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Right now at the beginning of this year,
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one out of every five homes had Nintendo.
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By the end of this year, one out of every three homes
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in America will have Nintendo.
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That's how fast it's growing.
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How long did it take you to get blinking again after that?
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I don't know.
[laughing]
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You look at yourself, you realize you're a zombie
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staring into that screen, playing.
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It's scary stuff.
Unbelievable.
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[digital musical motif]
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One time the salesperson said they went in
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to talk about the terms of the sale
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and that someone [laughing] pulled a gun out of their drawer
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and set it on the table in front of them
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to show them how serious they were about not taking a risk.
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Was definitely a rough chapter.
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I'm Gail Tilden.
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I was the advertising manager for Nintendo in 1985.
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And this is how I helped bring the NES to America.
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[light hip hop music]
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When I started at Nintendo, July 11th, 1983, 7-11,
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it was really a arcade game company,
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but also we did Game & Watch, little handheld games.
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My favorite one was called "Flagman."
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We also had some tabletop games.
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They looked like mini arcade games.
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So right after I started,
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I had my first trip to New York to work with Dentsu,
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our ad agency back there
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and make a commercial for "Mario's Cement Factory."
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At the time, I think there were about 70 people
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at Nintendo of America, in a way.
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It was a very, very small group.
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Famicom came out, not too long after that.
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We were focused on, I think, "Donkey Kong 3" arcade game,
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right when I started.
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But in Japan, they launched the Famicom.
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We got to see the games, which were really exciting
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'cause they seem like they looked like the same quality
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we had in the arcade.
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Of course, the design changed when it became the NES.
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It was really awesome from the beginning.
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So in 1985, we were dealing with the situation
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that the video game market had just crashed.
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There was really a lot of oversupply at retail.
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And so things were being heavily discounted.
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You would just walk through the mall
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and see these bins of closeouts of cartridges
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that consumers were really seeming to say
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that they were tired of it,
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that the games maybe didn't have enough diversity
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between different games.
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The over promising of the marketing
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was leading to things like "ET" came out
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and there was this huge folklore or urban legend
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that when it came out, that there was so much oversupply
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that it ended up going into a landfill
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somewhere in New Mexico.
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But actually I think not too long ago,
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someone actually dug them up to prove that it was true.
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And the retailers really had suffered
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from over investing in inventory and oversupply.
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And so the whole market just kind of had collapsed.
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It was at that point that we were trying to reenter
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with what we thought was clearly a better product,
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really coming in at a time when both the consumers
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and the retailers felt like video games
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had been a fad and it was kind of over.
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So our approach to kind of coming back
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into the home video market was,
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we decided to launch in New York only.
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Kind of biggest city,
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if-you-can-make-it-there type of thing.
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So we started in September of 1985
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in New York only, and really focused on a deluxe system
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that had the zapper and it had ROB the Robot
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before finally rolling out nationally
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in the end of '86, or Holiday '86.
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And at that time, when we launched nationally,
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we also had a Base Set, which included "Mario"
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and the Deluxe Set that we originally had.
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So ultimately we took advantage of that killer app
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with "Mario" for the national launch.
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Every game and the hardware came with this big poster.
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It had ROB's head.
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And surrounding it was a screenshot of every game
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divided into categories.
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We kept that poster in there for a long time,
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till probably the initial library
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had 15 titles plus the pack ins.
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Until we probably had over 30 titles,
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we continued to put that in.
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Another element that we put in was a card
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that actually emphasized the quality seal
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and that Nintendo guaranteed the quality of the product
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from both an entertainment value
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and the workmanship of the product.
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That quality seal at the time, my boss, Ron Judy
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he's like, "What could we do that would be more like
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the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval?
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And that Nintendo Quality Seal,
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it still appears on every box and on licensed products
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from lunchboxes to whatever.
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So that is something that stayed with Nintendo.
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So when the NES launched,
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the launch titles being "Duck Hunt" and "Gyromite."
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Those games were fun.
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Certainly took advantage of the accessories.
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And "Mario" was definitely a killer app.
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I really liked "NES Golf"
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'cause I had played that in the arcade version,
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but I also liked a little kind of puzzle type game
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called "Clu Clu Land."
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Another game with a sunglass wearing polar bear
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called "Ice Climber."
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A lot of people love "Clu Clu Land."
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"Clu Clu Land," where are you?
