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Power Up
cafeman writes "This was a really hard review to write. It's been a long time since I've read a book that was so fascinating on the first reading and yet raised so many questions on the second and third. Books on the history of gaming are relatively few -- Joystick Nation, High Score, Game Over, Masters of Doom and The Ultimate History of Video Games, the major works on the topic, all focus on the West. Finding out more about the history of gaming in Japan is harder. Suffice to say that if you're interested in game trivia, Japanese console gaming industry history, or the Eastern cultural drivers behind game design and communication, you owe it to yourself to get Power Up. Why was the book so frustrating? That's an interesting question, one that I've since put a lot of thought into. Much to the annoyance of my wife, I might add." Read on for the rest of cafeman's review.
Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life
author
Chris Kohler
pages
312
publisher
Brady Games
rating
8
reviewer
Cafeman
ISBN
0744004241
summary
An overview of the influence Japanese video games have had on the global industry.
This book is packed with information. For a book of only around 300 pages, Chris Kohler does an amazing job of maintaining the information flow without making it too dense. Unfortunately, this is the book's biggest weakness -- he does such a good job of including so much interesting information, his principal thesis gets lost.
The premise of the book appears pretty simple. Chris Kohler believes that Japanese video games have had a greater influence on Western game design, game promotion, and culture than previously recognized. He asks and tries to answer three questions (in his words):
To answer these questions, Chris identifies four key factors that distinguished Japanese game development -- the use of narrative, character abstraction, cinematic sequences, and control. To demonstrate the first three, he draws on specific arcade and console examples from the late '70s and early '80s to contrast Western design against Eastern. From there, he explores the relationship between (and complexities of) control and immersion by examining hardware development and the storytelling to provide context within games. He uses Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto's use of industrial and game design to illustrate the importance of control in the immersive game play experience.
After establishing the core concepts of narrative, character abstraction, cinematic sequences, and control, Chris turns to the use of storytelling to create fully developed characters that stimulate emotional responses within the player. To do so, he examines the development of characters and storylines within some of the most famous Japanese RPGs over time, focusing mainly on the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series. He also examines music as yet another control mechanism, looking specifically at the history and development of Gitaroo-Man, Parappa the Rappa, and Dance Dance Revolution (all games based on rhythm and music).
To complete the story, Chris then turns to the practical experiences of Westerners Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard in developing the hardware and games for a Japanese games company. The hardware in question was the SuperFX chip, the game Star Fox, and the company Nintendo. By drawing on specific challenges and successes within the project, he highlights the Japanese focus on fun game play and control refinement.
From here, Chris branches off into a collection of tangents describing Japanese gaming culture. He spends a chapter touring Akihabara. He also describes the mentality and business behind Japanese games collectors, ranging from government regulation about when particular games can be released through how to Japan handles games and video rentals. He also examines the perennially popular topic of game translation, including (of course) reference to AYBABTU. More interestingly, he also examines the difficulties of translating language within hardware constraints. He describes a number of case studies showing how some cultural concepts couldn't be translated, how some weren't allowed to be translated, and how some were just badly translated (with unintentional hilarity, much in the same vein as Engrish).
Chris then uses Pokémon, one of the most famous / infamous games to have come out of Japan, to revisit how Japanese games have pervaded the Western psyche. He uses Pokémon as a way of tieing together his arguments into a single example, demonstrating quite powerfully the importance the four key factors had in the creation of a game that appeals to multiple cultures. And, by doing so, he illustrates the influence some Japanese games have had on the world as well as their continuing popularity.
His final chapter forms a more speculative foray into what the future holds for Japanese game design, and by proxy, for the world. He discusses ICO, Blood Omen, and Eternal Darkness, and highlights the continued movement toward fully developed, multidimensional narrative through the use of adult subject matter and emotional connection. His epilogue then ties off the book with a recap of his main points and lays out a number of (briefly described) further research directions and thoughts, such as "How much control is too much?", "Is the Japanese games industry due for a shake-out?", and "Are East-West collaborations the answer?". And, with some reflective thoughts, he ends the book.
