Living a dream for some means hitting the game-winning homerun or taking the stage on Broadway. This weekend, I lived my dream when I visited the home of two of my idols, two of my mentors, two of my friends: Mario and Luigi. That's right, last Friday I went to the headquarters of Nintendo of America in Seattle with 20 other college journalists as part of Nintendo's first College Media Day. And it was sweeter than I could have ever imagined.
From the time we entered the main building, sights and sounds of the Nintendo universe surrounded us. Fighting off waves of orgasmic delight, I shuffled by display after display of video game lore: NES, SNES, GameBoy, even Virtual Boy. The wall of fame, featuring the front cover of every game to sell over a million copies, nearly reduced me to tears. But the real magic came as we were introduced to the localization team, the men who make Nintendo of America what it is today.
Because most software development for Nintendo is handled in Japan, when a game is prepared to enter the American market, it must be "localized." This process includes everything from changing the menus from Japanese to English to altering cultural references to things that an American audience will be able to understand. For instance, a sushi roll power-up means nothing to U.S. gamers, but a hamburger is something we can all sink our teeth into. As the team explains, some games like "Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker" require very little alteration, while some titles, like "Animal Crossing," need to be almost entirely rewritten.
No matter the level of involvement, the team takes its work very seriously. Throughout the day presenters and speakers made several comparisons to another branch of the entertainment industry--motion pictures. Over the past two decades the video game trade has grown to produce over $10 billion in revenue each year, a benchmark movies took nearly a century to reach. Both mediums want to tell a story, but in gaming, the difference is that patrons are not passive observers, but instead
active participants in an inter-
active landscape.
So what do these artisans have up their sleeves? Actually, a lot. This season will see the release of the next generation of
one of Nintendo's most popular franchises, "Mariokart." This new installment, "Double Dash," introduces a cooperative game play option, two new battle modes to complement the traditional version and a host of unlockable goodies. The key ingredient to the series' success remains the same--a classic cast of characters. This time racers partner up allowing one to do the driving while the other punches, hurls and slides the team to victory. A clean, sleek new look on the Gamecube comes with the ineffable control that has always been Nintendo's forte.
Also on the way for the holidays is the suped-up version of "1080°," the game that started the snowboard gaming frenzy back on the N64. Bringing a more realistic style to the genre, "1080°" has a polish that few others achieve. For handheld fans, two new titles will be debuting for the Gameboy Advance in the next month: "Mario and Luigi," a role playing game with a sense of humor and "Fire Emblem," one of Japan's most popular gaming franchises, in its first appearance stateside.
While these new titles are nothing short of impressive, what I will really carry away from my visit is the knowledge that there are people out there, in the "real world," who are as hopelessly addicted to video games as I am, and I know a lot of you are too. They have jobs and families, and they have game collections that rival some distributors. What is really important is that the interaction these individuals have with their visual and audio texts is nothing short of intellectual. Gaming, like reading or watching a movie, is an ability acquired through the understanding of themes, structures and nuances. Some people are lucky enough to call that a career, others of us will just have to call it what it is: an obsession.
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