Holy Cow! Yamauchi really was a pimp!!

U

Unison

Member
I thought you guys were just joking, but I just read in the book Game Over:

Yamauchi dropped the word karuta from the company name, which now became NCL - Nintendo Company, Ltd.- as the young president planned to branch out into new businesses.

The first product launched by the new company was a line of individuall portioned rice. Add water and - Presto! It was a dismal failure. Yamauchi then opened a "love hotel," with rooms rented by the hour. The business was, for Yamauchi, a personal passion; it was said that he was one of his own best customers (his infidelities were well known-- even by his own wife, who ignored them.)
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:lol

Who's teh mature now!??!?! :D
 
Game Over by Sheff is a very good read. I would recommend it to anyone that is interested in the game industry to read it. It's mostly about Nintendo, but it talks about Sony and Nintendo's early partnership, the Namco rivalry from the Pacman days and so forth...
 
Deepthroat said:
Share with us please. Spoiler tag if you have to.
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ROFL A SPOILERTAG?

You people are ridiculous. This is not a game/movie/book where there is an exciting scene that would ruin your experience. Maybe I'm seeing it in the wrong light.
 
I don't need a spoiler-tag. I want to know about his Big Pimpin' posthaste!

image167.jpg
 
TekunoRobby said:
ROFL A SPOILERTAG?

You people are ridiculous. This is not a game/movie/book where there is an exciting scene that would ruin your experience. Maybe I'm seeing it in the wrong light.
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Haha I just thought of the people that maybe are reading the book as we speak... :P
 
Woops, it was her 20th birthday.

Deepthroat said:
Share with us please. Spoiler tag if you have to.
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In his late thirties, Yamauchi was suavely handsome, a cigarette always dangling from the corner of his mouth. Even after he sold his love hotel, he was a familiar face among the Kyoto demimonde, Michiko said nothing, but the children resented him bitterly.

In 1970, on her twentieth birthday, Yamauchi shocked Yoko when he announced that she was going out on the town with him. She dressed up and accompanied him to a cabaret, a sikikake, where five geishas attended them, serving drinks. The women obviously knew him very well. Hiroshi toasted Yoko's coming of age, but when it got late, he sent her home in a taxi. He didn't come home until dawn.
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Yoko's the one who married Minoru Arakawa. There's a good bit about Mino meeting Hiroshi in there, too.
 
Hmmmmm 5 geisha that doesn't sound to bad.
This guy made some bad decisions in his time, but he sure knew how to live the life!
 
Hey, i'm his illegitimate bastard child. Calling my dad a pimp is akin to calling him a bum. So what if he has never acknowledged me or mom. I still came from his loins.
 
naz said:
This book should have been called "As Nintendo Turns" or "All My Koppas"

Post more :D
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The entire book is solid gold, he could keep posting for days. Buy the book; it's worth it even just for the movie-like experience that was the Tetris journey.
 
Game Over said:
Hiroshi ribbed Arakawa, saying he was a good choice because a woman shouldn't marry a man who was too good-looking. "If you have a nice-looking man, the girls won't leave him alone," he told his daughter.
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The man plays it pimp smooth before the wedding. He would know however, the girls were all over him.
 
Love hotels are not for prostitution. There just for everyday couples to shag in. He was old school Japanese, a great (for men anyway) yet dieing society.
 
Some more:

Michiko had Yoko invite Minoru to dinner at the Yamauchi home. Because of the terrifying portrait Yoko had painted of her father, Arakawa felt as if he were preparing to visit Don Corleone.

Dressed in a conservative suit, he arrived at the Yamauchis'. After the introductions were made, he joined the family at the low dining table, where Michiko and Yoko served the meal. Hiroshi sat back in his chair and studied his daughter's suitor.

The evening wore on and Yamauchi fired questions at Minoru as if he were conducting a job interview. He had to be convinced that Minoru was not a heavy drinker or a playboy.

"You went to Harvard, eh?" Yamauchi asked. "That is a good school."

Mino politely explained that he had gone to MIT.

"I have never heard of it," Yamauchi said.

Yoko and Mino had to convince him that MIT was okay too.

After the meal, the family withdrew to the living room for tea. There, Yamauchi looked at Arakawa and said, without emotion, "If you are going to marry my daughter, you should marry quickly."

Yoko and Minoru exchanged glances, and the young man nodded politely. "Yes, sir," he said.

Hiroshi ribbed Arakawa, saying he was a good choice because a woman shouldn't marry a man who was too good-looking. "If you have a nice-looking man, the girls won't leave him alone," he told his daughter.
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There's some good stuff about Donkey Kong and the Adam computer from Coleco, too.
 
NLB2 said:
Tell me what the story behind Tetris is!
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It's way too long to get into, basically it involves several different people/companies trying to grab the rights to it and what happens to them in the process. The way Scheff unfolds the story is like reading a suspense novel. I would recommend going to your library or something and checking the book out.
 
"Hiroshi ribbed Arakawa, saying he was a good choice because a woman shouldn't marry a man who was too good-looking. "If you have a nice-looking man, the girls won't leave him alone," he told his daughter."

:lol
 
There is a book on Microsoft similar to Game Over, but I use the term similar very loosely. The MS Xbox one comes off more as an advertisement for the console and isn't as rich with history from gaming's past (for obvious reasons).

I bought the book from EB for 1 cent, so that might tell you something. It's also only selling for $3 on amazon.com

Opening the Xbox - amazon.com
 
It's a fantastic book. I first read an abridged version of it (but not that abridged, it's still a full on book and a great read) years ago when it came free with N64 Magazine in the UK. Or was it Arcade? Might have been Arcade.