Enough of the synopsis; Chris Kohler clearly has a passionate interest in the subject matter. There's no doubt that he's spent lots of time researching the material or that he's highly interested in it. His love of the topic clearly shines through - regardless of whether he's talking about an interview he conducted or a random piece of trivia about the industry, his prose remains engaging, light, and most importantly, clear. His background is in writing reviews, articles, and editorial pieces for publications including Nintendo Official Magazine UK and Wired, and it shows -- he's very clearly used to writing to maintain reader interest.
His knowledge of trivia is also strong -- there are some real gems in this book. For example, I often wondered why Nintendo never marketed their Famicom Disk System outside of Japan. In exploring the challenges of extending the Nintendo's hardware lifecycle, Chris points out the importance of being able to upgrade the console through technology embedded in the cartridges. Rather than having to buy a new console, memory and processor upgrades could be packaged into the cartridge itself, effectively bundling the upgrades with the game. Nintendo realized pretty quickly after releasing the Famicom Disk System that it could offer neither, and so discontinued it at approximately the same time Super Mario 3 was released. Also interesting (but possibly controversial) was that the name "Final Fantasy" came not from Square's belief that it was their final chance at success, but because the head developer, Sakaguchi, planned on quitting Square after finishing it and going back to school. It was thus his "Final Fantasy". The book is peppered with interesting insights like this, and even ignoring his analysis, make purchasing the book worthwhile.
However, not all is roses. Chris's writing, while engaging, is also unfocussed. It's taken my writing this review to clarify exactly what I felt was his chain of logic. While that may be a commentary on my own interpretative abilities, other people who have read his book seem to agree with me. It took me three readings and copious notes to work out what the connecting threads were between chapters, and in turn, between his examples and the main elements of his thesis. Bluntly, the dots are there, but he fails to connect them effectively.
Chris also fails to completely prove the questions he asks at the start of his work. He develops a strong case for Japanese innovation during the early period of video games, but he doesn't do nearly as good a job applying that argument to the present. Despite a chapter devoted to Pokémon (and its success in Western culture), he fails to build a general case on how Japanese games have influenced Western game design, development, and psyche outside of a few specific examples. These normally involve Western developers who have moved over to Japan specifically to work with Nintendo, or games from Nintendo itself.
And that, in a nutshell, sums up where Chris appears to be coming from. His experiences and anecdotes focus around Nintendo almost exclusively, even to the extent of ignoring other Japanese gaming developments which could have further supported his thesis. Discussion of Dragon Quest I, one of the first attempts at an RPG for the Nintendo Famicom System, goes on for many pages. However, Final Fantasy VII, a Japanese game that arguably made the fantasy RPG mainstream in the West, gets only a page of high-level discussion. For the uninitiated, Dragon Quest was released on the Nintendo Famicom system, while Final Fantasy VII was released on the Sony PlayStation. The Nintendo offering gets all the focus.
In short, if it doesn't have to do with Nintendo, it apparently isn't important. Game companies such as Konami, Namco, and Sega are given cursory acknowledgements. Despite an entire chapter devoted to Japanese RPGs, Phantasy Star (another enduring Japanese RPG that introduced first person navigation on the Sega Master System) never even rates a mention, despite being released a year after the original Final Fantasy. One could argue that he largely ignored it because it was released by Sega, a company founded by an American in Japan. However, given that he spends an entire chapter devoted to two Gaijin in Japan, this seems a little inconsistent.
More problematically, his argument (as opposed to his book) only works if one ignores the rest of the world. While this isn't the time or place to fully explore this, his focus on Japan (and consoles specifically) has meant ignoring key developments. For example, he goes into great detail about character development and the use of narrative elements within Japanese RPGs, but completely ignores what was happening in the West in the years preceding them. The Bard's Tale, Wizardry, and more importantly, Ultima, are all completely ignored. While he makes quite a strong case for Japanese innovation during the early years of game development through games such as Donkey Kong and Super Mario World, he completely ignores all further development and refinement taking place in the U.S. This is especially strange when one considers that he has recently written about such games as Psychonauts and appears to have a reasonable knowledge of US and PC gaming history. While his position that Japanese game design influenced global design in the late '70s is plausible, there's a great deal of evidence to suggest that by the mid '80s the opposite was true and that the U.S. was exploring new designs in gaming in their own right, including introducing some interesting party management complexities. Strangely, while this position is actually hinted at through his quotes from Japanese developers, it is ignored. This is unfortunate, as from a historical perspective, it arguably attributes too much credit to Japanese design.
