Nintendo + Apple

The connection - or rather, similarity - between Nintendo and Apple is incredible.

Here are a few choice quotes from Osamu Inoue's Nintendo Magic, one of the better Nintendo books from the last few years:

"I think they have a lot in common with us in that we both make unique, interesting products that surprise people. I really respect and think highly of Nintendo. I myself own a Gamecube and a Wii." -Phil Schiller, 2008

Apple takes pride in its software development, bringing new experiences to its customers on the twin pillars of hardware and software. On that count, it's certainly not unlike Nintendo. [Nintendo president Satoru] Iwata himself agrees: "We want people to be surprised, and we want people to call our approach unique. That's what people say about Apple, too.

It's cherry-picking the numbers, but if you stack up quarterly sales numbers from 2005 through 2008 the lines are identical. Apple's are higher by a steady margin of about $3 billion, but the lines are identical in shape:

That's Apple on top, in black, and Nintendo below in grey, and me creepily peering around from behind the book

The quotes are endless about how either company wants to surprise people, or focuses on R&D heavily, or holds employees accountable, or how execs use each other's products, or has been to the brink of death and back, or has millions of people waiting with baited breath before product announcements.

My personal favorite common factor about the two companies is how both reach into their back catalogues of experiences and bring them back in unexpected ways. Roughly 48% of all media coverage of the iPad has referenced the Newton (a prototype PDA from 1993, pretty far ahead of its time). Other recurring themes include the Macintosh and iMac unveils, but you'd have to find a dedicated Apple fan to get you more examples than that. 

I can give you some Nintendo ones, though. The 3DS is, in a sense, a refinement of the Virtual Boy that came about once the technology improved. Nintendo has some product failures, such as Virtual Boy, just like Apple had the entire 1990s and the Motorola ROKR. Products aside, Nintendo brings back some small details in very subtle ways. Check out this little tune, which was bundled with a DSiWare animation app called Flipnote Studio:

Seems innocent enough, until you find that someone snuck a very similar tune into a secret level of Super Mario 3D Land:

And it turns out that these little tricksters have a long history of doing this stuff. If you owned a GameCube, you may not have ever known that the calming ambient system menu music is actually borrowed from a Famicom (NES) accessory that never made it to the US:

Speaking of hardware that never left Japan, learning about Satellaview blew my mind. It was a SNES addon with a satellite modem that let players download small segments of Nintendo games and even play along with live broadcast audio tracks, creating a sort of Legend of Zelda-meets-radio drama kind of feel. 

But the "download small segments of Nintendo games" is the big thing here. New bits of content for games like Link to the Past, F-Zero and Dr. Mario were created exclusively for the service. So, in effect, Nintendo was pushing the boundaries of what we now know as downloadable content and episodic gaming. In 1995. Here's a commercial, and even though it's in Japanese, you can get a basic idea of what's going on:

So in one corner you have Apple, which tried to take the computer mobile nearly 20 years ago with Newton and failed because the technology wasn't ready. And in the other you have Nintendo, which tried to reinvent gaming by way of connectivity over 15 years ago and failed because the technology wasn't ready (at least on the small scale of Japan, which didn't have terrestrial Internet in 1995). The ideas were always there, but the means weren't.

After being an Apple user for some five years, and having read Steve's bio, I'm finally coming around to understanding why someone would be an Apple fan, someone who follows the company out of something more than attachment to the products themselves, someone who sticks by in thick and thin.

I'm understanding it because I'm the same way with Nintendo, a very similar company.

Postscript
In all fairness, Nintendo didn't invent the gaming modem. The Sega Channel beat Nintendo to the punch in 1994, but the precedent for failed gaming modems goes back way further than I ever thought. 

In fact, attempts at connected gaming go all the way back to the Atari 2600. If Wikipedia is to be believed, that failed attempt became the eventual core technology of AOL.