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[light hip hop music]
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When it came to trying to find out
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what you as consumers would think about the NES,
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we did a few different focus groups.
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I would sit behind the mirror
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and I was the only one who knew how to play.
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So I would have to come out
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and demonstrate the product to the kids.
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And the kids were age range from 8 to 12 or 8 to 14.
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They seemed interested, like they wanted to see.
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They wanted to see me demo the robot
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or the zapper and seemed to me, they were happy and excited.
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And then we went to New Jersey and one of those sessions,
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the Nintendo executive team came
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and watched from behind the glass as well.
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Did the same thing. And the kids are reacting.
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And some kid who was very unruly,
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he drew a picture of a joystick
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that looked like a penis and held it up to my face
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on the mirror, he said, "I know you're behind here."
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[laughing] Anyway, so the Nintendo executives come,
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they're watching the kids,
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the kids seem enthused, et cetera.
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And at the end they ask the moderator
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what he thinks about the chances for success.
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And he said, kids are always enthusiastic about a product.
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So that's not the best way to gauge it.
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And they said, well,
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what should we imagine that our success is?
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He said, well, I've never seen anyone go ahead and launch
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with this type of result.
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It was a little worrisome
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that what we were interpreting as positive,
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the moderator was interpreting as neutral at best.
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When the NES came out, even in New York,
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the retailers had really been burned
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through all of the close outs of the prior generation.
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So they were not very receptive to taking in the product.
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And that really was probably one of the more difficult goals
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was to get the retailers, to give it shelf space,
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to have them not be concerned that they won't want to have
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a lot of markdowns or be stuck with product
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that they couldn't sell, that they had taken a risk on.
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So it was really one of the bigger challenges
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and trying to get them to include the NES
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in our advertising for the holidays.
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So the kinds of retailers
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that we had to work with in the early days,
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especially since what had happened in the prior generation,
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a lot of toys stores and that type of retailer
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were really concerned about working with video games.
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So a lot of people these days
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look at that iconic imagery,
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the way that packaging is that looks old fashioned,
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like pixels, like graph paper, the way we named things,
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we made sure not to call it a video game system,
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that of thing.
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So when it came to these challenges
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of trying to get away from the prior generation,
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there were challenges as related to retail.
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My challenges were more related to kind of make sure
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that the consumer and the parents who were purchasing
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didn't think that it was just more of the same.
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A group of us went back, there was a group of five or six,
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and then they brought like five more people back.
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And, living in temporary apartments, that kind of thing
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in New Jersey and renting cars and vans and running out
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and trying to install these big ROB displays at retail
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and to deliver product to them.
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And there were times when, they went to the Bronx
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with a truckload of product and a display.
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While they're loading in the display,
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people are looting the car, it was crazy.
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And back in 1985, New York was much less safe
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than it is today.
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So, park the car, get the wheels taken off.
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Not only was it difficult to get retailers
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or businesspeople to take a risk
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on putting a video game system and cartridges on the shelf.
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But parents had seen that they bought these games
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for their kids and they didn't even play them.
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Parents thought, I am not spending more money
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on a video game when you play it for 10 minutes
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and then you're not interested.
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We felt like we really did have a better product,
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a product that wouldn't disappoint.
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And we've wanted to put all efforts into making sure
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the consumer felt like they got their money's worth
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and that they would want to buy another game
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when we introduced more software.
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Some of the things that we did to that end
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were we called it the Nintendo Entertainment System.
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And the advertising really focused
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on the whole family playing together.
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It's looks pretty corny today, but it's a 1980s family
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and the dad is playing,
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and the mom is excited about playing, and two kids.
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And that type of advertising and positioning
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was the way that we went.
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Also putting ROB the Robot first
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in the sale of the NES or Nintendo Entertainment System,
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really gave a point of differentiation
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and made it look like it was more futuristic.
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And I think we also want to make sure
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that we would depend on the bug factor,
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which we called kids bugging their parents to get it,
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but that the parent would see that this was something
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that truly was new and different
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and would be a good investment for the whole family.
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I think in the early days,
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making sure that we weren't associated
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with what had gone on before, that these video games
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that were just simple blips
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and used a lot of licenses like "ET,"
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like other major sports or movies, entertainment.
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They would have a picture from the actual movie,
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a real person playing tennis on the cover.
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And then you would open
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and it would just basically be advanced "Kong."
