There were a variety of reasons that Nintendo was now willing to spruce things up, but the straw that broke the camel’s back turned out literally to be a camel. In late 1993 Coyner initiated a series of research studies in which gamers were given a stack of twenty pictures depicting animals and then asked to use these images to answer a series of questions about videogames. Questions like: which animals best represent Nintendo (and which ones best represent Sega)? The results were nearly unanimous: Cheetahs, gazelles, and other speedy creatures were associated with Sega, whereas elephants, camels, and other slow-movers supposedly embodied Nintendo. Arakawa was normally distrustful of focus groups and marketing data, but something about the images made a dent this time, and that enabled Coyner to move forward with what he was now about to unveil. “Kids want more excitement from our advertising. But the answer was not to imitate the competition. We have to do them one better,” he said, and with that he introduced Nintendo’s “Play It Loud” campaign.
On the surface, “Play It Loud” appeared to be exactly what Coyner had claimed it would not: a Sega ripoff. With quicker cuts, louder music, and an aggressive feeling, it had much in common with its competitor’s spots. But upon closer examination, that wasn’t quite the case. The colors were still bright, the game footage was still plentiful, and although there was mischief, there was also a sense of optimism. “We’re going to give the kids an anthem,” Coyner proudly explained, “one that says: ‘You can’t be young forever, so live it large, live it free, and play it loud.’ ”
Good but not great, Nilsen thought. But even with his high standards, he couldn’t help but echo Coyner’s sentiment: finally. Nintendo should have done this, or something like it, several years ago. But better late than never, right?
“Anyway,” Peter Main said, stepping in, “when Arakawa and Lincoln sent us out into the jungle, they said they weren’t going to take no for an answer. They wanted to know if we could put behind us this lily-white image on game content. Well, I think we’ve just shown that the answer to that is yes.”
Tattered applause swept through the room, but still nothing from Nilsen. That guy was a tough one to please. “Then, of course, there are the games,” Main continued. “It’s no secret we were weak on this in the second half of last year. And yes, Griffey and Metroid have started to turn the tide, but they’re not enough. We thought we’d found a great combination of old and new, but when we unloaded the cages back in Redmond, the response was: ‘Gee, that’s terrific, but it ain’t enough, and don’t you come back home until you get one more drop-dead-in-your-tracks killer attraction.’ They reminded me that ten years ago they shook the entire country with the big feet of Donkey Kong. ‘Can’t you guys go out there and find us that one huge hit that will once more make Nintendo undisputed king of the jungle?’ And so that’s exactly what we did.”
Main took a couple of steps closer to the audience, finding his rhythm and then appearing to near a crescendo to this whole performance. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the eighth wonder of the videogame world. The best game ever created by Nintendo or anyone else. The new stunning industry breakthrough . . . Donkey Kong Country.”
With these words, Peter Main introduced a clip of the atomic bomb Nintendo needed to turn the tide in its war with Sega. A game that never would have existed had Tony Harman not willed it into existence on the basis of the scenario he’d presented to Yamauchi of “one less bad commercial.” This was it, the true game-changer that both returned Nintendo to their roots and also took them one step ahead.
Nintendo was back. And as everyone in the room went wild with applause, this time Nilsen was the loudest of them all.
“Bravo,” Kmart’s Senior Buyer said two days later, as he approached Peter Main at Nintendo’s booth. Although he was a famously difficult man to please, on this day his face was filled with nothing but pleasantries.
“Well hello there, old friend,” Main said with an easygoing grin. “I’ll take a bravo whenever I can get one, but to what do I owe the honor?”
“Where do I even begin?” the buyer from Kmart replied, forcing a chuckle. “But really, that game you all showed off at the presentation, it’s out of this world.”
“It’s something else, isn’t it?”
“It’s gonna put you guys back on top!”
“Whoa now,” Main cautioned. “One thing at a time.”
“No, I mean it,” the buyer declared. “And in the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, Kmart is ready to make a very serious commitment.”
