Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [5]
HAVING SURVIVED THE VOLCANO, THE ARAKAWAS SET UP shop an ash-free three thousand miles away in New York City, with a rented warehouse across the Hudson River in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The Arakawas were in the Big Apple because it was, and still is, the toy capital of the world. Visiting three buyers in a day took a dollar’s worth of subway tokens, not a week of airports and hotel lounges.
But it wasn’t a good fit. Kyoto was fourteen hours ahead of Manhattan, and any conversation with the home office required one party to stay up very late or wake up very early. Yoko didn’t know as much English as her husband, and New York’s cesspool vibe—this was the year of the transit strike, Studio 54 being shuttered, and John Lennon’s murder—was hardly the Asian-friendly Pacific Northwest of Vancouver. They were unhappy in the city, yet supposed to figure out what sort of games these American foreigners wanted to play. In the vigilante atmosphere of the Guardian Angels, they decided on a game about shooting.
The success of Space Invaders had started a worldwide rage for shooters. (Since its release in June 1978, Space Invaders was also responsible for a shortage of hundred-yen coins in Japan, and for giving the Japanese something to be as proud of as Brazil was of Pelé.) Namco released a color sequel, Space Invaders, Part II, in 1980: it was a worldwide hit as well. Taito responded with Galaxian in 1979, which was basically Space Invaders with some swooping attacks: it was a hit too. Its sequel, Galaga, came out in 1981, with minor upgrades: yet another global hit.
In Japan, Nintendo tried its hand at its own space shooter game in 1980, Radar Scope. Radar Scope’s twist was that the enemies flew down, but then retreated back to the safety at the top of the screen. There were no shields for players to hide behind, and the more blasts a player let fly, the slower the “rapid-fire laser blaster” would become. Finally, some wireframe buildings in the background made for the illusion you were standing among skyscrapers, looking up at the alien horde.
Radar Scope was Nintendo’s biggest game of the year. Its catalog also boasted Space Firebird, a top-down dogfight game. There was also Space Fever, a straight-up replica of Space Invaders, from a year or two back. Space Launcher (sensing a theme to the names?) was a Frogger-style obstacle course game. Monkey Magic was a Breakout rip-off. Head-on-N was a maze game with race cars, except nowhere near as good as Pac-Man. Finally there was Sheriff, a Western-themed shooting game, which would seem perfect for America. But it had odd and frustrating controls, with two joysticks instead of one.
So, a few out-of-date knockoffs, a game that had players fuming over the lousy control scheme, and one proven hit. Yamauchi went all in on Radar Scope, telling Arakawa it had the best chance for American success. Nintendo started manufacturing three thousand cabinets, shipping them from Kyoto to the New Jersey warehouse. Arakawa’s job was to get them all sold. If he succeeded, Nintendo would have a toehold in the American market.
It would take a few months to assemble that many Radar Scope cabinets, so Arakawa starting preselling them. His first solo decision for the company was to focus almost exclusively on Radar Scope, and cut bait on the others: its success and Nintendo’s success would be one. Nintendo farmed out the distribution of Space Firebird to Gremlin, a company that worked with other Japanese companies such as Nichibutsu, Namco, and Konami. Space Fever never saw U.S. shores. Sheriff was released by Exidy as Bandido. None were big hits, which must have been a relief to all concerned.
But this wasn’t Let’s Make a Deal: just because all the other doors had donkeys behind them didn’t mean that the one Yamauchi and Arakawa chose had a new car. Arcade vendors found Radar Scope’s beeping annoying. (Presumably they knew their beeps, working among a hundred machines all set to “migraine.”) The news that the game was big in Japan didn’t impress. And did arcade vendors need yet another cloned Space