Consalvo - Atari to Zelda: Japans video games in global contexts

Mia Consalvo

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2016 Mia Consalvo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Stone Serif Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Consalvo, Mia, 1969

Atari to Zelda : Japans videogames in global contexts / Mia Consalvo.

Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, [2015] | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015039702 | ISBN 9780262034395 (hardcover : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262332170

Subjects: LCSH: Video gamesJapan. | Video gamesSocial aspectsJapan. |

Video games industryJapan.

Classification: LCC GV1469.3 .C646 2016 | DDC 794.80952dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039702

10987654321

It feels as though I have been writing this book for a very long time, and I doubt it will stop feeling like that even after it has come out in print. I still check the game industry news for reports of Japanese companies, and I gather stories of players who find their games compelling in some way. Yet I needed to stop writing at some point, and so you have this book now, an investigation of how Japanese videogames and the Japanese videogame industry have affected the North American industry and its players and developers. I have been successful in one sense: I still find the topic of Japanese videogames endlessly fascinating, so I doubt this will be the last I write on the topic.

Parts of this book have been published in different forms and altered as this book took shape. Much of chapter 1 was published as Cosmo-Play: Japanese Videogames and Western Players in Critical Social Policy and Video Game Play; a shorter version of chapter 2 was published as Unintended Travel: ROM Hackers and Fan Translations of Japanese Videogames in Gaming Globally; pieces of chapter 4 came from Persistence Meets Performance: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, published in Well Played 1.0: Video Game, Value and Meaning, and from A Localization Shops Tale: Bringing an Independent Japanese RPG to North America, published in The Routledge Handbook of Participatory Culture; and an earlier version of chapter 5 was published as Dubbing the Noise: Square Enix and Corporate Creation of Videogames in A Companion to Media Authorship.

I need to thank many people and places for helping me think through the ideas presented here. They have made this a much better book than it would have been, and any faults that remain are entirely my own. First, I need to thank Doug Sery and the anonymous reviewers of the books manuscript. This book is better for their comments, and they all pushed me to find my own voice and add theoretical depth and richness throughout the manuscript. I also thank my colleagues at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, where the book idea first took shape, even if I did not begin to write it until long after leaving there. Matthew Weise, Karen Riggs, and Tasha Oren: thank you for the support and conversations as I determined that writing about videogames was, in fact, a valid academic option. At Ohio University, I met more supportive colleagues, including Todd Harper, Nathan Dutton, Matt Falk, Roger Cooper, Greg Newton, Paula Carpenter, and Cynara Medina. I was then lucky enough to spend two years as part of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, where I found a studio full of interested, smart, and helpful peers who started reading drafts of chapters, providing feedback on early conceptual ideas, and helping me narrow my theoretical foundations. Thanks go to Clara Fernandez Vara, Philip Tan, Abe Stein, Konstantin Mitgutsch, Doris Rusch, Geoffrey Long, Rib Eberhart, Michael Rapa, Sara Verilli, and Henry Jenkins. And now at Concordia University, I again have an embarrassment of riches in terms of gracious colleagues who have been happy to read another draft, comment on a presentation, or just inquire about the status of the book generally. Another set of thanks to Bart Simon, Lynn Hughes, Jason Begy, Carolyn Jong, Joachim Despland, Kelly Boudreau, Thorsten Busch, Nic Watson, Pierson Browne, Allison Cole, and everyone else affiliated with Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG). Along the way, I also have received support and help from a number of colleagues around the world, including Ian Bogost, Jesper Juul, T. L. Taylor, Martin Picard, Lisa Nakamura, Nina Huntemann, Jonathan Gray, Jennifer Henderson, Aaron Delwiche, Drew Davidson, Talmadge Wright, Ren Reynolds, Josh Fairfield, Tom Boellstorff, Greg Lastowka, and many more. Thank-yous also go to those in the game industry who graciously gave of their time, as well as the many game players I talked to over the years.

And in saving the best for last, I thank my family. They have patiently supported me and wisely knew when to ask about the books progress as well as when not to ask about the books progress. Thank you to my parents, Fran and David; my sister Jen and brother-in-law Frank; and their respective furry friends, Elliot, Wolfgang, and Honeybadger. Lastly, I owe this book to the three who kept me sane, made me laugh, and remember that there is life apart from my laptop. This book is for youJohn, Jasper, and Sam.

The roots of my career as a game studies scholar took hold when my sister and I received our first home game systeman Atari 2600for Christmas one year. My favorite game for it was Space Invaders. Although I was never a hardcore player, I occasionally got into the zone of playing the game, holding the perpetually descending horde of aliens at bay as my cannon slid left and right, shooting and fleeing shots at the same time. I also remember playing Pitfall, Combat, and the disappointing Atari version of Pac-Man.

Sometimes I went to the local drug stores arcade, usually after school report cards had been given out because the store rewarded each A grade with a certain number of tokens. Given my strong academic status at the time (I was a nerd), my pocket bulged with tokens, and I usually played Centipede or Pole Position until the tokens were gone. I also played the cabinet version of Pac-Man at our favorite pizza place while waiting for dinner to arrive. After a few years, I put away my console and stopped playing games, at least until I bought a PC in graduate school and discovered the world of CD-ROM games. During those early experiences, I never thought about where the games or consoles came from or who had made them. Yet even the few games and systems that I was familiar with reveal a mixture of American and Japanese games and systems comingling at the beginnings of a global game industry.

When I came to game studies in the early 2000s and wanted to reacquaint myself with the world of console games, I first bought a Sony PlayStation along with games from Square, EA, and other major global publishers. There was a curious absence in early scholarship about games, however. Where was the discussion of Japans early influence in the industry? How could Nintendo be criticized for its depiction of gender roles without anything being said about the origin of many of the companys games? How do players from many different countries think about games that come to them from near as well as far away? And how do the games themselves warp and shift as they make that journey?

Even when I was writing Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games