Before Main even realized what was happening, several Kmart employees emerged from the trade show’s hubbub and stepped forward with a large check mounted on a plywood frame. The check was made out to Nintendo of America for $32 million.
“We’d like to officially place an order for a million units!” Kmart’s senior buyer announced. “What do you say?”
For a moment, Main was speechless. Not only was the gesture wonderfully surprising, but selling a quantity like this, right off the bat, would make Donkey Kong Country one of the bestselling games of 1994. It would also give them enormous momentum going into the Christmas season (the game would be released in November) and almost singlehandedly propel Nintendo back past Sega.
“I think you know exactly what I’m going to say,” Main said, that grin still sliding across his face. “This is a terrific gesture, and I’m truly honored, but there ain’t no way we can allocate that much product to you guys. Let me crunch the numbers with my guys back in Redmond, and I’ll get back to you with what Kmart’s allocation will be. How does that sound?”
How did it sound? Well, it sounded like although the videogame industry had dramatically changed these past few years, Nintendo was still the same: dedicated to great quality, and even greater quality control.
61.
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
“Come one, come all,” Stretch Anderson proclaimed, poking his head out from the first-class partition, “and see the amazing, outstanding, Mr. Steve Race!”
Stretch Anderson, Sony’s newest director of operations, was a lanky man by nature, and he seemed even lankier when he was on an airplane. He made his way down the aisle in economy class to see who wanted to speak with the man behind the curtain. He waved for one of the eager faces to come forward. “You’ll have ten minutes with the man,” Anderson said, ushering this stranger toward the first-class seating, “and not a minute more.” As soon as he scooted the gentleman past the partition, he turned around and looked for the next person to poach. The flight was packed, mostly full of guys who were heading back to California after a week spent at the 1994 Summer CES in Chicago. That made Anderson’s job even easier, all these employees from Sega and West Coast developers—it was like shooting fish in a barrel. “All right, who wants to go next?”
Several hands shot into the air, all of them hoping for ten minutes with the Great Oz at Sony and, if those minutes went well, maybe a job offer. It wasn’t so much that these people on the flight were unhappy with their current jobs, but Sony was offering big money, and based on the recently released hardware specs, people had begun to take the PS-X seriously. Ken Kutaragi’s masterpiece had dazzled at the Consumer Electronics Show. It was the world’s first true 3-D console, and able to process 360,000 polygons per second. In addition to the technical specifications, there was another surprising reason to get behind Sony: the software.
Like Tom Kalinske and Peter Main before him, Olafsson realized that the key to selling hardware lay in the software. But unlike Sega and Nintendo, Sony lacked an arcade pedigree and would struggle greatly to churn out first-party titles. Therefore, the secret to Sony’s success would hinge on successfully recruiting third-party developers. This is why Olafsson’s “overpaying” for Psygnosis had absolutely been worth it. Not only did the acquisition help stabilize Sony’s first-party roster, but the tech-savvy studio created an easy-to-use development kit with the intention of enticing developers to favor Sony over
Sega (whose kit was said to be extremely complicated) and Nintendo (who was notoriously stingy with providing development tools). That was one way that Olafsson hoped to inspire a lemming-like following toward Sony. The other was Electronic Arts, the same company that way back had hoisted skeptics onto Sega’s bandwagon. Olafsson and Jim Whims, SCEA’s newly appointed VP of sales, made a deal with EA’s CEO, Larry Probst: if EA could provide five titles in time for the launch, then for the lifetime of the console, they would only pay a $2 royalty (as opposed to the standard toll of $10). Another sweetheart deal for Electronic Arts, and this time they didn’t even have to reverse-engineer a console. Sony had slowly been building an army over the past few years, and now that people had started to pay attention, they were stunned by how formidable the force appeared to be.
“Who else wants in?” Anderson asked, making his rounds. Several hands rose, the faces below them revealing whimsical excitement and no trace of remorse.
