Author: VGC | John

John Scalzo has been writing about video games since 2001, and he co-founded Warp Zoned in 2011. Growing out of his interest in game history, the launch of Video Game Canon followed in 2017.

Viz Media Will Publish “Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom From Nintendo’s Legendary CEO” in Spring 2021

Even though it was founded in 1889, only five people have served as the President of Nintendo.

Satoru Iwata held that post from 2002 until his death in 2015, and in that time, the colorful executive guided the consolemaker through the boom years of the DS, Wii, and 3DS, and laid the groundwork for the launch of the Switch.

He also opened a window into Nintendo’s famously secretive culture, and spoke directly to fans as the face of the company’s Nintendo Direct video series and initiated a series of conversations with developers through his Iwata Asks column.

Shigesato Itoi’s printing company, Hobonichi, compiled some of these interviews (along with posts that Iwata made on the Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun website) into a collected edition in 2019 that was only available in Japan. But Itoi, who was also Iwata’s close friend and the creative force behind the EarthBound series, recently teamed up with Viz Media to announce that the collection will finally be released in English in Spring 2021 as Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom From Nintendo’s Legendary CEO.

Viz Media shared an official description of Ask Iwata with The Verge:

In this motivational collection, Satoru Iwata addresses diverse subjects such as locating bottlenecks, how success breeds resistance to change, and why programmers should never say no. Drawn from the “Iwata Asks” series of interviews with key contributors to Nintendo games and hardware, and featuring conversations with renowned Mario franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto and creator of Earthbound Shigesato Itoi, Ask Iwata offers game fans and business leaders an insight into the leadership, development and design philosophies of one of the most beloved figures in gaming history.

If you don’t want to wait until Spring 2021, the Iwata Asks archive is still available on Nintendo.com.

UPDATE (1/8/21): Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom From Nintendo’s Legendary CEO will be published on April 13, 2021.

Sealed Copy of Super Mario Bros. Sells for $114,000

Heritage Auctions announced that a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. was sold last week for $114,000, setting a new record for the sale price of a single game. The previous recordholder was a different mint condition copy of Mario’s first NES adventure, which sold for $100,150 in a private sale in early 2019.

So what makes this copy of Super Mario Bros. so valuable? According to the auction house, it comes down to the packaging’s 9.4 A+ grade from Wata Games and an equally rare “cardboard hangtab” (similar to those found on action figures) that was perforated onto the box by Nintendo:

What’s the deal with cardboard hangtabs? one may, understandably, wonder. Cardboard hangtabs were originally used on the US test market copies of black box games, back before plastic was used to seal each game. As Nintendo began to further establish their company in the US, their packaging was updated almost continuously. Strangely, the addition of the plastic wrap came before the box cutting die was altered to remove the cardboard hangtab. This rendered the functionality of the cardboard hangtab completely useless, since it was under the plastic seal. There are four sub-variants of the plastic sealed cardboard hangtab box (this particular copy of Super Mario Bros. being the “3 Code” variant) that were produced within the span of one year. Each sub-variant of the cardboard hangtab black box, produced within that timeframe, had a production period of just a few months; a drop in the bucket compared to the title’s overall production run.

In short, a cardboard hangtab copy of any early Nintendo Entertainment System game brings a certain air of “vintage” unrivaled by its successors.

Valarie McLeckie, the Video Game Specialist at Heritage Auctions, later told Ars Technica that this particular variant of Super Mario Bros. is believed to exist “in the single digits” today.

While this rare copy of Super Mario Bros. is sought-after by collectors for its uniqueness, fans interested in playing the game have several cheaper options. In addition to the millions of open copies of the NES original that exist in the wild, Super Mario Bros. has been re-released on the Super NES (as part of Super Mario All-Stars), Game Boy Color (as Super Mario Bros. Deluxe), Game Boy Advance, 3DS, Wii, Wii U, and the NES Classic. Super Mario Bros. is also part of the Nintendo Entertainment System compilation on the Nintendo Switch, which is a free download for all subscribers to the Nintendo Switch Online service.