The book, overall, reads as the first book publication by a person used to writing articles of under a few thousand words -- it's punchy, interesting, and full of facts, but it wanders. That could be because of his past, or it could be because of editorial input. Chris freely admits that the book stems from the dissertation he wrote as part of his Fulbright Fellowship in Japan. It's quite possible that the first draft may have been too academic, and in trying to appeal to a more general audience, his publisher encouraged him to add additional background and "fun facts" about the industry. Either way, the book lacks focus. From an interpretative perspective, its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness -- the sheer volume of interesting information distracts from the main threads of his argument. This lack of focus is painfully obvious in the second half of the book - it reads as a collection of unrelated essays.
Despite these reservations, I really enjoyed this book. While the main thesis of the book is hard to follow, it's still an interesting read with lots of trivia, history, and context. Chris clearly has a love of Japanese culture, and there's a dearth of books on this subject matter that treat it seriously. As a reader, I'm looking forward to Chris's next literary work -- based on this book, I'm already digging up his previous works, and I'll be first in line to buy his next. Facts are one thing, but passion is another, and he's definitely got both. My wife, despite not being interested in games in the slightest, has been taking his book to read on the train to work. I know it doesn't sound like much, but in my house, that's a major compliment. If I could recommend anything for the next work, it would be to get some other like-minded people with a good sense of gaming history to assist with the editing process. It would also be interesting to focus on game design and enjoyment with the intention of integrating both East and West design developments.
Every review needs a rating, no matter how illogical or unfair. If you're looking for something that provides some history around the Japanese gaming industry, gives a lot of very interesting facts, and entertains while doing so, I'd give this book an eight, possibly even a nine out of ten. As an academic work, looking at defining and developing an argument based on logic, research, and balanced discussion, I'd have to give it four out of ten. His argument is there (regardless of whether you agree with it or not), as are the supporting facts, but they're so lost in the noise as to be hidden. On a more editorial note, his thesis, while starting strong, grows progressively weaker due to a selective focus on Japan exclusively. While I recognize that this selective focus was intentional, I feel that it undermines his arguments due the breadth of his statements about the influence of Japanese design on the West. Even so, I'd highly recommend the book, and I can guarantee I'll be pre-ordering his next when it's published.
This book is packed with information. For a book of only around 300 pages, Chris Kohler does an amazing job of maintaining the information flow without making it too dense. Unfortunately, this is the book's biggest weakness -- he does such a good job of including so much interesting information, his principal thesis gets lost.
The premise of the book appears pretty simple. Chris Kohler believes that Japanese video games have had a greater influence on Western game design, game promotion, and culture than previously recognized. He asks and tries to answer three questions (in his words):
- What makes video games designed in Japan so phenomenally popular all over the world?
- How did the Japanese pioneer cinematic techniques in video games, raising the medium to an art form?
- How have these ideas so completely permeated the gaming world, not to mention our mainstream psyche?
To answer these questions, Chris identifies four key factors that distinguished Japanese game development -- the use of narrative, character abstraction, cinematic sequences, and control. To demonstrate the first three, he draws on specific arcade and console examples from the late '70s and early '80s to contrast Western design against Eastern. From there, he explores the relationship between (and complexities of) control and immersion by examining hardware development and the storytelling to provide context within games. He uses Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto's use of industrial and game design to illustrate the importance of control in the immersive game play experience.