“Maybe you should think about leaving too,” Michael Milken suggested to Kalinske when they met for lunch in the summer of 1994. “Come join Larry and me—you’d be an absolutely perfect fit.”
“That’s flattering,” Kalinske said, allowing himself for a moment to consider the possibility. Michael Milken, the renowned junk bond kingpin who had celebrated the eighties by shaking up Wall Street—which led to his starting off the nineties by serving twenty-two months in prison—was now a free man, and he wanted to do something good with his life. No, something great. And, like Kalinske, he’d always had tremendous passion for combining education with technology, which had led him to start a new company, with his brother and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, which did just that.
“I’ve talked about it with Larry,” Milken explained, “and we’d really like for you to run it. What do you think?” Milken had admired his lunch date ever since the two met in the early eighties, but it was something Kalinske had done at the end of the decade that really got his attention. On April 23, 1989, when the country was busy blaming its financial problems on a recently-indicted Michael Milken, Kalinske wrote an op-ed to the Los Angeles Times declaring that “The U.S. government should have given Michael Milken a commendation and gold medal for the help he’s provided our country’s economy instead of indicting him.” That was the kind of thing someone never forgets, and it further convinced Milken that Kalinske was the right guy to run his new venture.
“What do I think?” Kalinske asked. “It sounds great, absolutely fantastic, but I can’t leave Sega. Especially not now.”
“Why not? You said it’s a sinking ship.”
“I said it feels like a sinking ship,” Kalinske corrected. “That doesn’t mean things can’t be fixed. Plus, even if the ship sinks, I should be there to go down with it.”
“A martyr?”
“Hardly. I owe it to my company and the employees.”
“How is that not being a martyr?”
Kalinske gave this a moment of consideration. “Because in the videogame industry nobody cares about history. I’ll just be the guy who was there for the fall. No one will remember anything before that.”
“Hmmm,” Milken said, trying to decide whether to continue pushing. “Sounds to me like all the more reason to get out of there.”
“You’re probably right, but you’re not changing my mind,” Kalinske said, before falling into a smile. “At least not yet.”
“So,” Peter Main wondered aloud, with a grin befitting his befuddled excitement, “does anyone have half a clue about how the hell this is supposed to work?”
“Hardly,” Howard Lincoln said, also sporting a dangerously excited grin. “But I’m feeling rather confident that we’ll all be able to figure this out.”
“Yes,” Minoru Arakawa added with a soft blink of his eyes, which roughly translated to mean “we always do, don’t we?”
It was October 19, 1994, and Nintendo of America’s three amigos were bracing themselves to boldly go where no videogame executives had gone before: cyberspace. Six days earlier, NOA had announced that in an effort to make Donkey Kong Country the biggest game ever, Nintendo would become the first videogame to utilize online technology for a new product launch. Nintendo’s three-month online campaign would be available exclusively on CompuServe, the leading worldwide Internet service with 2.3 million members. To attract attention and bridge the gap between corporation and consumer, the campaign would kick off with a live, one-hour chat hosted by Arakawa, Lincoln, and Main.
“Now, what I’d like to know,” Main mused, “is after we post a reply, how will it know that we’re done with that question and onto the next one?”
“Don’t worry,” assured Ron Luks, CompuServe’s systems operator (SYSOP), who had come out to Redmond to moderate the conversation. “There’s some lingo that we’ll use to keep everything running smoothly. So just sit back, relax, and do what you all do best.” Luks looked at his watch, the seconds ticking down to 6:00 p.m. “Ready?”
