January 14th, 2004
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Happy Birthday, Nintendo
On Sunday I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography to see an exhibit on the twentieth anniversary of the Famicom (Japanese version of the original 8-bit Nintendo). It was pretty good. I’d heard about it on Video-fenky or slashdot– I was pretty excited to go after over a month of waiting. Through some extraordinary scavenging, the curator had managed to get every piece of (licensed) Famicom software for the exhibit, 1252 titles. They were displayed by the dozens in glass cases lining a dimly lit room, with special arrangements of hardware and peripherals at several islands. There were a couple cross-shaped arrays of LCD screens displaying lifesize interviews with some of video-gaming’s pioneers, including Shigeru Miyamoto (whom I’ve met) [see below] and Yuji Naka. Also present was a “making of the Famicom” documentary and an array of baseball games from the past two decades. I tried my hand at Dig Dug on a large projection screen (very reminiscient of Mo’jox, but without the physical activity). I knew I could break the paltry high score of 103000, but the controller was worn out from lots of little kids whamming on it, so the best I could do as 40k. After instinctively shouting as I screwed up the last time, I realized where I was and how many people were watching me and hurried out the exit.
Figure 1. See: awesome.
Luckily, there wasn’t any wait when we arrived, but by the time we left there was a line extending out the door and up the stairs to the first floor. It’s amazing how many different kinds of people were there…men and women, old folks and young; and it wasn’t just parents being dragged around by their kids– a good time was being had by all. Entertaiment usually associated with young guys in the US just seems to have more universal appeal and acceptance here. It’s probably lame but I get so happy seeing chicks with a game controller and computer t-shirt.
I got a pretty nice book from the gift shop on the way out. It contained not only photographs of all 1252 pieces of software, but also adorable Engrish translations of the summaries and interviews. Baree goodo!