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You'd look at the package and then you would play the game
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and it'd be a complete disconnect.
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So at the time the packaging that we created
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to make sure people didn't experience disappointment
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between the trimmings, if you will, and the actual software
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was really made on graph paper.
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It was supposed to represent computer graphics.
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It's quite blocky and it's kind of iconic today.
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People really see it as retro, but the whole purpose was
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that we didn't want to show, beautiful illustrations
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or photographs of real things on the packaging
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and then have people say, this game is nothing like this.
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So if anything, we kind of undersold
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in order to continue with this consumer satisfaction need
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and not wanting to ever disappoint.
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So all kids seemed enthusiastic to us
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in the focus groups, but the experts told us
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not to expect too much.
256
00:13:32.040 --> 00:13:34.890
We used that in thinking, jeez,
257
00:13:34.890 --> 00:13:37.460
we really are going to have to make sure
258
00:13:37.460 --> 00:13:41.640
that they think that we present this as new and different
259
00:13:41.640 --> 00:13:44.330
things like calling the games, game packs
260
00:13:44.330 --> 00:13:47.540
and the entertainment system.
261
00:13:47.540 --> 00:13:51.540
And coming up with ROB, your Robotic Operating Buddy.
262
00:13:51.540 --> 00:13:54.420
We had a lot of the nomenclature,
263
00:13:54.420 --> 00:13:57.410
anything just from the idea of using the word cartridge
264
00:13:57.410 --> 00:13:59.340
was something we didn't want to use.
265
00:13:59.340 --> 00:14:01.960
So we really tried to come up with ways
266
00:14:01.960 --> 00:14:06.400
about demonstrating and visually representing the product
267
00:14:06.400 --> 00:14:09.160
that was going to make them understand
268
00:14:09.160 --> 00:14:11.640
that this wasn't what they had seen before.
269
00:14:11.640 --> 00:14:14.100
So one of the tactics we used to make sure
270
00:14:14.100 --> 00:14:17.010
kids could get their hands on the system
271
00:14:17.010 --> 00:14:19.430
and actually see it and experience it,
272
00:14:19.430 --> 00:14:21.530
that it was something new and different
273
00:14:21.530 --> 00:14:26.300
was we did grassroots marketing at mall tours.
274
00:14:26.300 --> 00:14:31.110
So we booked these malls around the greater New York area.
275
00:14:31.110 --> 00:14:34.070
And we would go in and set up on Friday night
276
00:14:34.070 --> 00:14:38.490
and through the weekend we would have the system set up
277
00:14:38.490 --> 00:14:42.360
and interesting cabinets, and a big screen,
278
00:14:42.360 --> 00:14:46.940
which at the time like a 40" big screen was a big deal.
279
00:14:46.940 --> 00:14:49.040
Little platform and a big screen.
280
00:14:49.040 --> 00:14:53.250
And on the big screen, we would play "NES Baseball."
281
00:14:53.250 --> 00:14:56.650
And we had some stars from the Mets
282
00:14:56.650 --> 00:15:00.360 line:15%
come out and play against the kids.
283
00:15:00.360 --> 00:15:04.820 line:15%
So they would create a line and get to step up and play.
284
00:15:04.820 --> 00:15:07.240
And so the two celebrities
285
00:15:07.240 --> 00:15:10.600
that we were able to contract with, one was Ron Darling
286
00:15:10.600 --> 00:15:13.917
from the Mets who was really a Playboy kind of guy,
287
00:15:16.420 --> 00:15:20.190
at the time was very well known and did a lot of promotion.
288
00:15:20.190 --> 00:15:22.660
And another guy named Mookie Wilson,
289
00:15:22.660 --> 00:15:24.610
And Mookie had a son named Preston,
290
00:15:24.610 --> 00:15:27.080
and he would also come to the mall tour.
291
00:15:27.080 --> 00:15:30.380
So sometimes he was the most enthusiastic kid
292
00:15:30.380 --> 00:15:32.350
and he probably also know how to play the games,
293
00:15:32.350 --> 00:15:35.500
the best of anybody by the time we were done.
294
00:15:35.500 --> 00:15:40.380
But I remember going to a mall out in Long Island
295
00:15:40.380 --> 00:15:45.380
where the mall manager, she just didn't want us there.
296
00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.090
So she put us like in the basement, in the corner.