Nearly ten years earlier, Arakawa, Lincoln, and Main were plotting how to get a product nobody had ever heard of into stores everywhere. Slowly at first, and then quickly as credibility grew, these men succeeded in spectacular fashion. Inch by inch, they willed their way into more than 20,000 stores, and Nintendo products were available in just about every retail space imaginable. But now there was a whole new space to think about, one that was much harder to imagine because it didn’t physically exist. It was there but it was not; it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
The technocrats spoke about the Internet as if it were a foregone conclusion, and maybe it would be, but it was hard to accept this certainty and not wonder what happened to that foregone conclusion of multimedia. What about virtual reality? Or any of the other Next Big Things that so quickly shrunk into extinction over the years? Maybe the Internet would catch on, or maybe it would be the latest casualty in the graveyard of foregone conclusions, but either way Nintendo would be there. Those days of wait-and-see were over, allowing scrappy go-getters take what should have been their own. Arakawa, Lincoln, and Main were ready to look forward. Not out of panic or desperation, but with the same thing that always propelled them forward: patience, persistence, and the numerical beauty of a well-calculated risk. Today a new quest began, a journey into the beyond. And just as they had done before, they set out to slowly take over this intangible new space, inch by theoretical inch.
“Ready?” Lincoln repeated to himself. “Always and never.” Arakawa and Main nodded, signaling to Luks that they were ready to get started with whatever came next.
The Nintendo of America conference is beginning
RON LUKS/SYSOP: Welcome everyone. On behalf of CompuServe and the Video Game Publishers Forums, I would like to welcome our members to the first Nintendo online conference. My name is Ron Luks, and I’ll be the moderator for tonight’s conference. Now, I’d like to introduce our three guests of honor.
RON LUKS/SYSOP: First is Mr. Minoru Arakawa, who serves as President of Nintendo of America (His screen name will be “MR.A”).
RON LUKS/SYSOP: Next is Howard Lincoln, who joined Nintendo as Sr. Vice President in 1983, and was appointed Chairman of NOA in Feb 1994 (“HOWARD”).
RON LUKS/SYSOP: And last but not least we have Peter Main, who has directed all sales and marketing activities for Nintendo products since 1987 (“PETER”).
RON LUKS/SYSOP: Before we open up for questions, I’d like to introduce Howard Lincoln and have him provide a quick introduction to Donkey Kong country and its new technology. Howard, GA (GO AHEAD).
HOWARD: First Ron, on behalf of Minoru Arakawa and Peter Main, I’d like to let everyone know how excited we are to be here tonight. Conversing online is a new concept and we are looking forward to communicating using this new medium.
HOWARD: Needless to say, we’re very excited about this new game, which in our estimation will set the gold standard for 16-bit game play. We’ve been able to take the computer graphics technology that brought the dinosaurs to life i
n “Jurassic Park” and put it into a 16-bit video game. We call this process Advanced Computer Modeling, and the results are outstanding.
RON LUKS/SYSOP: Thanks Howard. So without any further delay. Let me open the floor to the first question. And remember, to get in line to ask a question type “/QUE”
Moderator recognizes question #1 from Christian Mueller
CHRISTIAN MUELLER: DKC has superb graphics, but we’ve seen such gameplay before. Do you think the consumer will accept “old games” even when they have superior graphics? GA
MR. A: Thank you for asking us about this. This is a brand new Donkey Kong game. Not only are the graphics superior but the gameplay is outstanding in each of 100 levels. The gameplay is outstanding. GA
Moderator recognizes question #2 from Jer Horwitz
JER HORWITZ: This conference is a wonderful idea. Thanks for doing it! I remember when I first saw DKC at the Summer CES show. My writers and I were all astonished that it was a SNES game . . . I’m wondering, what will the next game be to use the ACM technology? GA
PETER: That’s a good question. UniRacers, coming on December 12th also utilizes ACM technology to generate over 8,000 frames of animation. We also have other games currently in development which you will hear more about shortly. GA
The online chat continued for nearly an hour, and ended with the question that everyone under eighteen had been wondering since first picking up a Nintendo controller.
Moderator recognizes question #23 from Chocobo
JEN KUIPER: Ever since Nintendo started the revolution that changed video games from a hobby to an industry, I have seriously wanted to work for you people.
Who do I contact for more info? I’m there dude! PLAY IT LOUD!! GA
PETER: (All three gentlemen laughing) We are always looking for talented people so just drop us a line attention: Bev Mitchell, and we will be right back to you.
Console Wars Page 60