Bite-Sized Game History: Nintendo Power Survives Dragon Warrior, Doom’s Shareware Secrets, and Dirty Harry’s Bizarre Announcement

When you’re working with video games, you have to learn to be adaptable. In this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, we look at adapting in the face of a flop, adapting when you have a blockbuster fall in your lap, and adapting to the reality of creating game adaptations.

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Bite-Sized Game History: John Tobias Gets Started, The Simpsons Go Medieval, and Some CES 1994 Swag

Everybody has to get their start somewhere.

For a lot of developers, that start often comes from an opportunity that’s slightly outside the game industry. But even after they’ve been at it for a few decades, some veteran designers need to get to a place where they can restart. And you can’t have a beginning without something else ending, like the game industry’s transition from CES to E3 in 1994-1995.

We’ll talk about all of these scenarios in this edition of Bite-Sized Game History.

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World Video Game Hall of Fame Welcomes its Class of 2020: Minecraft, Bejeweled, Centipede, and King’s Quest

After selling more than 200 million copies over the last decade, it’s hard to remember a time when Minecraft wasn’t nearly synonymous with the entire medium of video games. And though it was only available in an unfinished state from 2009 to 2011, it seemed to emerge from Mojang’s offices as a fully-formed phenomenon even in its earliest days.

So as players continued to flock to its Lego-like world in droves, it was a bit of a shock when the game was denied entry into the World Video Game Hall of Fame three separate times. Shortlisted as a finalist in 2015, 2016, and 2018, the title was passed over again and again and again. But Minecraft’s creative sandbox become too big to ignore this year, and it has finally been enshrined among gaming’s greats.

In a stunning upset, three unlikely candidates also garnered enough support from the Hall of Fame’s Selection Advisory Committee to join the Class of 2020. A genre-defining match-3 puzzler from PopCap (Bejeweled), a classic coin-op from Atari (Centipede), and one of earliest adventure titles from Sierra (King’s Quest) won out over more popular titles such as NBA Jam, GoldenEye 007, and Guitar Hero.

While this year’s class might look a little surprising, historians working at the Hall of Fame’s parent organizations, the Strong Museum and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, helped put their importance into perspective.

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Destructoid Picked Their Favorite Games for Sega’s 60th Anniversary

Sega is celebrating their 60th anniversary this week, and the staff of Destructoid has marked the occasion with a look back at some of their favorite games from the publisher.

The list is pretty evenly split between Sega’s halcyon days as a consolemaker and their current status as a premier third-party partner to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. There’s even a few fond memories of Sega’s brief tenure as an arcade powerhouse.

CJ Andriessen kicked things off with a loving ode to The House of the Dead: Overkill, Sega’s grindhouse-inspired light gun game that launched for the Wii in 2009 (and was eventually re-released over the years for the PS4 and PC). Overkill was a great pick to start this retrospective, as everyone loves just how over-the-top and nasty it is, and for how it’s a fitting finale to the House of the Dead franchise… even though, chronologically, it comes first.

The rest of the staff each highlighted a different game from Sega’s history, and with each one falling into a different genre

Like Nintendo, Sega never let themselves be pigeonholed into a specialized niche, and their wide-ranging library includes titles that fall into every genre and subgenre, and the rest of the Destructoid staff picked games that reflect the company’s penchant for trying anything once:

▶ Jonathan Holmes selected Panzer Dragoon Saga, one of Sega’s epic RPGs from the Saturn era.
▶ Adzuken got behind the wheel of Out Run, Sega’s sunny arcade racer.
▶ Anthony Marzano confessed his love for Crazy Taxi, Sega’s kooky chauffeur simulation.
▶ Jordan Devore opened up about Yakuza 0, Sega’s sixth gangland tale from Japan.
▶ Josh Tolentino picked Sakura Wars, the first game in Sega’s anime-inspired strategy series.
▶ Patrick Hancock got colorful with Jet Set Radio, Sega’s dystopian graffiti game.
▶ And Chris Moyse stepped inside the circle for Virtua Fighter, Sega’s first attempt at a 3D fighter.

