: debut of the Famicon, also known as the Nintendo Entertainment System,
Speaker 1: and walk through Nintendo's history with home video games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've we've seen though the seeds have been sown.
Speaker 1: People who who made a Nintendo and in the name
Speaker 1: that we all know today are with the company. They've realized,
Speaker 1: um that a story can propel a video game to
Speaker 1: to stardom, and they've identified their company mascot yep. So
Speaker 1: when we pick up, we will start in Uh, well,
Speaker 1: I think July fifte is just as good a day
Speaker 1: as any, So we'll pick up and we'll explain the
Speaker 1: significance of that. Yes, so guys, be sure to tune
Speaker 1: into Part two, which we will be recording almost immediately
Speaker 1: after we've finished this, and we will complete the story
Speaker 1: of the history of Nintendo and bring it up to
Speaker 1: to present day and kind of explain where the company
Speaker 1: is right now, which is a position that it was
Speaker 1: in not you know, more than a little bit more
Speaker 1: than fifty years ago. Uh, they're they're back there again
Speaker 1: in some troubled times, but we'll get to that in
Speaker 1: the next episode. And if you guys have suggestions for
Speaker 1: our specific topics you would like us to tackle, including
Speaker 1: companies that you think we should profile. Let us been
Speaker 1: a popular series, Yeah, we've had. We've had quite a
Speaker 1: few people, right and we know the HPS on our list, um,
Speaker 1: and we've got several other companies on our list as well.
Speaker 1: So if you have a specific company you think we
Speaker 1: should focus on, let us no, you can let us
Speaker 1: know an email. Our addresses tech Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com or tell us on Twitter or Facebook
Speaker 1: are handled. There is tech stuff hs W and Chris
Speaker 1: and I will taught to you again really soon. Be
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