If Nintendo had to be 'first' at something in the field, it was the use of a broadcast satellite, although even the Golden Age-era consoles used cable TV to achieve much the same effect.

(On an aside from my aside, Ed Rotberg, the creator of Battlezone, even told me that gameplay analytics were thought of at Golden Age-era Atari but the machines needed modems to phone home. Does the gaming industry have any ideas that weren't originally thought up in the 1970s?)

And while I'm doing the errors-and-corrections segment, I may as well admit that the 48% statistic about Newton is totally made up.

Playlist: Catching up on all of 2011, pretty much

I haven't told the world what I'm playing, reading and listening to since March of last year!

Ack!

Let's get down to it:

Spotify 
I should mention Spotify first, since the service is a decent music player but it's really an amazing platform for me to shout out my musical opinions and tastes to the people who may want to know about it. I haven't really been able to share music with my high school amigos since high school, thanks to the inevitable demise of our LAN parties, too much laziness to run FTP or other filesharing servers, and the increasing difficulty of using common desktop apps to send files back and forth.

Within a week or two of being converted to Spotify, Aroon, Alex and I basically got to play catch-up on several years' of diverging music collections. It's really good to be coming back together. If you're not using Spotify for its social features, it's because you don't have a taste in music.

All that said, I'm listening to:

Kenichiro Nishihara, Life - Mostly misses, especially compared to Humming Jazz, but don't miss Now I Know.

Funky DL, Blackcurrent Jazz 2 - DL's best since The 4th Quarter. Fantastic from start to finish. Don't miss Le Jazz Courant Noir. This is already the soundtrack to the rest of my time here in the US.

Nujabes, Spiritual State - You already know what I think.

Chris Botti Live in Boston - Sometimes you just need a little jazz.

Gaming

Forza Motorspot 3 (yes, 3) - So good that I switched away from GT5. Can't wait to get my hands on 4.

Yakuza 4 - I loved 3, so no surprise I enjoyed this one. There was less to surprise me in this one, and no new environments, but the enhancements over 3 made it worth the run.

Uncharted 3 - Personally, my Best Game of 2011. I started playing and next thing I knew Aroon was planted on the couch watching the action. Then, next thing I knew, we started over and Nick planted himself on the couch too. This is what a blockbuster - game, movie, whatever - should be.

Battlefield 3 - Actually really enjoyed the singleplayer campaign, if only because it's marginally less ridiculous than Modern Warfare. I really should've paid the $10 for multiplayer access.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Hats off to Eidos Montreal. They pulled off what every studio promising a big reboot promises, except they actually delivered. I adore the atmosphere, the world, the attention to detail. Looking at the augmentation, or the hacking mini-game, or the linearity, and it isn't classic DX. But the spirit of the narrative - the poverty, the paranoia, the way that globalization gives way to corporate rule - is completely and satisfyingly present. Can't wait for the inevitable sequel, and I'm just fine if it takes five years to execute again.

Donkey Kong Country Returns - As a trip down memory lane, certainly better done than most Nintendo platformers that aren't Mario. As a platformer, however, waggle controls are annoying and disappointing. And the cartoony, low-poly look that the Wii is known for doesn't do DKC justice. It's worth 2 or 3 hours, but from that you've scratched the itch and you can put it away.

Sonic Generations - I'd been hankering for a good Sonic so badly that I bought Sonic CD and gave it my first whirl ever since I never had a Sega CD growing up. Then along came Generations and - holy moly - it's good! A good 3D Sonic! Hallelujah!

Skip

Tropico 4 - Like a Zynga game but with a bad interface. Shudder.

Kirby's Epic Yarn - A game that showed incredible promise on its art style alone turns out to be a ho-hum platformer. I'd let my kids play it, if I had any. But I don't have kids, so skip it I did.