297
00:15:48.090 --> 00:15:51.943
And she, and I had an all out war over,
298
00:15:52.850 --> 00:15:54.959
we had booked this promotion,
299
00:15:54.959 --> 00:15:57.967
but she didn't want anything to do with video games
300
00:15:57.967 --> 00:16:01.880
and the negative influence that they would have.
301
00:16:01.880 --> 00:16:05.140
So she wanted to hide us in the corner.
302
00:16:05.140 --> 00:16:06.590
But it was a way of getting out there
303
00:16:06.590 --> 00:16:08.580
and getting people to see it and play it
304
00:16:08.580 --> 00:16:13.580
and see that it was better than a generation before.
305
00:16:13.970 --> 00:16:15.790
And it certainly worked in terms of
306
00:16:15.790 --> 00:16:18.960
kids definitely wanted to ask for it for Christmas.
307
00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:20.970
And hopefully parents liked it too,
308
00:16:20.970 --> 00:16:23.030
and saw that it would be fun.
309
00:16:23.030 --> 00:16:25.130
So the team that was back in New York,
310
00:16:25.130 --> 00:16:27.850
because it was pretty small, I think in total,
311
00:16:27.850 --> 00:16:29.660
there might've been 10 or 12 people,
312
00:16:29.660 --> 00:16:30.853
but when we got to the weekend
313
00:16:30.853 --> 00:16:32.980
that we were going to actually launch
314
00:16:32.980 --> 00:16:36.610
and the product was going to go out to retail,
315
00:16:36.610 --> 00:16:39.910
night that it came in and we were ready to go.
316
00:16:39.910 --> 00:16:44.910
We had Ron Judy and Bruce Lowry was the VP of sales,
317
00:16:45.450 --> 00:16:49.820
Mr. Arakawa our president and Howard Lincoln, our senior VP
318
00:16:49.820 --> 00:16:54.820
were all back there with us and we loaded up the truck
319
00:16:54.860 --> 00:16:57.830
in the warehouse and opened a bottle of champagne
320
00:16:57.830 --> 00:17:00.560
that we drank out of styrofoam cups. [laughing]
321
00:17:00.560 --> 00:17:02.530
And we were in New Jersey.
322
00:17:02.530 --> 00:17:05.180
And off went the truck for delivery.
323
00:17:05.180 --> 00:17:07.120
So the next morning, a few of us went
324
00:17:07.120 --> 00:17:09.360
and stood outside of the FAO Schwarz.
325
00:17:09.360 --> 00:17:11.110
The system was all set up.
326
00:17:11.110 --> 00:17:13.150
And we waited for people to come in
327
00:17:13.150 --> 00:17:14.130
and make that first sale.
328
00:17:14.130 --> 00:17:16.990
So someone comes in and they not only buy the system,
329
00:17:16.990 --> 00:17:20.190
but they buy like every game. And it was so excite-
330
00:17:20.190 --> 00:17:22.540
I was like, oh, they're, they're buying it,
331
00:17:22.540 --> 00:17:25.070
they're buying it. You know?
332
00:17:25.070 --> 00:17:29.330
Later we found out that it was like a Japanese publisher
333
00:17:29.330 --> 00:17:33.770
who came in and bought it for samples for their business.
334
00:17:33.770 --> 00:17:37.200
Later, after New York, we went to LA
335
00:17:37.200 --> 00:17:38.980
and we use those same tactics.
336
00:17:38.980 --> 00:17:40.690
We did mall tours.
337
00:17:40.690 --> 00:17:42.380
We were starting to prepare
338
00:17:42.380 --> 00:17:44.860
for how we were going to do a national launch.
339
00:17:44.860 --> 00:17:48.580
It's tough 'cause we were a pretty lean team.
340
00:17:48.580 --> 00:17:51.590
And at the time a guy named Don Kingsborough
341
00:17:51.590 --> 00:17:54.650
had launched a company called Worlds of Wonder
342
00:17:54.650 --> 00:17:58.010
with Teddy Ruxpin was their big product line.
343
00:17:58.010 --> 00:18:01.720
And he was someone that we knew from the business.
344
00:18:01.720 --> 00:18:04.300
And Mr. Arakawa really liked him.
