“I really don’t know,” Pober explained. “But if I had to guess, it would be as a result of some recent commercials. I haven’t seen them myself, but I keep hearing about subliminal messages and some kind of scream. Does that mean anything to you?”
Kalinske shook his head. Of course it did, and as he weighed the gravity of this situation, he couldn’t help but think back on the story of Prometheus, the Greek mythological figure who had stolen fire from the gods and delivered it to all of humanity. He had so nobly risked his life, but had done so for the sake of moving civilization forward. “How much time, if you had to guess, do you think we’ve got before this hits the fan?”
“A lot,” Pober said, “and that’s if anything even comes of this at all. Like I said at the beginning, these are just rumblings. Could be nothing.”
“Let’s hope,” Kalinske said, shaking his head.
Pober agreed and then bid him adieu, leaving Kalinske alone in his office with only his thoughts of Prometheus. Now he remembered the details from the second half of the story. After delivering the gift of fire and advancing humanity, Prometheus was punished by the deities for committing this terrible crime. How dare he bring the mortals one step closer to immortality! And how dare he think himself a hero to mankind when what he’d really done was to rob them of their beautiful ignorance? A price must be paid for this act of hubris, a heavy price indeed, and so Zeus, the god of gods, sentenced the thief to eternal torment for his irreversible transgression. Bound to a rock, the immortal Prometheus would be, and each day an eagle would descend from the heavens to feed on his liver, inflicting unspeakable pain. Prometheus would suffer like nothing ever before, but that physical toll would never compare to the pain of knowing that each night, without fail, his shredded liver would grow back, and each morning the eagle would return to repeat the cycle over and over, until forever never came.
The message was rather clear: the keepers of the world had a habit of punishing the champions of progress. And Kalinske vowed to do everything in his power to make sure that didn’t happen.
Howard Lincoln, however, felt like he had already done everything in his power. “It’s not us,” Lincoln explained to Arthur Pober, “I can tell you that much. We strictly monitor all of the content on our systems. Every single second of it.”
“Hey,” Pober said, “I’m not here to point fingers.”
“I mean it,” Lincoln continued. What better example of this was there than the case of Mortal Kombat? Both Sega and Nintendo had tried to get exclusive rights to the violent arcade game, but Acclaim (who owned the console rights to Midway’s games) wanted to release it on both systems. That was Acclaim’s choice, and that was fine, but just because Sega was going to release this gory game as is didn’t mean Nintendo would do the same. For the SNES version, Lincoln asked the developers to decrease the level of violence and substitute a bland gray sweat in place of the game’s blazing red blood. This was not an easy decision, nor was it a business one; Lincoln knew that by watering down the violence, Nintendo’s version would likely be outsold by the one Kalinske would be dealing. But just because it was more profitable, that didn’t make it right. Lincoln knew that in the coming months there would be those who wondered who was right and who was wrong, but he didn’t care at all about that, because he knew without question that for Nintendo this was the only way. “Goddamn,” Lincoln continued. “If it weren’t for Nintendo, this industry would just be a bunch of pornography.”
“I know, I know,” Pober said. “But I still wanted to call out of courtesy. I doubt that anything will come of this, but you have a right to know what’s going on.”
“Thank you for doing so. I do appreciate the call,” Lincoln said. “I’m curious, have you relayed this to my good friend Tom Kalinske?”
“Not yet,” Pober said, “but he’s my next call.”
“Good,” Lincoln said. For the past two years, Kalinske had been trying to label Nintendo as the Disney of videogames, so Howard Lincoln couldn’t help but take a little comfort in the fact that if anything came of this, he’d have the likes of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy in his corner. “When you speak with Tom, you really ought to ask him how he’s currently feeling about the notion of karma.”
There was a lot of evidence to suggest that Nintendo really should be considered the “Disney of videogames,” but in 1993, there was another developer who wanted to steal this moniker away from Nintendo, and that was the actual Walt Disney Company.
