Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

Jeff Ryan

Aug 2011 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

The story of Nintendo's rise and the beloved icon who made it possible.

Nintendo has continually set the standard for video-game innovation in America, starting in 1981 with a plucky hero who jumped over barrels to save a girl from an ape.

The saga of Mario, the portly plumber who became the most successful franchise in the history of gaming, has plot twists worthy of a video game. Jeff Ryan shares the story of how this quintessentially Japanese company found success in the American market. Lawsuits, Hollywood, die- hard fans, and face-offs with Sony and Microsoft are all part of the drama.

Find out about:

*Mario's eccentric yet brilliant creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, who was tapped for the job because was considered expendable.

*Minoru Arakawa, the son-in-law of Nintendo's imperious president, who bumbled his way to success. *The unexpected approach that allowed Nintendo to reinvent itself as the gaming system for the non-gamer, especially now with the Wii Even those who can't tell a Koopa from a Goomba will find this a fascinating story of striving, comeuppance, and redemption.

Ratings and reviews

I was about 4 when i saw Atari, but wasn't drawn in. But when that NES with Mario/Duck hunt showed up years later for Christmas life changed dramatically. It was almost surreal growing up a Nintendo fan, a gamer, knowing that very company was only 30 min from where I lived. Nintendo will always have a sentimental spot in my heart, and the impact they have on what was once a laughing stock industry to the multi billion dollar business it is today will always be an irony I enjoy living with.

The book has a lot of factual errors. Not even about Mario. It has factual errors about iD software and even cultural factual errors. This book came out after the Wii U and even has a random paragraph about how no one cares about the history, or story, of the Zelda series. There's even a part where he mentions that no one ever thought of Mario having sex. Newgrounds era flash animations proves that wrong, on a cultural level. I only bring this up to show how disconnected the author is. Once you get past the first section and half of the second section the book just rambles on. It spent a few paragraphs telling you what happens in the The Wizard. Why? Telling us about The Wizard does nothing to tell us how Nintendo conquered the US. That's about all they mention for the Wizard. Not how it was the first time we saw SMB3 and the hype it built up. The book is full of spelling errors and grammatical errors too.

I enjoyed reading this, but past the section about Super Mario Bros for the NES/Famicon (sic), I didn't really learn much. I read it mostly as light reading before bed, and it served that purpose well. My reason for 3 stars is the large amount of factual errors. As noted, the Famicom ("Nintendo Family Computer") is repeatedly referred to as the Famicon. That's hard to explain. I also recall a section about Zelda: A Link to the Past being incorrect. Same for parts about Mario RPG and New Super Mario Bros (as another reviewer mentioned). This is very odd and inexplicable; the amount of errors made me question the rest of the book. Also, I was hoping for more information that couldn't be learned from reading Wikipedia. More along the lines of business strategy and the psychology of why Mario continues to be relevant today. The book really reads as a summarization of Wikipedia in many cases. It's still an enjoyable light read, just not more than 3 stars because of these issues.

About the author

Jeff Ryan, a lifelong gamer, has been featured on Salon.com and All Things Considered. He reviewed over 500 video games and covered four console launches as the games editor for Katrillion, a popular dotcom-era news and entertainment Web site. He lives in Bloomfield, New Jersey.