345
00:18:04.300 --> 00:18:07.920
And he and Ron Judy talked to Don about,
346
00:18:07.920 --> 00:18:10.870
maybe there was a way that we could use
347
00:18:10.870 --> 00:18:13.470
their distribution process
348
00:18:13.470 --> 00:18:16.690
to get our products into stores nationwide.
349
00:18:16.690 --> 00:18:20.140
At the time, there were a lot of regional chains
350
00:18:20.140 --> 00:18:22.850
as opposed to national chains that we have now,
351
00:18:22.850 --> 00:18:25.530
like Target or Walmart, that kind of thing.
352
00:18:25.530 --> 00:18:29.040
We decided to use their rep firm.
353
00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:32.870
And we went to a meeting, I believe it was before a CES.
354
00:18:32.870 --> 00:18:35.750
And we went to this meeting to introduce them to the product
355
00:18:35.750 --> 00:18:37.560
and show them what it was like.
356
00:18:37.560 --> 00:18:40.490
And I know I was demoing the product
357
00:18:40.490 --> 00:18:42.910
and that they were gonna have this big opportunity
358
00:18:42.910 --> 00:18:47.400
to add this Nintendo line along with Teddy Ruxpin
359
00:18:47.400 --> 00:18:50.320
to take out to retailers.
360
00:18:50.320 --> 00:18:54.100
And many of them had also already been through the fall
361
00:18:54.100 --> 00:18:57.300
of the video game industry and how challenging it was
362
00:18:57.300 --> 00:18:59.440
when all the accounts want to return the product
363
00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:01.430
or deal with markdowns, et cetera,
364
00:19:01.430 --> 00:19:04.340
they were not enthusiastic.
365
00:19:04.340 --> 00:19:07.260
And they were actually downright disrespectful
366
00:19:07.260 --> 00:19:08.800
during the meeting.
367
00:19:08.800 --> 00:19:12.650
And so Don [indistinct], he got up
368
00:19:12.650 --> 00:19:17.370
and he essentially yelled at them about their disrespect.
369
00:19:17.370 --> 00:19:22.230
This whole sales team of like 50 people in this room
370
00:19:22.230 --> 00:19:23.950
are basically saying, [laughing]
371
00:19:23.950 --> 00:19:25.740
we don't want to sell your product.
372
00:19:25.740 --> 00:19:29.590
But they went on to, of course, have great success.
373
00:19:29.590 --> 00:19:32.650
And many of them stayed with Nintendo
374
00:19:32.650 --> 00:19:36.480
after Worlds of Wonder wasn't really in business anymore.
375
00:19:36.480 --> 00:19:38.620
Or the Teddy Ruxpin fad was over.
376
00:19:38.620 --> 00:19:40.670
They continued to have a good business
377
00:19:40.670 --> 00:19:42.363
with Nintendo for many years.
378
00:19:47.910 --> 00:19:50.340
Since my job was marketing communications,
379
00:19:50.340 --> 00:19:55.270
doing things like advertising, PR, trying to get stories,
380
00:19:55.270 --> 00:19:56.610
that was very difficult.
381
00:19:56.610 --> 00:19:59.053
Trying to get stories about Nintendo.
382
00:20:03.070 --> 00:20:05.250
We even did an event in LA
383
00:20:05.250 --> 00:20:08.420
where we had a whole bunch of kids celebrities come,
384
00:20:08.420 --> 00:20:10.840
like at the time Jason Bateman
385
00:20:10.840 --> 00:20:14.150
was a kid celebrity and his sister.
386
00:20:14.150 --> 00:20:18.310
And we had all these people, Wil Wheaton
387
00:20:18.310 --> 00:20:20.320
from "Stand By Me" at the time.
388
00:20:20.320 --> 00:20:23.620
And even with that type of what we considered
389
00:20:23.620 --> 00:20:27.120
kid starpower, we had a hard time
390
00:20:27.120 --> 00:20:29.560
getting pickup on public relations,
391
00:20:29.560 --> 00:20:30.930
getting people to talk about it.
392
00:20:30.930 --> 00:20:33.853
As we launched nationally,
393
00:20:35.659 --> 00:20:38.130
it became something where you would see it
394
00:20:38.130 --> 00:20:39.780
in your personal life.
395
00:20:39.780 --> 00:20:44.780
I think you feel the success when, as a regular consumer,
396
00:20:45.350 --> 00:20:46.580
you walk into a store
397
00:20:46.580 --> 00:20:48.780
and you really see your work right there.