After establishing the core concepts of narrative, character abstraction, cinematic sequences, and control, Chris turns to the use of storytelling to create fully developed characters that stimulate emotional responses within the player. To do so, he examines the development of characters and storylines within some of the most famous Japanese RPGs over time, focusing mainly on the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series. He also examines music as yet another control mechanism, looking specifically at the history and development of Gitaroo-Man, Parappa the Rappa, and Dance Dance Revolution (all games based on rhythm and music).
To complete the story, Chris then turns to the practical experiences of Westerners Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard in developing the hardware and games for a Japanese games company. The hardware in question was the SuperFX chip, the game Star Fox, and the company Nintendo. By drawing on specific challenges and successes within the project, he highlights the Japanese focus on fun game play and control refinement.
From here, Chris branches off into a collection of tangents describing Japanese gaming culture. He spends a chapter touring Akihabara. He also describes the mentality and business behind Japanese games collectors, ranging from government regulation about when particular games can be released through how to Japan handles games and video rentals. He also examines the perennially popular topic of game translation, including (of course) reference to AYBABTU. More interestingly, he also examines the difficulties of translating language within hardware constraints. He describes a number of case studies showing how some cultural concepts couldn't be translated, how some weren't allowed to be translated, and how some were just badly translated (with unintentional hilarity, much in the same vein as Engrish).
Chris then uses Pokémon, one of the most famous / infamous games to have come out of Japan, to revisit how Japanese games have pervaded the Western psyche. He uses Pokémon as a way of tieing together his arguments into a single example, demonstrating quite powerfully the importance the four key factors had in the creation of a game that appeals to multiple cultures. And, by doing so, he illustrates the influence some Japanese games have had on the world as well as their continuing popularity.
His final chapter forms a more speculative foray into what the future holds for Japanese game design, and by proxy, for the world. He discusses ICO, Blood Omen, and Eternal Darkness, and highlights the continued movement toward fully developed, multidimensional narrative through the use of adult subject matter and emotional connection. His epilogue then ties off the book with a recap of his main points and lays out a number of (briefly described) further research directions and thoughts, such as "How much control is too much?", "Is the Japanese games industry due for a shake-out?", and "Are East-West collaborations the answer?". And, with some reflective thoughts, he ends the book.
Enough of the synopsis; Chris Kohler clearly has a passionate interest in the subject matter. There's no doubt that he's spent lots of time researching the material or that he's highly interested in it. His love of the topic clearly shines through - regardless of whether he's talking about an interview he conducted or a random piece of trivia about the industry, his prose remains engaging, light, and most importantly, clear. His background is in writing reviews, articles, and editorial pieces for publications including Nintendo Official Magazine UK and Wired, and it shows -- he's very clearly used to writing to maintain reader interest.
His knowledge of trivia is also strong -- there are some real gems in this book. For example, I often wondered why Nintendo never marketed their Famicom Disk System outside of Japan. In exploring the challenges of extending the Nintendo's hardware lifecycle, Chris points out the importance of being able to upgrade the console through technology embedded in the cartridges. Rather than having to buy a new console, memory and processor upgrades could be packaged into the cartridge itself, effectively bundling the upgrades with the game. Nintendo realized pretty quickly after releasing the Famicom Disk System that it could offer neither, and so discontinued it at approximately the same time Super Mario 3 was released. Also interesting (but possibly controversial) was that the name "Final Fantasy" came not from Square's belief that it was their final chance at success, but because the head developer, Sakaguchi, planned on quitting Square after finishing it and going back to school. It was thus his "Final Fantasy". The book is peppered with interesting insights like this, and even ignoring his analysis, make purchasing the book worthwhile.
However, not all is roses. Chris's writing, while engaging, is also unfocussed. It's taken my writing this review to clarify exactly what I felt was his chain of logic. While that may be a commentary on my own interpretative abilities, other people who have read his book seem to agree with me. It took me three readings and copious notes to work out what the connecting threads were between chapters, and in turn, between his examples and the main elements of his thesis. Bluntly, the dots are there, but he fails to connect them effectively.