Since 1981, when Nintendo introduced the Mickey Mouse Game & Watch, Disney had been dipping its toe into the business of videogames. There had been a few notable efforts to develop games internally, but for the most part the extent of Disney’s toe-dipping entailed licensing out characters to unaffiliated developers. The list of licensees included Nintendo (who released a few Game & Watch titles), Sega (who crafted hits like Quackshot and Castle of Illusion), and most notably Capcom (who picked up the rights to several pieces of intellectual property in the Magic Kingdom way back in 1987). This clever acquisition was the work of Joe Morici, Capcom’s forward-thinking VP of sales and marketing. Throughout the 1980s, Morici’s claim to fame was that he had come up with the name Mega Man (the Japanese-created character had originally been christened Rock Man), but by 1993 it would have been difficult for him to begin any bragging session without first mentioning Disney. Over the past five years, the combination of Capcom’s talented developers and Disney’s storied properties had resulted in hits like Mickey Mousecapade (1987), Ducktales (1989), and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1991). The relationship also led to The Little Mermaid (1992), which was notable for being one of the first games designed for and marketed toward girls. It was a match made in heaven, but as Capcom continued to capitalize on these intellectual properties, Disney started to believe that maybe they should be the ones making these games (and raking in the windfalls that followed).
For Disney, the time to delve deeper into the videogame industry couldn’t have come at a better time. Although the company had an unparalleled reputation for making great animated films, it had been several years since Disney had produced a classic. With features like The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective the eighties had been an underwhelming decade, but that trend changed in the nineties. The Little Mermaid rang in the new decade, Beauty and the Beast followed after that, and then came Aladdin. To capitalize on these hot properties, Disney entered into a partnership with Sega and Virgin Interactive, a third-party developer that Shinobu Toyoda had recommended.
There were already a million reasons why Kalinske was thrilled to be in business with Disney, but the relationship became even more vital when he learned about the government’s recent interest in videogames. If they did decide to get involved, Sega (and not Nintendo) would likely be the target. There was no denying that Sega aimed at an older audience, and there was no doubt that the folks in Washington would selectively overlook this fact. In the event that this really did come to pass, Kalinske wanted to have as many squeaky clean friends standing beside him as he could. So what better way to announce the beginning of this beautiful relationship than a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show?
Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of Walt Disney Studios, had a similar but much bigger idea. This was his first foray into videogame publishing, and he wanted to make a splash—a Disney-sized splash. Katzenberg saw the original plans for the press conference, decided they were not grand enough, and then made arrangements for a press conference that fit his vision. What he provided was nearly magical: Katzenberg and Disney re-created Agrabah in a hotel in Las Vegas, complete with live animals, staged performances, and real palm trees. With speeches by Katzenberg and Kalinske as well as a keynote by Virgin’s founder Richard Branson, it was the event of the 1993 Winter CES.
After the event, Katzenberg was amped up and excited, but also worried about how the industry would react to his game. There was also a strange variable that raised the stakes of Katzenberg’s and Sega’s
game: Capcom (as per their previous licensing deal) was also releasing a version of Aladdin, this one for the Super Nintendo. All of this paraded through Kalinske’s mind as he accompanied Katzenberg toward Sega’s booth for the very first demo of the game. With everything at stake, Kalinske was a little bit nervous. He would have been much more nervous, however, if he had any idea what was going on with the actual game chip at that very moment.
Video games at that time were written on EPROMS, erasable programmable read-only memory chips. During Katzenberg’s press conference, Diane Fornasier and the rest of the marketing team were to arrange Sega’s kiosk and prepare an enticing setup for the demonstration of the Aladdin EPROM. The problem was that as the press conference started, she realized that nobody had the EPROM. The game was missing. In this pre-cell-phone era, the team communicated on walkie-talkies, and after a mad, static-filled scramble they eventually realized who had the game chip. It was a woman on Sega’s marketing team, but unfortunately she had not shown up that day. With time running out, Fornasier sent a team to her hotel room where they discovered her huddled over the toilet, red in the face and violenty ill. After providing requisite concern, they eventually learned that the disk was in the hotel’s safe, and then prodded her into remembering the combination between the graphic tirades of vomit. It was not pretty, nor easy to forget, but they got the EPROM, and then rushed back to the show.