Final Fantasy XIII - Not worth the 60 hours it'd take to appreciate this game. After 5, I still have no idea what a fal'Cie is and I hate every character except the awesome black dude with the 'fro. Still, my hat goes off to the people who implemented the seriously beautiful motion graphics. Those little details were fantastic.

Reading

Steve Jobs' bio is worth the read.

Blake Recommends: the Lightning Round

Holy moly, school hit me hard. I haven't updated what I've been consuming since last summer. Well then, it's time to catch up, and to do so quickly, I'm going to borrow a concept coined by my dear friend and colleague Adam Wright: the Instareview.

The Instareview is almost like a haiku in that it conveys a lot of information, or one very poignant idea, using a minimum of words. Hopefully, it'll take less time than dilly-dallying in the details and the track listings and the analysis, but still give a good idea of how I really feel about something.

Let's get to trying this out!

Music

Cee-Lo Green, The Lady Killer - Good all the way through, not just 'Fuck You.' A classic? Maybe not.

DJ Deckstream, Deckstream Soundtracks 2 - Like a gourmet steak from a fusion place: weird first taste, but definitely meaty with a great aftertaste. On heavy rotation.

Jasmine, Dreamin - The only ever time I've 'pulled an Aroon' and played one song, on repeat, for hours on end. 

Kenichiro Nishihara, Humming Jazz - In a post-Nujabes world, there's a gap in Japan's hip-hop, and Nishihara comes closer than anyone else to filling it. Don't miss the collab with Substantial.

modal soul classics vol. 2, DEDICATED TO NUJABES - Speaking of Nujabes, his old crew released an album to say goodbye. You can hear the celebration of life in some tracks and the hurt in others. 

Kero One, Kinetic World - An album so DIY, you can hear the Garageband in it. (But I'm still psyched for his next one, or a live show).

Lupe Fiasco, Lasers - 18 tracks of some overproduced rapper (feat. Lupe Fiasco).

Passion Pit, Manners - I admit it. I'm hooked. Love these guys. Next thing you know I'll be driving a Volkswagen, using Apple products and watching comedies on ABC. Wait a second...

Think Twice, With a Loop and Some String - Half of Specifics does his 'own' album, half of which is collab with Specifics MC Golden Boy anyway. Who knew Canadian hip-hop was so consistently good?

Games

Yakuza 3 - Are you a Japanophile? Did you like Shenmue? Do you like some really good narrative in your games? The more you answered yes, the more you should play this game. I'm biased, but it was my game of 2010.

Gran Turismo 5 - It's Pokemon with cars. BRB, gotta keep catching 'em all.

DJ Hero 2 - Everything I, the boy who fantasizes of DJing, wanted 1 to be. Devastated there won't be a 3.

Halo: Reach - Bungie knows how to stay ahead of the curve. 

StarCraft II - I'm too white to play this game. I'm also too white to play football. Doesn't stop me from loving watching either one as a sport.

You Don't Know Jack - Best trivia game ever gets best modern revival ever.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - First time I've ever said 'meh' to a Mario game. What happened?

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future - First time I've ever said 'meh' to a Layton game. What happened?

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Now's a great time to sell your Activision stock.

Red Dead Redemption - Objectively, extremely well made, but I can't get it out of my head that this is GTA4 with horsies. Sorry, Rockstar SD.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - The cool kids call it AssBro for short. And they stick to the extremely addictive multiplayer mode.

Movies

The Social Network - This movie speaks my language: specifically, techie startup business technobabble written by Aaron Sorkin. If you're me, you'll love it.

Sucker Punch - What's the word for "a mess of messes"?

Pirate Radio - Every bit as cool as 60s/70s Britain.

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OK, so it's not as good as Adam's work, but man, I had a lot of pop culture to get off my chest there.

RIP Music Games, 2005-2010

Today, I finished DJ Hero 2.

(Yeah, I'm way behind on my gaming backlog, school is utterly demolishing me lately). 

