Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave The World An Extra Life
Chris Kohler (12.99)
Rather than plotting a simple history of Japanese gaming exports, Kohler brings the impact of general Japanese culture into the story and examines the unique ways in which Japanese designers have affected gaming the world over.
The book begins by looking into distinct aspects of Japanese entertainment: comic books, the birth of manga stylings and cinematic story-telling techniques. By looking at these influences - and their early adoption by Japanese designers into the arcade revolution - a good foundation is set for the rest of the book to explore. Kohler presents a number of facts and figures to accompany his case, and there’s hardly a page that doesn’t contain a little gem of trivia, but this initial foundation then leads into what I feel is the weakest part of the book.
It’s impossible to understate the influence Nintendo has had on gaming, and Kohler looks into the early history of Nintendo as a company and how their designers were ideally placed to dominate videogame design – largely because they were pushing creativity just as Atari were falling apart.
We like the bit with the teddy bears best.
It’s a historically entertaining read that soon turns into a critical breakdown and analysis of game series’ like Mario and Zelda. Sadly, this breakdown seems to suck all the soul out of the games. The scene by scene analysis of Mario’s narrative and Zelda’s plot (right through to the credit screens) reads like a spoiler walkthrough, and that’s despite me having already finished those games and knowing what happens.
Happily, things improve when Kohler starts to examine more specific people and culturally interesting developments in gaming. It’s in this second half of the book where I found most of the depth; relayed to us in interviews with landmark game designers. In particular, the sections involving Masaya Matsura (Parappa The Rapper, Vib Ribbon) and Keiichi Yano (Gitaroo-Man) who both provide background on the unique musical revolutions their games spawned. Then there’s the story of Star Fox and the Super FX chip as told by Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard of Argonaut, who give a brilliant insight into the inner workings of Nintendo.
“Bastard space-toffs. I’ll show them…”
The book finally turns to the modern part of the story; one of merchandising, modern gaming culture in Japan (Akihabra in particular) and the most recent collaborations between Nintendo and western developers such as Retro Studios and Silicon Nights. I found this the strongest part of the book, purely because it gave me a vivid insight into Japanese culture without turning back to dry critiques of game narrative. The trivia lightens the tone nicely, with plenty of bizarre and uniquely Japanese oddities – like it being illegal to release a game mid-week.
Akihabra by day. Leicester Square only with Japanese writing.
As a potted history it works well, but the more astute of you may have already picked up on something: where is Sega? Or even Sony for that matter? Power-Up is very Nintendo-centric and I can’t help but feel it’s missing a great deal by being so.
JIMAROID, November
2004.
RODENT CASH RATING -
AMAZON SPECIAL DEAL PERHAPS?
“If you like yer Ninty then it's Nideal. Umm. Sorry?”
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