Meanwhile, Katzenberg was on his way to the booth. Kalinske got a message from someone on a walkie-talkie to stall Katzenberg from arriving at the kiosk. He orchestrated about ten good minutes of stalling, attempting to highlight the wonders of CES to a confused Katzenberg, who was trying to lead the press to his game. The Disney movie mogul tried to break away, but Nilsen made a last-ditch effort to slow him down, getting Katzenberg to try riding one of Sega’s racing simulator games (which bought about five more minutes). Finally, though, Katzenberg had had enough and took everyone to the booth for the demonstration. While he was in front of the booth, talking about the challenges of creating a game that was true to the movie, the team arrived with the EPROM and slipped it to Fornasier, who inserted it casually into the Sega Genesis on Katzenberg’s cue as if nothing had happened. Aladdin went on to be named Best Genesis Game of 1993 by Electronic Gaming Monthly.
44.
CRAZY LIKE A FOX
As “A Whole New World” melodically played from the speakers scattered around Disney’s Vegas-based Agrabah, Nintendo’s Tony Harman couldn’t help but agree with the message behind the theme song from the movie Aladdin. It was a whole new world indeed, he thought as he watched footage from the game. So much of what Sega released was just well-packaged junk, but this game right here was an absolute gem.
What made Sega’s Aladdin different from the Capcom/SNES version was that it had been built with a new style of graphics called digicel animation. This breakthrough, created by Virgin’s David Perry and Neil Young, enabled hand-drawn film cells to be directly scanned into development software. As a result, they were able to work directly with Disney’s animators, and had access to over 250,000 cells from the movie throughout the development process. Harman was awed by the final product, which looked and felt like it was controlling the protagonist from an animated film. Despite his mortal dislike of Sega, and his belief that with only twelve levels its lasting interest was limited, he had to admit that this was a game-changer. Just one man’s opinion, of course, but Harman’s ability to evaluate videogames was second to none.
Arakawa valued these opinions so much that he assembled something called the product launch committee, which was basically his way of getting the marketing guys (Main, White, Sakaley, and Tilden) to speak with NOA’s product development guy (Harman) and discuss all aspects of a game’s release—things like which games deserved their own commercials, and how best to promote these titles in Nintendo Power. Harman respected NOA’s marketing staff, but it always floored him that not a single one of them was a gamer. Sure, these were businessmen and it was true that one need not adore widgets in order to sell them effectively, but it also couldn’t hurt, right?
Like most people who love playing videogames, Harman secretly dreamed of one day creating a hit, and he finally got closer to that goal after Mr. Y.’s announcement at Shoshinkai of a Nintendo baseball game. Although most of Nintendo’s games were made by Japanese developers (either by Nintendo themselves or by a third-party game maker in the region), for this baseball game Harman chose to look toward Europe. He’d been closely monitoring the technological advancements over there and was greatly impressed by some of the work being done. Harman’s European fascination had already paid off handsomely once (by finding Argonaut Studios, which later developed the Super FX chip), and he expected it to do so again, this time with a respected British publisher named Software Creations.
Harman had high hopes for his baseball game, and so did Nintendo of America (who was negotiating with Seattle Mariners superstar Ken Griffey Jr. to make him the face of this game), but as great a sports game as he believed that this would be, that’s all it would ever be—a great sports game. Hopefully it would make a lot of money and provide countless hours of fun, but it would never be a classic like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda. The even more secret dream behind Harman’s secret dream was to make a game starring one of Nintendo’s iconic characters. It was an understandable desire, but Nintendo was so protective of those franchises and wouldn’t let somebody outside Japan touch them. There was something admirable about this stance, but there was something almost racist about it as well. Nintendo didn’t believe that anybody outside Japan could achieve greatness. Not only did Harman believe that this could be done, but he also believed that by not taking this chance, Nintendo risked missing out on some of these breakthroughs. And seeing the Aladdin game at CES served as proof to him of this fact. So he decided to write a paper, a manifesto of sorts, that discussed the criteria of what makes a great game, and use this to prove that one could be made outside Japan.