Chris also fails to completely prove the questions he asks at the start of his work. He develops a strong case for Japanese innovation during the early period of video games, but he doesn't do nearly as good a job applying that argument to the present. Despite a chapter devoted to Pokémon (and its success in Western culture), he fails to build a general case on how Japanese games have influenced Western game design, development, and psyche outside of a few specific examples. These normally involve Western developers who have moved over to Japan specifically to work with Nintendo, or games from Nintendo itself.
And that, in a nutshell, sums up where Chris appears to be coming from. His experiences and anecdotes focus around Nintendo almost exclusively, even to the extent of ignoring other Japanese gaming developments which could have further supported his thesis. Discussion of Dragon Quest I, one of the first attempts at an RPG for the Nintendo Famicom System, goes on for many pages. However, Final Fantasy VII, a Japanese game that arguably made the fantasy RPG mainstream in the West, gets only a page of high-level discussion. For the uninitiated, Dragon Quest was released on the Nintendo Famicom system, while Final Fantasy VII was released on the Sony PlayStation. The Nintendo offering gets all the focus.
In short, if it doesn't have to do with Nintendo, it apparently isn't important. Game companies such as Konami, Namco, and Sega are given cursory acknowledgements. Despite an entire chapter devoted to Japanese RPGs, Phantasy Star (another enduring Japanese RPG that introduced first person navigation on the Sega Master System) never even rates a mention, despite being released a year after the original Final Fantasy. One could argue that he largely ignored it because it was released by Sega, a company founded by an American in Japan. However, given that he spends an entire chapter devoted to two Gaijin in Japan, this seems a little inconsistent.
More problematically, his argument (as opposed to his book) only works if one ignores the rest of the world. While this isn't the time or place to fully explore this, his focus on Japan (and consoles specifically) has meant ignoring key developments. For example, he goes into great detail about character development and the use of narrative elements within Japanese RPGs, but completely ignores what was happening in the West in the years preceding them. The Bard's Tale, Wizardry, and more importantly, Ultima, are all completely ignored. While he makes quite a strong case for Japanese innovation during the early years of game development through games such as Donkey Kong and Super Mario World, he completely ignores all further development and refinement taking place in the U.S. This is especially strange when one considers that he has recently written about such games as Psychonauts and appears to have a reasonable knowledge of US and PC gaming history. While his position that Japanese game design influenced global design in the late '70s is plausible, there's a great deal of evidence to suggest that by the mid '80s the opposite was true and that the U.S. was exploring new designs in gaming in their own right, including introducing some interesting party management complexities. Strangely, while this position is actually hinted at through his quotes from Japanese developers, it is ignored. This is unfortunate, as from a historical perspective, it arguably attributes too much credit to Japanese design.
The book, overall, reads as the first book publication by a person used to writing articles of under a few thousand words -- it's punchy, interesting, and full of facts, but it wanders. That could be because of his past, or it could be because of editorial input. Chris freely admits that the book stems from the dissertation he wrote as part of his Fulbright Fellowship in Japan. It's quite possible that the first draft may have been too academic, and in trying to appeal to a more general audience, his publisher encouraged him to add additional background and "fun facts" about the industry. Either way, the book lacks focus. From an interpretative perspective, its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness -- the sheer volume of interesting information distracts from the main threads of his argument. This lack of focus is painfully obvious in the second half of the book - it reads as a collection of unrelated essays.
Despite these reservations, I really enjoyed this book. While the main thesis of the book is hard to follow, it's still an interesting read with lots of trivia, history, and context. Chris clearly has a love of Japanese culture, and there's a dearth of books on this subject matter that treat it seriously. As a reader, I'm looking forward to Chris's next literary work -- based on this book, I'm already digging up his previous works, and I'll be first in line to buy his next. Facts are one thing, but passion is another, and he's definitely got both. My wife, despite not being interested in games in the slightest, has been taking his book to read on the train to work. I know it doesn't sound like much, but in my house, that's a major compliment. If I could recommend anything for the next work, it would be to get some other like-minded people with a good sense of gaming history to assist with the editing process. It would also be interesting to focus on game design and enjoyment with the intention of integrating both East and West design developments.