Anyway, it was the best free gift ever.
 
I'm reading this now as well, and wondering are there are any books as detailed that pick up where Game OVer leads off? I'd like to read a book like this that involves Nintendo, SOny and Microsoft in much the same way this book focused on nintendo with some Atari.

Also, I'd like to say that the old NOA kicked as compared to todays, I haven't got to the end of the book yet, so I'm not sure what happened to Arakawa, Lincoln, and Main, but I get they impression they aren't with Nintendo today... These guys were awesome!

The Donkey Kong legal battles read like a good novel!
 
Unison said:
:lol

Who's teh mature now!??!?! :D
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There's no doubt Yamauchi is "mature"; he's like 100! :lol

PkunkFury said:
Also, I'd like to say that the old NOA kicked as compared to todays, I haven't got to the end of the book yet, so I'm not sure what happened to Arakawa, Lincoln, and Main, but I get they impression they aren't with Nintendo today... These guys were awesome!
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There's a brief section that goes over some happenings of the years after the original release of the book, by Andy Eddy (Eddie?), but I don't remember if it's recent enough to include anything about any of these guys leaving. If anything, only Lincoln.

Arakawa: He was thought to be one of the prime candidates to take over Hiroshi Yamauchi's role. However, he ended up retiring and moving to Hawaii.
Lincoln: 6-ish years ago he switched from Nintendo to the corporately-related Seattle Mariners. Not sure exactly what his role was, or if he's still serving in the same capacity.
Main: 3-ish years ago he retired, but soon got a job at Mega Blocks.
 
My fav part of the Tetris saga was when they were having a meeting with the Russians, and they were trying to impress... I think it was Lincoln and Arakawa. So the Russians showed off a handheld game of there own... which was a pirated version of Donkey Kong. That made me laugh my ass off.
 
NLB2 said:
Tell me what the story behind Tetris is!
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As other people posted, it is quite long, but I will tell you this, when some of the companies were trying to get the rights from the Russians, some of them actually talked to Mikhail Gorbachev himself. :lol
That was so hillarious.
 
This type of thread comes up every now and then. Always good to see fresh faces wondering what this "Game Over" is all about.

Here’s a snipet from the early days at NOA that always made me chuckle. :)

“The shipment of “Radarscopes” arrived by the truckload from the train station after their cross-country journey. Phillips excitedly uncrated a game, plugged it in, and stood before the console. “It was like when a car dealer gets in a new car,” he says. “I would test ‘em out, drive ‘em.”

Arakawa watched him. “It was like he was sleepwalking,” he says. Phillips was disappointed with “Radarscope.” “It’s hopeless,” he said. He joined the other Nintendo employees who were waiting for the new game to arrive from Japan.

One day a courier delivered a package that had arrived by air from Kyoto. Don James signed for it and delivered the small box to Arakawa. He opened it and saw the board that contained the new game’s program. As the service technician installed it in a console, Arakawa called in Judy and Stone. They watched as the power was turned on. The opening screen announced the game: “DONKEY KONG.”

They looked at one another. Stone swore. He and Judy tried the game and concluded that it was a disaster. Two thousand “Donkey Kongs” were worse than two thousand “Radarscopes.” Al Stone walked out. “It’s over,” he said.

Arakawa worriedly complained to Yamauchi, who was thoroughly unsympathetic. He implored Yamauchi at least to change the name, but Yamauchi refused. “It is a good game,” he said.

Arakawa had no choice but to attempt to sell it. Judy reluctantly agreed to try, and he convinced Stone to cooperate. There was one promising sign: when the new flame-haired kid in the warehouse, Howard Phillips, test-drove “Donkey Kong,” they had to pry him off it to get him back to work.”
 
There was one promising sign: when the new flame-haired kid in the warehouse, Howard Phillips, test-drove “Donkey Kong,” they had to pry him off it to get him back to work.”
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That's a great line right there. I'm going to have to look into getting a copy of this book.
 
I also recommend Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Levy. It's a neat book about the earlier years of the computer/game industry, from MIT up until just before Nintendo arrived in America.
 
Justin Bailey said:
Yeah the whole story behind Tetris was nuts.
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Speaking of which.. have any of you guys seen the documentary on Tetris? I think it was called: "Tetris - From Russia With Love". About an hour. Very interesting.
 
There aren't very complete accounts of the PC game history, High Score is the book I've got with the most PC game history.

I've got:
Ultimate History of Videogames (of course)
High Score
Supercade (haven't read it yet)
Dungeon and Dreamers (centered around the PC gaming community, very interesting)
Power-Up (haven't read it yet)

Like I said, I'm looking to get Game Over and Phoenix later on.

any suggestions though?
 
Date of Lies said:
There aren't very complete accounts of the PC game history, High Score is the book I've got with the most PC game history.

I've got:
Ultimate History of Videogames (of course)
High Score
Supercade (haven't read it yet)
Dungeon and Dreamers (centered around the PC gaming community, very interesting)
Power-Up (haven't read it yet)

Like I said, I'm looking to get Game Over and Phoenix later on.

any suggestions though?
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Get Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. It covers from the MIT days to the early 80's of the PC and PC game industry. Lots of interesting stuff on the early days of Sierra, Broderbund, and some stuff on Apple and Atari.
 
Masters of Doom is good. I liked Opening the Xbox as well, pretty informative about the beginnings.

Does anyone know if any online store sells new copies of Game Over? I've been trying to find that for a while but it seems it's only available used...

What's Phoenix?
 
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