Bill White couldn’t have cared less about where the games were made; all he cared about was that they were marketable, and that he be allowed to promote the hell out of them. He had been given the autonomy to do so during his early years at Nintendo (The Wizard, the Pepsi deal, the Nintendo World Championships), but as time wore on, he increasingly got the feeling that he was being handcuffed. Nowadays, there wasn’t much more to do than smile, nod, and spread Nintendo optimism. So while Harman was wandering around the trade show, White was back at the company’s massive booth trying to turn every piece of good news into headline-worthy greatness.
“Christmas was phenomenal,” he said, speaking to a reporter from Bloomberg. “Videogames came back in unbelievable fashion. And it gives us tremendous momentum coming into 1993, where we expect hardware and software sales to rise by 19 percent.”
The reporter nodded, jotting this down. “Very impressive, but what does Nintendo have to say about its flagship 8-bit system, which has fallen considerably? You’ve gone from nine million units sold in 1989 to less than three million this past year.”
“I look at that as a positive,” White said. “To continue sustaining sales of the original NES, when more people are buying the faster and more sophisticated Super Nintendo systems—to me, that speaks volumes about Nintendo’s commitment to quality.”
“And what about CD-ROM technology?” the reporter asked. “Sega already has a system out there, and the 3DO company has recently announced plans to launch a CD-based system by end of the year.”
“That’s a great question,” White said. “Nintendo hopes to bring out a 32-bit CD-ROM accessory by the end of the year. But if we don’t feel it meets our standards, it won’t be released. In this environment, it’s easy to get caught up in the arms race aspect of it all, but that’s just not how we at Nintendo believe in doing business. That being said, our commitment to technology is second to none. Are you familiar with Nintendo’s new Super FX chip.”
White used this self-cr
eated segue to promote Star Fox, and hyped Nintendo’s new franchise with comparisons to Star Trek and Star Wars. As the interview neared its end, the reporter asked White if he could pass along any materials to publish alongside the article. That would make sense, White thought, but alas, he could not. All exclusive content went first to Nintendo Power, so there was nothing to do but smile and nod. The handcuffs, they were feeling very tight these days.
One month later, while White was fantasizing about a Houdini-esque escape and Harman was coming up with ways to improve upon Aladdin, Fornasier was desperately trying to avoid going to the bathroom. Her bladder was not particularly thrilled by this decision, but she felt like there was just too much at stake for her to leave the room, even if only for a minute. That’s just how it went during Sega’s annual planning meetings, and this one would prove to be particularly pivotal, as it led to the company’s best year yet.
“So there’s a chance that Sonic 3 won’t be ready for Christmas this year,” Fornasier explained. In an ideal world, Sega would release a new Sonic title every holiday season, but it was only January 1993 and Naka had already cautioned that the newest game might be late. Since Christmas tended to make or break a videogame company’s year, finding a potential replacement was a top priority. “I know I’m crazy for even asking this,” Fornasier continued, “but is there by chance a consensus on what everyone thinks our best game will be for ’93?”
Before she even finished asking the question, nearly every single person in the room was already shouting out a response. Aladdin! Jurassic Park! Eternal Champions! Not only were they just yelling the names of the games, but shipping quantities and suggested prices as well. It was a lot of noise, but Fornasier hadn’t expected any less. The conference room was filled with all the top people from sales, marketing, and operations, as well as the producers for each of the upcoming year’s games. Of course each of them shouted out their own games; their job performances (and likely their annual bonuses) heavily depended on the decisions made in this meeting. If large initial orders were placed for a game, and significant marketing dollars were put behind it, there was a strong chance it would be a hit. So Fornasier asking everyone in the room about the best game was kind of like Santa Claus visiting a first-grade classroom and saying “I have a finite number of gifts this year, so can you please tell me which kids have been the nicest?”
Console Wars Page 48