Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [28]
Further mixing the character’s and the player’s adventures were the Warp Zones. Scattered here and there were secret chambers, with “Welcome to Warp Zone!” displayed over three identical pipes. They all led to different levels of the game. It was a built-in cheat, letting Mario bypass vast swatches of the game if he wanted. Another bit of humor, addressing just how Brobdignagian the game had become: what book lets you know you can skip ahead to page 320 if you want?
It must have been frustrating for Yamauchi, not a patient man, to watch the development. His A-team of designers produced a great game, gave it a perfect end point, and then added a dumb joke to explain why they had to design another four levels to play. And then the same dumb joke again. And again! Shades of The Agony and the Ecstasy, with the pope continually asking Michelangelo when the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling will be completed, and the painter responding, “When I’m finished!”
In the end, Super Mario Bros. had thirty-two levels, and eight boss battles. Mario could gain a hit point by eating a mushroom, and grow much larger in size. He could gain temporary invincibility from sparkly stars. He could throw bouncing fireballs if he touched a flower. He climbed beanpoles to the sky, fought off a reptile king, and battled a series of turtles wielding hammers, wings, and spines. He saved any number of women who were not our princess. He jumped on floating platforms, avoided flaming windmills, and ducked living bullets fired at him. He would gain another life if he found a “1-up” mushroom, or collected a hundred coins.
While the game took forever to make, it also took many hours to play through completely. This was Donkey Kong if each level was ten times regular size, and if the levels never repeated. Each board had so many hidden coins and power-ups, so many enemies and dangers, so many secrets! This wasn’t a simulation; it was a world to get lost in, as replayable as a favorite book or movie or album. It was supposed to ship in the summer, but Miyamoto saki for a few more weeks to fix bugs. It shipped on Friday, September 13, not the most auspicious of dates. When it arrived in Japanese arcades, players kept plopping quarters in long after they defeated King Koopa, just to find all the Easter eggs. Everyone played it as Billy Mitchell did, trying to wring the computer chip of every last secret.
Now if only someone would sell it. Yamauchi had hit wall after wall trying to get the Famicon, an established hit on its way to selling more than 19 million copies in Japan, on American shelves. Japan had about 120 million people at that time, so almost one in six owned a Famicon. Yet video game consoles remained radioactive to U.S. retailers. It was their loss, of course, but also Nintendo’s.
Before Famicon’s success, Yamauchi sat down with Atari and offered them a sweetheart deal. Nintendo would make Famicons, and Atari would sell them as an Atari product, with Nintendo taking a hefty slice of the revenue. Nintendo would lose its darling distribution network, but it trusted it would be in safe hands with Atari. The deal fell apart, mostly because Atari itself fell apart during the ’83 crash. Nintendo was left without an American partner. Atari was left to kick itself over letting a golden goose fly away.
After the Famicon had proved itself in Japan, Yamauchi sent it (and Arakawa) to electronics trade shows. The console received a new Americanized name, the Advanced Video System: Famicon was too Japanese. It worked with a typing keyboard,