Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

Well written and engaging. I wanted more of a deep dive but this was a good primer. Worth a read.

This was pretty good and had a nice overview of Nintendo's accomplishments as a company as well as some of their shortfalls for a balanced look into its successes and failures. The writer has a somewhat condescending writing style where he either thinks his audience or people outside of Nintendo are lacking a few braincells.

"Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America" is a delightful romp through the history of Nintendo's rise to dominance, from playing cards to Game & Watch to Donkey Kong to the console wars -- and its struggles along the way.I was a Nintendo fan almost from birth: Born in 1987, I came of game-playing age just about the time the SNES was released. Christmas 1996, when I received an N64 and a fresh copy of Super Mario 64, still goes down as my favorite Christmas ever. But GameCube would be the last Nintendo console that I'd purchase; I was turned off by the Wii, and I bought an Xbox 360 instead. With the Wii, Nintendo was seemingly turning their back on the hardcore gamers of the "D-pad generation" (as Ryan calls them), their most devoted fans and the ones who propelled Nintendo to success in the 80s and 90s. Why? Ryan explains this shift in strategy -- and many others -- in this book.In "Super Mario," we learn of Nintendo's business brilliance: the decision to convert an overflowing inventory of Radar Scope arcade cabinets into Donkey Kong cabinets, rather than building new cabinets, narrowly saving Nintendo's American business; the careful crafting of Mario and his image; Nintendo's iron grip on distribution and third-party developers; the devotion to "lateral thinking of seasoned technology" and avoidance of hardware arms races; and much, much more. But we also learn of Nintendo's failures: the Virtual Boy and a backward-looking adherence to cartridges, to name a few.We learn of Shigeru Miyamoto's wizardry and get a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of classic series like Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda, the different installments in those series, and the evolution of those series over time.And we get Jeff Ryan's take on the history of video games overall -- from the "joystick generation" to the "D-pad generation" to today's "motion generation" of casual gamers -- and where the industry might be heading in the future.If you're fascinated by video games, technology, and/or business strategy -- or if you're just a child of the 80s/90s looking to take a trip down memory lane -- you'll love "Super Mario." Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be in the basement digging through boxes to find my old SNES...

It is a fun easy read, but wished he went more in depth. Never stayed much in one topic. Interesting though.

As a child of the 1980's, some of my earliest memories are video game related. Christmas of 1987 will always be remembered as the year I was given my version of a Red Rider BB Gun...a Nintendo system, complete with Super Mario Bros. So in reality (and this sounds a little sad), I've known Mario as long as, or longer than, some of my closest friends.They say never judge a book by its cover, but as soon as I saw the cover art for "Super Mario", I knew I was going to love it. Maybe I was just getting a little wistful for the days of 8-bit graphics, but I had high hopes for this book before I opened the cover. And it roundly exceeded my expectations. I thought I knew about Nintendo's history, but from the very beginning, it was clear there was a great deal I didn't know. The author does an outstanding job of chronicling Nintendo (and Mario's) rise to power over the years.For all its success, Nintendo has its share of failures, and I was happy to see the author give them their share of attention. I never like when a book like this reads like a commercial or propaganda, and this most certainly didn't. Mr. Ryan is obviously a fan of Nintendo (he admits this early on...and I don't think you could write a book like this if you weren't a fan), but I never felt like he was gushing.Lastly, I really enjoyed the author's writing style. The pacing was good, and he mixed in a lot of humor, so in addition to being informative, I found it fun and entertaining.So whether or not you're a fan of video games, I really think you're going to enjoy this book. I know my interest in video games isn't what it once was, but "Super Mario" had me captivated from start to finish. All told, I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

I've been a fan of Nintendo history for a while, and I like reading about the development of video games and video game consoles. This book does a good job of describing the process through which Nintendo's video game business came to life, from the Game & Watch to Donkey Kong and beyond. Even better than that, though, the book places all of these elements into their historical contexts. Before discussing the creation of Donkey Kong, the author describes the state of the industry at the time, and why Nintendo was either brilliant or crazy to do what they did, making you celebrate their success all the more. You get a full picture of Nintendo's place in video game history, and the book shows exactly why they are celebrated as the innovators they are.With that said, the book's main issue is that there will occasionally be blatant factual errors. It's rather odd because the information is very easy to verify, and makes the book seem like it wasn't properly edited. Just as one example, the author claims that Super Paper Mario is a spiritual successor to New Super Mario Bros. This is information that is very easy to verify, with only a couple seconds of Googling, making me wonder how such an error might slip through. There are several of these scattered throughout the book, so I would be reluctant to use this book as an academic source or anything of the sort.If you can look past the occasional error, this book is a great read for Nintendo fans. It illustrates the history of Nintendo in an engrossing way, making you excited for each new development, even though you've known what they are for the past 30 years.