398
00:20:48.780 --> 00:20:49.883
It's on the screen.
399
00:20:51.960 --> 00:20:53.780
It just legitimizes it so much.
400
00:20:53.780 --> 00:20:57.490
And it made me feel like not only were we successful,
401
00:20:57.490 --> 00:20:58.627
but it was gonna be a big thing
402
00:20:58.627 --> 00:21:01.140
and that it was gonna be around a long time.
403
00:21:01.140 --> 00:21:05.160
So once we launched nationally with the NES,
404
00:21:05.160 --> 00:21:09.770
the company was really growing and started changing.
405
00:21:09.770 --> 00:21:13.550
The marketing department went from two or three people
406
00:21:13.550 --> 00:21:16.640
to dividing into different departments
407
00:21:16.640 --> 00:21:21.640
and having many more layers, people with more experience.
408
00:21:22.210 --> 00:21:25.170
We ended up forming our publishing division
409
00:21:25.170 --> 00:21:29.840
and I got asked to move and start "Nintendo Power Magazine,"
410
00:21:29.840 --> 00:21:34.840
which was an outgrowth of the Fun Club Newsletter.
411
00:21:35.070 --> 00:21:39.230
We decided to make a full fledged magazine.
412
00:21:39.230 --> 00:21:41.543
But there were other things that changed also.
413
00:21:42.490 --> 00:21:44.700
At the senior level, Ron Judy left
414
00:21:44.700 --> 00:21:47.010
and went to start Nintendo in Europe.
415
00:21:47.010 --> 00:21:49.400
And Peter Main came on board.
416
00:21:49.400 --> 00:21:51.390
He was a seasoned marketer
417
00:21:51.390 --> 00:21:53.550
that Mr. Arakawa knew from Canada.
418
00:21:53.550 --> 00:21:55.070
Bob Thompson, that I mentioned,
419
00:21:55.070 --> 00:21:59.010
our customer service department, became huge.
420
00:21:59.010 --> 00:22:02.260
And we founded Game Counseling, Customer Service.
421
00:22:02.260 --> 00:22:06.110
And we had hundreds of people in that area.
422
00:22:06.110 --> 00:22:09.360
Areas like licensing.
423
00:22:09.360 --> 00:22:12.670
When we started licensing other companies to make software,
424
00:22:12.670 --> 00:22:17.050
that area was incredibly important to Nintendo.
425
00:22:17.050 --> 00:22:20.840
And to support that we had have a huge testing group
426
00:22:20.840 --> 00:22:22.670
that would test all the games
427
00:22:22.670 --> 00:22:27.670
and make sure the content met Nintendo's criteria,
428
00:22:27.820 --> 00:22:29.960
and made sure that the programs themselves
429
00:22:29.960 --> 00:22:33.390
didn't have any bugs or any glitches in them.
430
00:22:33.390 --> 00:22:36.500
So that became a huge group of people.
431
00:22:36.500 --> 00:22:40.770
So, really during the mid and late '80s,
432
00:22:40.770 --> 00:22:43.670
the company really grew.
433
00:22:43.670 --> 00:22:45.680
Maybe it just started looking a lot more
434
00:22:45.680 --> 00:22:49.840
like a lot of other companies, but definitely
435
00:22:50.990 --> 00:22:55.110
it grew by leaps and bounds at that time.
436
00:22:55.110 --> 00:22:59.610
So along with all of the pack ins, at some point
437
00:22:59.610 --> 00:23:03.030
we shifted to offering a newsletter
438
00:23:03.030 --> 00:23:05.390
and it grew so quickly,
439
00:23:05.390 --> 00:23:07.840
people wanting to get this newsletter,
440
00:23:07.840 --> 00:23:09.360
that by the time we had the issue
441
00:23:09.360 --> 00:23:11.750 line:15%
called the "Punch-Out!!" issue,
442
00:23:11.750 --> 00:23:15.600 line:15%
we had about 600,000 subscribers.
443
00:23:15.600 --> 00:23:18.430
So it was eating up a lot of marketing budget
444
00:23:18.430 --> 00:23:23.400
to mail out this newsletter, create it, print it, mail it.
445
00:23:23.400 --> 00:23:27.314
And Mr. Arakawa had seen that in Japan,
446
00:23:27.314 --> 00:23:31.270
publishing about video games had grown
447
00:23:31.270 --> 00:23:33.830
and become its own kind of category.