Every review needs a rating, no matter how illogical or unfair. If you're looking for something that provides some history around the Japanese gaming industry, gives a lot of very interesting facts, and entertains while doing so, I'd give this book an eight, possibly even a nine out of ten. As an academic work, looking at defining and developing an argument based on logic, research, and balanced discussion, I'd have to give it four out of ten. His argument is there (regardless of whether you agree with it or not), as are the supporting facts, but they're so lost in the noise as to be hidden. On a more editorial note, his thesis, while starting strong, grows progressively weaker due to a selective focus on Japan exclusively. While I recognize that this selective focus was intentional, I feel that it undermines his arguments due the breadth of his statements about the influence of Japanese design on the West. Even so, I'd highly recommend the book, and I can guarantee I'll be pre-ordering his next when it's published.
You can purchase Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Interesting that the reviewer brings up Pokemon as influencing America, especially considering that Magic was around long before Pokemon and certainly influenced it. Magic comes from the Seattle area.
Can we blame the Japanese for adding multiple buttons to a controller? Some controllers have so many buttons except one for the kitchen sink. My ideal controller is an Atari 2600 joystick with one button. Then again, I'm an old fart.
lol, what?
Chris identifies four key factors that distinguished Japanese game development -- the use of narrative, character abstraction, cinematic sequences, and control.
5) Tentacle rape.
Does it really? What if your audience is, you know, literate, and has read the rest of the review?
in Japanese games, at least seen through Western eyes. The same is true of manga and anime, where nothing is ever definitively resolved nor plotlines clearly delineated. The ambiguity is rooted in Japanese culture, which is great, but after you've fought the final boss in Devil May Cry six times in a row because he simply refuses to die, no matter how spectacularly he blows up on each successive occasion, or after neo-Tokyo blows up twice in a row without explanation at the end of Akira, it becomes a little tedious and pointless. With all apologies to /. anime-philes, the perfect game would marry Japanese visual genius and gameplay with Western writers.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I wonder if it includes any special sections on the FF series from SquareSoft. I grew up on those games (on all the various platforms) and I know Japan had a handful that were never released in the U.S. Not that anyone will flame me over my choice (unless truly fanatical), but I think FF7 is the best game to come out on the Playstation, if not all the 3rd-gen and onward video game systems.
Did you know subscribers can see articles in the future? Holy shit!
"Ugh, too long slappy too LONG!"
All these reviews are always 20 pages long. Reviews tell us if a book is good or bad, then tell us why, not list off the Entire contents of the book in large detail.
Ok now, about the book. If any industry has an interesting history, it's deffinatly the gaming industry. You could make volumes of books like this man. This is probably an interesting read, but the way this review is written i just got tired half way through.
Nasa spent billions making a pen capable of writing in space. The Russians just use a pencil.
If you're talking about the CCG, then I could definitely see that -- the Pokemon CCG was developed by Wizards of the Coast. The actual game, however, is a different story. =)
So what's up with calling the author "Chris"? Is he your college roomate or something?
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
Parent poster was modded down previously for doing this same kind of thing on book reviews under the name pmc258. See here
Why change to a new username if this time you are including a disclaimer, which was what upset people last time?
"Much to the annoyance of my wife,..."
Is this the wife who is always away on modeling assignments? The one you met at a truth telling contest 3 towns down?
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Just because your message carries a disclaimer, doesn't mean it's not spam. It's the same kaleidojewel post that's been plaguing /. for ages. Nobody wants to see your "GIVE ME MAH MONEY!" posts in each book review. All of that constant posting for a nickel or two? So sad.
You crazy kids with your 8-way joysticks and your so-called "fire" button. Bah!
In my day we had a single left-right knob, and we LIKED it!
The video game industry peaked with Pong. All else since has been over-decorated frippery.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
is a fascinating example of a micro-cultural competitive advantage. It's like the dominance of Russian figure skaters or Kenyan marathon runners. Japanese animators start early--seems like every Japanese school kid can draw a respectable comic strip. Whereas you'd catch American teenagers scribbling lyrics or rock band logos on their notebooks in class, Japanese kids would be free-hand drawing Dragonball Z.
