It's how you play the game
Nintendo Magic
by Osamu Inoue
Bought this last year but just got around to reading it recently; it's actually topical, given the recent price drop of the 3DS. This book was originally released in Japan in 2009, so it really only reflects Nintendo's operations through 2008, and only really addresses the Japanese market.
The book makes a point out of the fact that Nintendo brass doesn't give a lot of interviews for fear of giving away their "essential Nintendoness" or whatever; as such, Inoue overly praises the company and its personnel at every turn and barely addresses the bumps on the road. Even the failures are given a nice sheen-I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about the Virtual Boy in such glowing terms. Apparently it was our (the consumer's) fault that it failed, because we weren't visionary enough, and not say, because it caused headaches.
When the book isn't busy praising Iwata, Miyamoto, Yokoi and whomever else, it at least gives you some insight into the development of the DS and Wii. The parts where they go behind-the-scenes are perhaps the most interesting, unfortunately there aren't enough of them. There's some vague and/or brief discussion of the hardware, a little more can be said for the software side of things. It was nice to learn some of the background behind say, Brain Age, though I wonder if some research on my end could have yielded the same results.
Inoue also talks about how the future of Nintendo, and the game industry by-proxy, is to make non-gamers gamers. Reggie Fils-Aime said the same thing at E3 once, about how you'll never meet someone who has never seen a movie or read a book, but there are plenty of people who have never played a video game. Nintendo definitely succeeded in that measure-I just think of my mother playing Brain Age and Wii Fit. They also mention a bunch of stuff not available outside of Japan, some without proper explanation, so there's a weird disconnect between what the book talks about and what I know personally. Heck, because it's very Japan-centric, Inoue barely (if ever) mentions the Xbox 360-because this is a Japanese business book, the only competitor that matters is Sony.
There's a chapter where Apple is addressed, but maybe because it's from a 2008 perspective, it doesn't really go into that ecosystem much. They're more of a cloud on the horizon, and the book doesn't really consider that they would become as big as they did-that many of those non-gamer gamers would move on to a multipurpose device for their gaming needs and leave Nintendo behind. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how Nintendo's going to handle this in the long-term, because a price drop sure isn't going to fix their woes now.
SideScrollers
by Matthew Loux
Even if the genre existed before 1994, "slacker" was totally defined by Clerks and its stamp seems to be found everywhere. Or maybe it's just that everyone watches the same movies. This basically plays out like an updated Clerks and/or Mallrats, which a bunch of young men who work menial jobs getting in trouble with some of the local color and having wacky hijinks. They even have their own Jay and Silent Bob.
It's not a complete cut-and-paste job; the female characters have a bigger presence in the book, and we definitely get a "tour of the town" which reminds me of say, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (though this book predates the film but not the novel). But there are some fuzzy spots here and there. The characters seem to have just graduated high school, and none seem to have college plans, but one of them has his own apartment. Maybe I just don't understand Connecticut that way.
Despite the name, the book has some, but not a lot of video game references in it. It's not dense in the way Scott Pilgrim is. That's good in that the book won't date as much, but at the same time, the cover promised something the interior doesn't deliver.
That all said, I really enjoyed the book. I just wish that comics creators would stop presenting geek comedies that are really just Clerks Lite.
by Osamu Inoue
Bought this last year but just got around to reading it recently; it's actually topical, given the recent price drop of the 3DS. This book was originally released in Japan in 2009, so it really only reflects Nintendo's operations through 2008, and only really addresses the Japanese market.
The book makes a point out of the fact that Nintendo brass doesn't give a lot of interviews for fear of giving away their "essential Nintendoness" or whatever; as such, Inoue overly praises the company and its personnel at every turn and barely addresses the bumps on the road. Even the failures are given a nice sheen-I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about the Virtual Boy in such glowing terms. Apparently it was our (the consumer's) fault that it failed, because we weren't visionary enough, and not say, because it caused headaches.
When the book isn't busy praising Iwata, Miyamoto, Yokoi and whomever else, it at least gives you some insight into the development of the DS and Wii. The parts where they go behind-the-scenes are perhaps the most interesting, unfortunately there aren't enough of them. There's some vague and/or brief discussion of the hardware, a little more can be said for the software side of things. It was nice to learn some of the background behind say, Brain Age, though I wonder if some research on my end could have yielded the same results.
Inoue also talks about how the future of Nintendo, and the game industry by-proxy, is to make non-gamers gamers. Reggie Fils-Aime said the same thing at E3 once, about how you'll never meet someone who has never seen a movie or read a book, but there are plenty of people who have never played a video game. Nintendo definitely succeeded in that measure-I just think of my mother playing Brain Age and Wii Fit. They also mention a bunch of stuff not available outside of Japan, some without proper explanation, so there's a weird disconnect between what the book talks about and what I know personally. Heck, because it's very Japan-centric, Inoue barely (if ever) mentions the Xbox 360-because this is a Japanese business book, the only competitor that matters is Sony.
There's a chapter where Apple is addressed, but maybe because it's from a 2008 perspective, it doesn't really go into that ecosystem much. They're more of a cloud on the horizon, and the book doesn't really consider that they would become as big as they did-that many of those non-gamer gamers would move on to a multipurpose device for their gaming needs and leave Nintendo behind. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how Nintendo's going to handle this in the long-term, because a price drop sure isn't going to fix their woes now.
SideScrollers
by Matthew Loux
Even if the genre existed before 1994, "slacker" was totally defined by Clerks and its stamp seems to be found everywhere. Or maybe it's just that everyone watches the same movies. This basically plays out like an updated Clerks and/or Mallrats, which a bunch of young men who work menial jobs getting in trouble with some of the local color and having wacky hijinks. They even have their own Jay and Silent Bob.
It's not a complete cut-and-paste job; the female characters have a bigger presence in the book, and we definitely get a "tour of the town" which reminds me of say, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (though this book predates the film but not the novel). But there are some fuzzy spots here and there. The characters seem to have just graduated high school, and none seem to have college plans, but one of them has his own apartment. Maybe I just don't understand Connecticut that way.
Despite the name, the book has some, but not a lot of video game references in it. It's not dense in the way Scott Pilgrim is. That's good in that the book won't date as much, but at the same time, the cover promised something the interior doesn't deliver.
That all said, I really enjoyed the book. I just wish that comics creators would stop presenting geek comedies that are really just Clerks Lite.