448
00:23:33.830 --> 00:23:36.650
And he wanted to do that in the US too.
449
00:23:36.650 --> 00:23:40.590
So he asked me if I would consider
450
00:23:40.590 --> 00:23:43.040
taking on this publishing world
451
00:23:44.135 --> 00:23:46.060
as a director of publications.
452
00:23:46.060 --> 00:23:48.330
Then we started "Nintendo Power"
453
00:23:48.330 --> 00:23:51.880
working with a co-publisher in Japan
454
00:23:51.880 --> 00:23:56.260
who really understood how to take things like screenshots
455
00:23:56.260 --> 00:23:58.190
and make all those cool maps
456
00:23:58.190 --> 00:24:00.603
to show people how to play the games.
457
00:24:02.430 --> 00:24:05.427
That was a really fun role for me.
458
00:24:05.427 --> 00:24:10.140
"Nintendo Power" continued for, I think, almost 25 years.
459
00:24:10.140 --> 00:24:13.240
So with "Nintendo Power," one of the big purposes
460
00:24:13.240 --> 00:24:17.010
was to make sure, again, that people liked the games,
461
00:24:17.010 --> 00:24:20.010
make sure that they were satisfied
462
00:24:20.010 --> 00:24:23.110
and they would always be ready to buy the next game,
463
00:24:23.110 --> 00:24:24.810
felt it was worth their money.
464
00:24:24.810 --> 00:24:28.660
So we would show a walk through of the whole game
465
00:24:28.660 --> 00:24:31.670
in "Nintendo Power" or a Player's Guide.
466
00:24:31.670 --> 00:24:33.800
But there was one policy which was,
467
00:24:33.800 --> 00:24:37.640
you don't show the final boss or the final scene.
468
00:24:37.640 --> 00:24:40.770
And the reason is, and I think I recall
469
00:24:40.770 --> 00:24:43.480
that Mr. Miyamoto was a big driver of this
470
00:24:43.480 --> 00:24:46.590
was that's the payoff for all your hard work.
471
00:24:46.590 --> 00:24:50.530
You spent all this investment of playing this game
472
00:24:50.530 --> 00:24:52.320
and getting to the end.
473
00:24:52.320 --> 00:24:57.280
And to not let the consumer and the player
474
00:24:57.280 --> 00:25:01.900
really enjoy the success of that final moment,
475
00:25:01.900 --> 00:25:05.990
it was felt like, let's just keep that for them.
476
00:25:05.990 --> 00:25:09.210
So when I think of the influenced Nintendo had on people,
477
00:25:09.210 --> 00:25:12.450
probably the area that I am most proud of
478
00:25:12.450 --> 00:25:15.120
is when you think of "Nintendo Power"
479
00:25:15.120 --> 00:25:19.270
and the millions of readers of "Nintendo Power,"
480
00:25:19.270 --> 00:25:22.400
the idea that we were actually getting kids to read
481
00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:26.030
and getting them to study these things like these maps
482
00:25:27.723 --> 00:25:29.730
and the detail, and to take something
483
00:25:29.730 --> 00:25:32.250
that they loved as much as playing the game
484
00:25:32.250 --> 00:25:34.350
and then want to really learn about it.
485
00:25:34.350 --> 00:25:36.670
So just think how much you have to learn
486
00:25:36.670 --> 00:25:38.850
when you're playing a game and how much
487
00:25:40.080 --> 00:25:43.670
people enjoyed reading and poring over these things.
488
00:25:43.670 --> 00:25:46.180
I think it created
489
00:25:47.037 --> 00:25:51.570
a mindset amongst those people
490
00:25:51.570 --> 00:25:53.760
who were involved at that time as players,
491
00:25:53.760 --> 00:25:58.020
as kids that was hopefully really valuable
492
00:25:58.020 --> 00:26:00.070
and their whole life to think
493
00:26:00.070 --> 00:26:02.300
if they wanted to know about something,
494
00:26:02.300 --> 00:26:04.880
they would go read about it, or study about it.
495
00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:08.710
And that they knew that they could expand their knowledge
496
00:26:09.680 --> 00:26:12.830
through additional information and learning.
497
00:26:12.830 --> 00:26:14.410
So I think that
498
00:26:14.410 --> 00:26:17.593
that's the coolest contribution from my side.