Somehow the cultural meme has sprung up in Japan that places relative importance on illustration, and it bears fruit in the gaming, anime, manga, and toy industries. Interesting to contemplate how a society could consciously create other micro-cultures for competitive advantage.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
"Dear Mr. President of Sony, there are too many buttons on game controllers nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot."
"Despite an entire chapter devoted to Japanese RPGs, Phantasy Star (another enduring Japanese RPG that introduced first person navigation on the Sega Master System) never even rates a mention, despite being released a year after the original Final Fantasy. One could argue that he largely ignored it because it was released by Sega, a company founded by an American in Japan."
You said it yourself. Phantasy Star, an inferior game to Final Fantasy in most ways, was released after Final Fantasy was. Whoopee, first-person dungeon crawling - hardly worth the mention.
The fact that Sega was founded by an American has no bearing on anything here. I question you for mentioning this fact as if to point out some glaring error of ethnocentrism that the author has made, particularly because of the italicized emphasis you use in your original posting. While one could (as you say) make the argument you present, nobody should. Having read Kohler's works in the past, I am certain that the argument is groundless.
This was a really hard review to write. It's been a long time since I've read a book that was so fascinating on the first reading and yet raised so many questions on the second and third. Books on the history of gaming are relatively few -- Joystick Nation, High Score, Game Over, Masters of Doom and The Ultimate History of Video Games, the major works on the topic, all focus on the West. Finding out more about the history of gaming in Japan is harder. Suffice to say that if you're interested in game trivia, Japanese console gaming industry history, or the Eastern cultural drivers behind game design and communication, you owe it to yourself to get Power Up.
Emphasis mine. If it were suffice to say that part -- which sums up the review nicely -- then why subject us to the tedium of the preceding sentences?
Really hard to write? Then be a better writer; or get an editor.
-kgj
-kgj
Narrative is in fact one of the strongest focuses of the Japanese game industry after game play whereas Western games focus far more on exploring an interesting setting. (See the Final Fantasy series vs. the Wizardry series.) The problem you are having is with the Japanese having a lack of insistence on cut-and-dry, tie-it-all-up endings (or with a lack of exposure to the good stuff).
Japanese film and games focus far more on the situation and the characters than the events and the resolution. They are also extremely fond of in media res introductions. This is most prevalent in their drama, psycho-thriller, and ultra-high budget action movies, their more cryptic and cerebral anime, and in their RPGs. This tends to upset American fans who want their to be a nice resolution about how all the people with robots beat all the bad guys up rather than about how the main character got over his crippling self-doubt and isolation. (*cough* Evangelion *cough*)
Just because the director doesn't tie everything up and spoon feed it to you like Jerry Bruckheimer would doesn't mean that they can't tell a story.
(Side note: The ending to Akira sucked because they expected you to have read the manga. I think it's possibly one of the weakest anime titles out there, but people love it because it was one of the first things they saw and the visuals rocked. I'm not very fond of the movie.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
What makes video games designed in Japan so phenomenally popular all over the world?
Fuzzy little fictional characters targeted at children that re-release themselves under new names every 6 months?
Perhaps.
Sounds like an "I am earlier than thou!" war to me...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Did somebody command the author to rise from his grave?
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The West is more than the US. There's a fine tradition of game design from Scandinavia, for example. Or the French did some innovative stuff as well - Captain Blood sticks out as an oddball gem. From the UK, we have the glory that was the early days of Psygnosis, plus Ultimate's 8 bit works. And what of Russia and Tetris?
A knowledge of PC gaming history can't go back that far either. Where is the C64 or the Amiga? A lot of innovative stuff was done on both of those platforms, and I'm sure others will feel their own platform had something to offer as well (I was a C64 and Atari ST man at the time). PC gaming was essentially farcical until the arrival of the 486 DX2 66Mhz and either Wing Commander or Doom, depending on your point of view.
Please don't misunderstand me - this is not an attempt to knock the fine development that went on in the States (where's the nod to Dungeon Master, for a start...). It's more that I felt in your review you were being a little guilty of the same problem you criticised the original author for - focus on a single region without looking at some of the broader scene.
Cheers,
Ian
The best parts of "Game Over," IMHO, were cribbed from the earlier work entitled "Zap - the Rise and Fall of Atari" by Scott Cohen. At the time of the release of "Game Over," "Zap" had been out-of-print for several years. To my knowledge, its back in print by a different publisher. Fascinating work.
There's also a great work on the late Steve Ross, chairman of Warner Communications, acquirer of Atari Inc., forerunning champion of multimedia integration, and architect of the Time-Warner merger. Its called *Master of the Game*, by Connie Bruck. It has some great insight into Ross and his views on Atari and the early videogame industry too.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
It sounds like the author's reading into it a little too much and making his own dots to connect. I would say he's an idiot, but the review well written otherwise. I guess he's just fucking crazy.
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I'd say that it *can* be important.
See, there is just time-wasting discussion surrounding video games. That's one thing that is quite arguably not valuable. System advocacy arguments, chatting about some game.
But really trying to analyze the social impact of video games and the mechanisms through which video games function in society is not only relevant and important (video games have had quite an impact on us, and are consuming an increasing amount of human time, eating away from the previously-more-influential television), but interesting.
Consider how much mass media or inexpensive, rapid long-distance communications interacted with and changed society, at least in the United States. I'd say that, while video games may not be as influential as these, they are certainly important.
They provide a medium that allows for more experimentation than, say, movies, so they allow more exploration of what people like. They are interactive -- they are systems that must not only provide stimuli to people but do so in response to input, and make those people happy.
The Japanese bit is, I'd say, of interest to many people, and something that Japan can be proud of. I hear plenty of complaints about Westernization, but the East *does* have its own spreading culture, and Japan has had its own impact. (cowboys:ninjas::US:Japan, consider anime, consider video games). Exporting culture through media is valuable in that it increases demand for things produced by that culture. In that sense, if video games are the largest media export of Japan to the West, they may be economically valuable.
You can look at the discussion and say "this is so highly-specialized that it's unlikely to have direct, practical impact to me", and probably be right, unless you're involved in marketing or the video game industry. But there are all *kinds* of things that I read and do that aren't going to have a practical benefit to me. I play chess every now and then, for instance, and it's nothing more than a fun mental exercise, like analyzing video games.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
That's when they got it right!
Offtopic:
A ~4 years back I programmed a video game about video games and a friend did the art. It sold horrible as it was more niche than we realized so our shareware company went under.
However it may be interesting to play for those reading the comments here so I'm mentioning it in case anybody wants to try to find the demo.
Note: it is for win32 only. It was called Game Derby. If you and a friend both think you know a lot about video game trivia give it a shot. It was also 2 player only.
One of the best things about this game, short of me getting a job in the industry, was getting to read all those great book about the history of the industry. If you like games I highly recommend getting some of those books. And Halcyon Days if it is still for sale online.
seriously folks, why do all geeks feel the need to mention that they're married? no one cares. it's not some status symbol.
it's so common that everything any geek could do is going to annoy their wives, so why don't you start mentioning the wive thing when it DOESN'T bother her. although that still adds nothing to the story, it is at least something we might not have guessed.
With the exception of Zelda and Shinning Force way back on the Sega Genesis Asian games are total crap. So who the hell cares about their history. I'm sick and tired of you stupid anime loving, final fantasy masturbating nerds thinking every thing that comes out of the East is the shit. If it's all so great then move their you dumb bastards and take all your manga and anime porn with you.
Some people may take this as a joke, but my experience is that you can actual improve social skills by playing these games. (Stop laughing for a moment, please). It is an abstraction of a social system, but you are interacting with real people. It is a good place for social experimentation.
Could we replace the voice actors who do the fake grunty voices for all the BIG TOUGH GUYS in anime?
Buy Rubber Stamps