7 ms·

I’m hoping that the success of the “Ask Iwata” book leads to someone writing a Miyamoto book. That tiny team at Nintendo basically invented the modern games ind

I’m hoping that the success of the “Ask Iwata” book leads to someone writing a Miyamoto book. That tiny team at Nintendo basically invented the modern games industry after it had crashed from Atari. It’s always great to hear details of what happened behind the scenes, when future legends were just people at desks trying to build something great

klodolph 5y ago
> That tiny team at Nintendo basically invented the modern games industry after it had crashed from Atari. That’s really only the perspective from North America. The “crash” was mostly limited to North America, with a much smaller impact on Europe, and hardly any impact on Japan. It was mostly a crash of Atari, specifically. Europe was busy playing games on systems like the ZX Spectrum. The Atari systems were imported and more expensive. Japan experienced a boom in game console sales during that same time period. Both the Famicom and SG-1000 were released in 1983. It was not a crash, and in Japan it’s simply called the “Atari shock”.
- nohr 5y ago
  Never knew about that, do you have a good aeticle/book about that?
  - klodolph 5y ago
    The Wikipedia article hints at it: > The video game crash of 1983 [...] was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. > But outside of North America the video game industry was doing very well. Home consoles were growing in popularity in Japan while home computers were surging across Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983 The Japanese language Wikipedia has a very different tone to the article, because it was written from perspectives outside North America: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%82%BF%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A7%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%82%BF%E3%83%AA%E3... Note that the article’s title in Japanese is “Atari shock”. Honestly, I think it should be called the “US video game crash of 1983”, and the article should be more up-front that this was something that happened specifically in the US. I think the English-language Wikipedia relies too heavily on North American sources.
    - astrange 5y ago
      The other language Wikipedias have this issue even worse; they tend to be translations from English, so they’ll discuss the video game crash like it was important even if it didn’t happen in their country.
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      - klodolph 5y ago
        Sure, but there are tons of Japanese-language sources of commentary specifically about the video game industry, and the English-language articles about video games are almost pathologically narrow in their viewpoints.
    - ndiddy 5y ago
      Japan had a smaller “crash” around 1986. Before then, lots of Famicom games were selling millions or high 6 figures regardless of quality, but afterwards (with VERY FEW exceptions) the million sellers were mainly first party and Dragon Quest games.

klodolph 5y ago

> That tiny team at Nintendo basically invented the modern games industry after it had crashed from Atari. That’s really only the perspective from North America. The “crash” was mostly limited to North America, with a much smaller impact on Europe, and hardly any impact on Japan. It was mostly a crash of Atari, specifically. Europe was busy playing games on systems like the ZX Spectrum. The Atari systems were imported and more expensive. Japan experienced a boom in game console sales during that same time period. Both the Famicom and SG-1000 were released in 1983. It was not a crash, and in Japan it’s simply called the “Atari shock”.

nohr 5y ago
Never knew about that, do you have a good aeticle/book about that?
- klodolph 5y ago
  The Wikipedia article hints at it: > The video game crash of 1983 [...] was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. > But outside of North America the video game industry was doing very well. Home consoles were growing in popularity in Japan while home computers were surging across Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983 The Japanese language Wikipedia has a very different tone to the article, because it was written from perspectives outside North America: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%82%BF%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A7%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%82%BF%E3%83%AA%E3... Note that the article’s title in Japanese is “Atari shock”. Honestly, I think it should be called the “US video game crash of 1983”, and the article should be more up-front that this was something that happened specifically in the US. I think the English-language Wikipedia relies too heavily on North American sources.
  - astrange 5y ago
    The other language Wikipedias have this issue even worse; they tend to be translations from English, so they’ll discuss the video game crash like it was important even if it didn’t happen in their country.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - klodolph 5y ago
      Sure, but there are tons of Japanese-language sources of commentary specifically about the video game industry, and the English-language articles about video games are almost pathologically narrow in their viewpoints.
  - ndiddy 5y ago
    Japan had a smaller “crash” around 1986. Before then, lots of Famicom games were selling millions or high 6 figures regardless of quality, but afterwards (with VERY FEW exceptions) the million sellers were mainly first party and Dragon Quest games.