But as I said, Sega’s library is large and full of unique treasures. So be sure to dip into the comments at Destructoid for even more suggestions to celebrate Sega’s anniversary.

2019 GOTY Scoreboard: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Untitled Goose Game, and More

It’s rare for the critical consensus around the “Game of the Year” to stray beyond a handful of titles. But that’s exactly what happened in 2019, as three games split the major awards and nearly a dozen others laid claim to at least one publication-specific award.

Leading the pack, if you can even call it that, is From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which was the big winner at The Game Awards and the SXSW Gaming Awards. Then there was House House’s Untitled Goose Game, which waddled away with trophies from the DICE Awards and the GDC Awards. Finally, there’s Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds, which won the big prize at the BAFTA Games Awards.

After that, it’s easy to go down the list and find a few highlights, including Remedy’s Control, Kojima Productions’s Death Stranding, and Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, all of which were recognized as the top title of 2019 by at least nine publications. And that’s not even getting into the massive traffic jam of titles that earned runner-up status. We might be heading into a transition year for the game industry, but 2019 was certainly a capstone year for this generation.

You can see all of the “Game of the Year” contenders from 2019 in the 2019 GOTY Scoreboard after the break.

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Edge’s “Feel Better” List Features Games to Escape to a Happier Place

The creators of Edge were forced to come up with something different for the newest issue of the long-running game magazine. Confined to their homes and forced to cancel a traditional print distribution for “E345” due to the coronavirus pandemic, the writers and editors sat down and channeled their feelings of frustration into “Feel Better,” a list of games that might just add some color to these dark times.

I’ll let the magazine’s Editor, Nathan Brown, explain:

The games we celebrate this issue share one defining characteristic. They make you feel better. Most are non-violent, or at least nonconfrontational – games for the monkey rather than the lizard brain, that are about helping others, not hindering them. Some combat the anxieties we all feel about the rapidly changing world around us; others offer an escape to a simpler, happier place. Most are suitable for the whole family. Above all they are games that will make you feel better when you stand up than you did when you sat down. We hope that reading about them helps in some way. It has certainly helped us to write about them.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is there, of course, as are Stardew Valley and Minecraft. But “Feel Better” goes beyond those three to feature a total of 52 games, and each one is a gem.

There’s the bright colors and boundless energy of found in games like Jet Set Radio, Katamari Damacy, and Splatoon 2. Or you can unleash your inner musician with DJ Hero and Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat. Readers are even encouraged to get on their feet with recommendations for Ring Fit Adventure and Wii Sports Resort.

“Feel Better” is Brown’s final issue at the helm of Edge, and he should absolutely be proud of his work. The entire list can be found after the break.

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Bite-Sized Game History: The Smithsonian’s Animal Crossing Obsession, Game Characters Through the Years, and Ken Griffey Jr.

Welcome to another edition of Bite-Sized Game History!

This time around we’ll be looking at the Animal Crossing: New Horizons habits of a few librarians at the Smithsonian, an infographic that charts the evolution of more than a dozen game characters, and the time Ken Griffey Jr. and one lucky Nintendo Power reader got to play a game on the Kingdome’s big screen.

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A Brief Recap of the Wild Drama Surrounding the Launch of Cooking Mama: Cookstar

Fans have been drawn to the colorful flavor of the Cooking Mama franchise ever since the first game was released for the DS in 2006. Dishing out meals alongside Mama has never been a particularly meaty experience, but the behind-the-scenes drama surrounding her latest entree, Cooking Mama: Cookstar for the Nintendo Switch, is definitely getting a little spicy.

I’d apologize for all those food puns, but trust me, you’re going to be hungry for more by the end of this.

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