It was the best music game I've ever played. When Guitar Hero came out, it was widely loved for how it enables 'power fantasy' - the ability to suddenly be awesome at guitar, without all the work and calluses. I always, always wanted that for turntables, a symbol of the music that more appealed to me, whether hip-hop or electronic. Getting to imaginarily play the part of DJ was as appealing to me as electric guitar is to white people.

DJ Hero came out in 2009 and lived up to the promise, just. It was a flawed game, a 3-out-of-5 in most reviews, but I was just happy that the thing existed. But DJ Hero 2 seriously tightened up the graphics on level 3 - better visuals, yes, but more gameplay depth, more difficulty depth, and much better music. Out of all the tracks I played, I'd only give about 2 tracks less than a 3 out of 5. Most were very good, and a large number were seriously awesome. This game is, objectively, a 4 out of 5. 

For me? Subjectively? A 5 out of 5. I'm ready to buy this game for good and keep it on the shelf forever. I love it.

But sadly, today was also the day that Activision put the final nail in the coffin. Its entire music game business is done, as are 500 employees, meaning no more Guitar Hero or DJ Hero. The train stops here. It's only shocking when viewed in light of statements from annual reports and conference as recent as two years ago: that the music genre was one of (only mildly paraphrasing here) "three pillars" of Activision's business.

Not that Activision is some sort of unique bad guy for getting out of the music games business. Harmonix (the geniuses who made this whole thing happen) was put on the block over the holidays and they've already begun shrinking. The only 'bad guy' move here was irrational overinvestment.

Anyway. It was truly a good run. Harmonix wowed and amazed us with the original Guitar Hero during the 2005 holiday season. Let's not forget that sensation of the first time we all played it. And let's face it: Rock Band was the superior product all throughout its fight with Guitar Hero, because it was Harmonix's baby. Activision was just along for the ride. 

Want proof? Look at the tie-ins when things started getting skinny. Activision looked at some spreadsheets and came back with some big, mass-market names: Metallica, Aerosmith, Van Halen. Harmonix dug into its heart, looked at the stars and came back with the trump card, the ultimate tie-in: The Beatles.

Activision was just along for the ride... until DJ Hero. Acti dug through its large organization, its celebrity Rolodex, and put together a new and original entry for a whole new set of gamers. And all the muscle that that development exercise built up was fully and satisfyingly flexed for DJH2. 

That was for the holiday of 2010. The whole genre has risen and fallen in five neat years. During that time there were some great moments for me, and for everyone I know who's played the genre. The first "oh holy wow, this is cool" moment. The axe battles with friends. The drunken band nights. The stage events. 

From here, plastic toy instruments will fade out of use but not out of existence. They'll start going for clearance at game shops, and then stores will refuse to buy used ones, and like the crazy gaming peripherals of our past they'll fade into closets and garage sales. But there are tens of millions of them out there, so they won't become eBay token rarities like some oldies from the 80s and 90s. 

So in ten years' time we'll all have old, incompatible plastic toy instruments in our closets and when nostalgia strikes we'll say, "Remember Guitar Hero?"

It was a really good run.

Games ARE art, see?!

I am totally not an art nut. I don't get it and don't connect with it.
But that has changed.

Last night, a gallery in Santa Monica opened a show of art inspired by
video games. It was a wide variety of takes on some really popular
franchises: Mario was his 8-bit self, or a wiry human plumber laboring
away under the sink. The Prince of Darkness was an evil version of
Katamari's prince.

Colors and styles were as varied as the stuff in any other California
gallery - but it was all in homage to a 30-year-old culture of games.
In writings in recent months about choosing to move forward with a
life in the gaming business, I've also realized, accepted and embraced
that gaming is -my- culture.

I found one work that resonated and came home with me. It's certainly
not beautiful, but it definitely evoked a reaction from me: laughter.
And art is meant to do that, right? It's absurd, but it will
eventually go up on a wall (probably in my next domicile post-grad),
so here's a preview: