(even as a villain) was a no-no.
There was a push to make a lot of games for Yamauchi’s new game console. Nintendo was excellent at nemawashi , a Japanese gardening term for digging around the roots of a to-be-transplanted tree. Nemawashi referred to the business necessity of quietly laying the correct groundwork of success. For Nintendo, nemawashi demanded that a game console have many games ready for release, and many more in the pipeline. Otherwise, it’d be as deserved a failure as all the American consoles that rushed to market without any quality in their product. And they had to be a different breed of game, not necessarily engineered like arcade games to end quickly.
As soon as Devil World was finished, Miyamoto received a promotion. He had been working with his mentor, Gunpei Yokoi, who was on the Game & Watch development team and also pitched in overseeing the Donkey Kong franchise. But Yamauchi wanted to keep Yokoi working on Game & Watch: it was Yokoi’s idea, and each new game added to Nintendo’s coffers. Yamauchi decided his company’s new golden boy, shaggy Shiggy Miyamoto, was management material. Miyamoto supposed that Yamauchi saw in him a surrogate son—or grandson.
Miyamoto officially stepped back into a producer’s role with his new position. He hadn’t trained as a software designer: it wasn’t where his skills lay. He knew enough to be able to explain what he wanted, how he wanted it, and how it could be done. Like Mario, just because he was good at a job didn’t mean there wasn’t a better fit for him somewhere else. Yokoi’s management style was encouragement: he told future Metroid designer Yoshi Sakamoto, “If you can draw pixel art, you can make a game.” Miyamoto continued the style of choosing carrots over sticks with his crew. (His leadership turned out to be better than his organizational skills: he needed an assistant just to keep track of things.) A new designer named Kazuaki Morita served as Miyamoto’s protégé. Which put the thirty-something Miyamoto in the role of mentor.
Their first challenge was Ice Climber , which seemed like a polarthemed Mario Bros. Except that as Popo and Nana, the cute titular Eskimo kids, advanced to the top of the screen, it panned up with them. The “level” was about five screens high! Scrolling upward also allowed the cut-off lower screen to become a deadly obstacle if the climbers fell below it. Miyamoto also supervised a horizontally panning game called Excitebike , whose controls used one of motocross’s elements, overheating, as the game’s crutch. (Miyamoto bicycled to work instead of driving a car, so he had an interest in things two wheeled.) Both buttons sped up the bike: the A button was regular speed and the B button was a sizzling form of turbo power. Use it too much and the bike cooks. Use it too little, and get lapped.
The Famicon was released in Japan on July 13, 1983. Two controllers were hardwired into the white and maroon system, with vertical holding slots built into the console to store them when not in use. Player one had a start and select button, with the power cord sticking out from the left. Player two, with the power cord to the right, had an internal microphone instead. The Famicon accepted sixty-pin game cartridges from a top-down slot, and could be expanded to accept certain discs and allow modem support. (Yes: modem support in 1983. America Online started in 1983 as well, as Gameline, a service offering modem support for the Atari 2600.)
The Famicon launched with three games, all ports of Nintendo’s arcade hits: Donkey Kong , Donkey Kong Jr. , and Popeye . A dozen more games were in the works. This wasn’t a mere arcade game, rigged to play just one game, or a rinky-dink piece of LCD electronics. This was a full-fledged computer! Yamauchi didn’t get his wish of a price under ¥10,000, but the retail price of ¥14,800 was still on the low side for a console, and helped it gain market
There was a push to make a lot of games for Yamauchi’s new game console. Nintendo was excellent at nemawashi , a Japanese gardening term for digging around the roots of a to-be-transplanted tree. Nemawashi referred to the business necessity of quietly laying the correct groundwork of success. For Nintendo, nemawashi demanded that a game console have many games ready for release, and many more in the pipeline. Otherwise, it’d be as deserved a failure as all the American consoles that rushed to market without any quality in their product. And they had to be a different breed of game, not necessarily engineered like arcade games to end quickly.
As soon as Devil World was finished, Miyamoto received a promotion. He had been working with his mentor, Gunpei Yokoi, who was on the Game & Watch development team and also pitched in overseeing the Donkey Kong franchise. But Yamauchi wanted to keep Yokoi working on Game & Watch: it was Yokoi’s idea, and each new game added to Nintendo’s coffers. Yamauchi decided his company’s new golden boy, shaggy Shiggy Miyamoto, was management material. Miyamoto supposed that Yamauchi saw in him a surrogate son—or grandson.
Miyamoto officially stepped back into a producer’s role with his new position. He hadn’t trained as a software designer: it wasn’t where his skills lay. He knew enough to be able to explain what he wanted, how he wanted it, and how it could be done. Like Mario, just because he was good at a job didn’t mean there wasn’t a better fit for him somewhere else. Yokoi’s management style was encouragement: he told future Metroid designer Yoshi Sakamoto, “If you can draw pixel art, you can make a game.” Miyamoto continued the style of choosing carrots over sticks with his crew. (His leadership turned out to be better than his organizational skills: he needed an assistant just to keep track of things.) A new designer named Kazuaki Morita served as Miyamoto’s protégé. Which put the thirty-something Miyamoto in the role of mentor.
Their first challenge was Ice Climber , which seemed like a polarthemed Mario Bros. Except that as Popo and Nana, the cute titular Eskimo kids, advanced to the top of the screen, it panned up with them. The “level” was about five screens high! Scrolling upward also allowed the cut-off lower screen to become a deadly obstacle if the climbers fell below it. Miyamoto also supervised a horizontally panning game called Excitebike , whose controls used one of motocross’s elements, overheating, as the game’s crutch. (Miyamoto bicycled to work instead of driving a car, so he had an interest in things two wheeled.) Both buttons sped up the bike: the A button was regular speed and the B button was a sizzling form of turbo power. Use it too much and the bike cooks. Use it too little, and get lapped.
The Famicon was released in Japan on July 13, 1983. Two controllers were hardwired into the white and maroon system, with vertical holding slots built into the console to store them when not in use. Player one had a start and select button, with the power cord sticking out from the left. Player two, with the power cord to the right, had an internal microphone instead. The Famicon accepted sixty-pin game cartridges from a top-down slot, and could be expanded to accept certain discs and allow modem support. (Yes: modem support in 1983. America Online started in 1983 as well, as Gameline, a service offering modem support for the Atari 2600.)
The Famicon launched with three games, all ports of Nintendo’s arcade hits: Donkey Kong , Donkey Kong Jr. , and Popeye . A dozen more games were in the works. This wasn’t a mere arcade game, rigged to play just one game, or a rinky-dink piece of LCD electronics. This was a full-fledged computer! Yamauchi didn’t get his wish of a price under ¥10,000, but the retail price of ¥14,800 was still on the low side for a console, and helped it gain market
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