Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [88]
It received little notice: Kirby games, aimed at kids, never did. But each translucent pink Kirby cartridge had an accelerometer in it, a cost-effective type called a micro-electromechanical system, or MEMS. The MEMS chip was basically a tiny spring with a weight on it: move it, and the spring registers the movement and translates it to Kirby. Accelerometers are used everywhere, in bridges and cars and medical devices.
It wasn’t a perfect fit. Game Boy users were accustomed to holding their machine in any number of slouchy ways: now that Kirby was as volatile as a blob of mercury, they had to keep things balanced—and pray there was sufficient light to see. The only practical way to make it work, Iwata concluded, would be to have a special console controller with built-in accelerometers. Players could tilt that however they wanted, and still see their TV screen. No, it wouldn’t do for a handheld device. And Nintendo’s upcoming handheld, the DS, had enough hooks. “[Gamers have] given up on video games,” Iwata said at a trade show. “[W]e have to call them back in.”
Iwata, following through on Yamauchi’s vision, was introducing a new portable console in 2004. This was two years after his ascendancy to the top post, and only three years since the Game Boy Advance was released. It would be his first real test. He wasn’t running things the same way as Yamauchi; he encouraged the daimyos to cooperate and share staff, instead of feud. He talked nonstop to the staff, using reams of charts to back up his statements. Anything to measure up to the shogun and his inerrant instinct.
While he didn’t glower at people like Yamauchi did, Iwata lived and breathed Nintendo philosophy as much as the employees who had logged in decades of dedication. He larded vast hoards of cash, kept staff low, and refused to branch out beyond games. Yamauchi, still a board member, backed up Iwata in print . . . to a degree. “If we are unsuccessful with the Nintendo DS, we may not go bankrupt, but we will be crushed,” he told the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. “The next two years will be a really crucial time for Nintendo.” In other words: let’s see if he screws this up.
The Nintendo DS built off of the success of the GBA’s maturelooking edition. DS stood for Dual Screen, and each unit had two three-inch LCD screens. Mario could explore in a fold-out world with double the sky, jumping up into the second screen’s territory when faced with a high obstacle. Or, he could keep a constant map of his travels on one screen, along with possessions and various power meters. Or, turning the DS sideways, Mario could explore a portrait-oriented world instead of a landscape. The possibilities were untapped. Which young blood thought up the idea of reusing Gunpei Yokoi’s ancient Game and Watch two-screen idea? Yamauchi, who passed Iwata the idea just before retirement.
Even better than two screens was the touch screen. The base screen had a resistive panel, which turns the whole image into a digital button. Wherever pressure was applied, the two resistive layers connected, sending an electrical impulse, no different than when the A or B button was pressed. ATMs used the same technology. “Touching is good,” went the naughty advertising campaign slogan. All DSes shipped with a stylus as well, so people didn’t smudge the screen.
The DS was backward-compatible with the GBA games, but designers didn’t kill themselves trying to accommodate Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, which had slightly larger cartridges. That 1989 version of Tetris, alas, wasn’t playable anymore. Twin speakers allowed for true stereo sound. Puzzlingly, there wasn’t room for a headphone jack: anyone who wanted to listen on a train had to buy an adaptor. The screen resolution was also anemic compared to high-end cell phones. A small mike in one corner