Super Nintendo The game-changing company that unlocked the power of play

"The story of Nintendo... is the story of video games as a whole," asserts journalist MacDonald (You Died) in this entertaining history of the Japanese gaming company. Founder Fusajiro Yamauchi started Nintendo in the 1890s to sell illustrated handmade playing cards known as hanafuda. Decades later, the company brought on engineer Gunpei Yokoi, who created one of Nintendo's first successful toys, an extendable plastic gripper known as the Ultra Hand. Nintendo's first gaming console, the Color TV-Game 6, entered the market in 1977 and hit games, like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon, launched the company into global prominence. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata saw games not just as a form of entertainment, MacDonald explains, but as a way of improving quality of life. She chronicles how the company helped popularize handheld gaming with the creation of the Game Boy in 1989 and innovated touch-screen controls, as seen on the Nintendo DS, before smartphones were commonplace. MacDonald writes with a gamer's keen eye for the intricacies of play and a thoughtful appreciation for Nintendo's commitment to innovate and have fun. This is a must-read for gamers. (Feb.)

A deep dive into the game company that gave us Mario, the Wii, and Covid-era comfort. Though most commonly associated with video games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, the Japanese firm Nintendo has a history that stretches back to the 1890s, when the company specialized in card games. As MacDonald, games editor at theGuardian, explains in this study of the company's history, Nintendo has eschewed the high-res innovations of its competitors and instead focuses on creating a sense of play and family friendliness. It enjoyed early successes in the '80s with the arcade game Donkey Kong but truly exploded when it got into the console business and introduced plumbers Mario and Luigi. (Their iconic mustaches and overalls, MacDonald notes, were less style choices than workarounds with the limits of rendering humans in 8-bit environments.) The book is structured around chapters dedicated to particular games rather than eras or consoles, which has its virtues. Nintendo classics like Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda, and Wii Sports each demonstrate a variation on the company's philosophy of play; Animal Crossing, a cozy game that was deeply embraced during the early months of Covid, is especially well treated here. But a structure focused on particular games and their multiple variants seems to give MacDonald license to occasionally get in the weeds about gameplay and fan chatter. (An appendix ranks her 50 favorite Nintendo games.) And because Nintendo can be famously tight-lipped about its financials, the book lacks broader context around the gaming industry. Still, MacDonald digs up some insights from designers and enthusiasts, and if the book generally shades toward corporate hagiography, it chronicles a company that has time and again delivered games that have enchanted millions. Gaming history written with a fan's verve, for better and worse. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.