This is a truly brilliant read. I couldn't put it down and finished it in three days. The author has been very passionate with his words. As a consequence the book is very well written. Its relevant to mention the author is a well established gaming journalist, hence why his sentences flow together rather elegantly.Theres a few issues I have with it. Firstly I understand the book is called 'How Nintendo Conquered America'; yet I would have enjoyed a more comprehensive examination of Nintendo's European success, not simply America and Japan. This book covers Japan and North America extensively, yet I would have liked some more research into other regions, especially Europe. The other thing is that this book is simply black and white text. I would have also liked the option of a fully coloured hardback edition. For a book like this, I felt that text alone dosen't do the narrative justice. I would have loved to have seen pictures of Super Mario Bros. 3 super smash launch around the world, or images of Nintendos' consoles innards. The author describes hardware specifications at some points, yet without images its difficult to contextualise what he means. For example he explains that the console nomenclature (bits) refers to an exponential output in power, not cardinal. Thus I would have liked maybe a few diagrams to demonstrate this point more clearly.Aside from that, I would say this is geared to anyone with an interest in the history of the games industry. However... To me this isn't just a book about Nintendo. Its a book that delves into the resilience of the human spirit. I felt very emotional at points in the book reading about how the team at Nintendo defied all expectations. How every failure made them stronger. Theres one point in the book the author describes the launch of the original NES console. The president of Nintendo (at the time) took one gamble... he decided to pack Super Mario Bros. with every NES console. It was his ace in the hole. It was magic to read about these pivotal moments in Nintendo's history, where one wrong move could make or break the company. This book is excellent. The only reason I awarded 4 stars is because its not enough, this story deserves photos and full colour in hardback, but for £7 the paperback is definitely a worthwhile read.

Jeff Ryans „Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America“ behandelt die steile Karriere des wohl berühmtesten Maskottchens der Welt. Die wichtige Rolle Super Marios während Nintendos kometenhaften Aufstiegs während der 80er und 90er Jahre in Amerika ist nicht von der Hand zu weisen und auf den 304 Seiten ausführlich beschrieben.Super Mario ist heute bekannter als Mickey Maus und spielt mehr Geld in die Kassen, als so manche Musikband oder Filmfranchises. Von den bescheidenen Anfängen eines japanischen Spielzeugherstellers bis zum heutigen einflussreichen milliardenschweren Unternehmen spielte der italienische Klempner stets eine Schlüsselrolle für Nintendo.Doch was geschah hinter den verschlossenen Türen? Welche Rolle spielte gerade Hiroshi Yamauchis Schwiegersohn Minoru Arakawa, als dieser Präsident von Nintendo of America wurde? Wieso wurde Shigeru Miyamoto bei Nintendo eingestellt?Viele dieser Fragen werden beantwortet und es ist faszinierend zu erfahren, was Nintendo vor gut 30 Jahren alles auf sich nahm, um in Übersee erfolgreich zu werden. Das kleine Lagerhaus in dem die Donkey Kong Arcade Maschinen zusammengebaut wurden, die Gerichtsverhandlung zwischen Universal und Nintendo und der Schachzug. um sich die Tetrislizenz zu sichern sind nur ein paar der vielen Themen.Das Buch berichtet über die Zeitspanne vom ersten Donkey Kong Automaten bis zur Nintendo Wii.Über 30 Jahre Mario Geschichte werden dabei behandelt, ebenso auch bekannte Persönlichkeiten wie Gunpei Yokoi, Horoshi Yamauchi, Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata und und und.Schade ist jedoch, dass sich Ryan zu oft in Rand-Trivia verstrickt. Zum einen ist es zwar interessant etwas über die Arcade Legende Billy Mitchell zu erfahren, wenn man jedoch dafür so gut wie nichts über Super Mario „Papa“ Shigeru Miyamoto erfährt, muss man sich fragen worauf Jeff Ryan seinen Fokus wirklich gelegt hat.Wer generell mehr Einsicht in Nintendos Arbeit auch in wirtschaftlicher Hinsicht erhalten möchte sollte sich „Gameboy – Wie Nintendo die Welt eroberte“ näher ansehen.Bisher ist das Buch nur in der englischen Sprache erhältlich. Ist online aber fast überall zu finden und günstig zu erwerben. Aufgrund des einfachen Schriebstils sollte es auch für englisch faule ganz gut zu lesen sein.

This is a really good book, with tons of information about how Nintendo built itself into the company we see today and I would have given it 5 stars if it had been proofread properly.Throughout the whole book, the author refers to the Japanese NES as the Famicon, but it is called the Famicom! For a book charting a company, it should really get the product names correct.There are many other mistakes, such as using the number 0 instead of the letter o, using a person's name twice in one sentence and spelling it wrong one of these times, and at one point the book talks about the company Phillips but then starts calling them Panasonic! Things like this make parts of the book hard to read and will have you reading a page over to try and work out if you have lost the narrative at some point.Also the authors use of brackets and commas to go into a tangent is not always elegant and you may find yourself again needing to re-read a section to get back on track from the tangential information.That said, if you are interested in video game history, the book is well worth reading.

This book disappointed me. I'm not 100% sure why but I think it's the dryness of the prose. Sure, it was never going to be a laugh riot but it seems more a collection of facts and you can almost see the timeline in your head, marked out at appropriate points with the bits of information the author has chosen to focus on. That's not a problem but it is pretty much that. It's a "this happened, then this happened, then this happened" kind of book rather than being in any way written like a piece of entertainment. It also seems to miss out on massive chunks of popular/well known Nintendo lore but I suppose ultimately these were probably extraneous to the actual title of the book, which pertains to how nintendo got their foot in the door of the USA as a trading company. The "tie up" at the end of the book does seem a tad "out of nowhere", too, and it is, as with other digressions in the book, a point that is very much "the authors opinion". He does go off at times and talk about how he thinks things should have been done and these could well have been good points to inject a little humour and to spark up the tone a little bit but no, they remain as deadpan as the rest of the book. I believe this to have been very well researched (and his meaty bibliography at the end proves this) BUT a book like this could have been a joy rather than a condensing of freely available facts. It does, to an extent, read a bit like a wikipedia article. Perhaps that is too cruel a criticism of the author but I was looking for more from this book and, considering the subject matter, expected it to be a little more jaunty. Recommended for hardcore Nintendo fans, perhaps, were it not for the fact that you almost certainly would know all this information, anyway.

Bought for a Mario fan he loved it.