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John Stossel's hard-hitting report on the Nintendo menace.... 1988 edition

R

RotBot

Member
In which we learn that people drove 1000 miles to wait in line for Super Mario Bros. 2, Josh--Age 8--is not deceived by Birdo's cross-dressing, people wearing blue sweaters don't know how to hold controllers, Nintendo help desk staff cheat at light gun games, the game shortage conspiracy has been going on for 20 years, and something happened in Soviet Armenia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv6bAMfYfLI&fmt=18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZK0ZY7wC7U&fmt=18

Via Errormacro:
A 1988 episode of 20/20 brings this John Stossel report on that damned Nintendo thing the kids are so into these days. Pretty much every moment of this is gold, from Stossel's incredulous tone while describing Mario's "ridiculous plot," to his questions of why the Japanese are the ones having all the success (still a genuine concern in the late '80s), to the kid at 4:26 in the first video with really odd controller hand placement. But better still is watching the whole thing and counting how many quotes could apply to games today with no change whatsoever, right down to the lines in Japan for Dragon Quest and claims that Nintendo is creating a false shortage to fuel demand.
Click to expand...

Bonus Bill O'Reilly
Post other mainstream media coverage of video games from the low-bit days if you find any.
 
R

RotBot

Member
Deku said:
Oh people were lining up for NES in 1988 in America?
Click to expand...
They were lining up for Super Mario Bros. 2 :(

ShockingAlberto said:
Excellent.

I love Stossel's fearmongering. The mustache makes it funnier.
Click to expand...
I think this is actually a lot more balanced than most of the stuff you see on Fox News and CNN today.
 
F

FromTheFuture

Member
Thanks for posting that. I don't know why, but I ended up watching the whole thing. I guess it's just nice to look back on the old times.
 
T

Tobor

Member
I love the ending. He ended up buying a "Nintendo" for the report, and he and his wife stayed up till midnight playing. :lol
 
E

evilromero

Member
20 years later and the craze for Nintendo continues. And 20 years later it's the same people reporting the crazy phenomena likes it's some foreign language. It's almost uncanny seeing them talk about artificially constraining supply to pump up demand for Mario 2.
 
U

Ulairi

Banned
Actually, that's a pretty fair piece and a lot better than what we get now or what was released back in the day.
 
K

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
Tobor said:
I love the ending. He ended up buying a "Nintendo" for the report, and he and his wife stayed up till midnight playing. :lol
Click to expand...

It's the Wii all over again! Or, should I say "the Wii is the NES all over again"? ;)

Seriously though, I like this kind of testimonies to the past (can you even say that in English? I'm not a native speaker). It's funny, because you can see girls and boys alike play the thing, and Stossel even hinted at the broadness of the appeal by saying that he and his wife play it.

It makes you wonder about the strategies of some companies, say, Ubisoft. They gloss over how they're geniuses because with the Imagine series and garbage like that they've "successfully" targeted girls. Give me a break. If anything, they're a bunch of idiots, because the NES already had games that appealed not only to girls, but to boys AND (in some cases) to adults. Ubisoft thinks they're capitalizing on Nintendo's success with new audiences, while in reality, they're narrowing their focus even more, because kids (including girls) have always been one of the most profitable audiences in the videogame industry, if not the most.

[EDIT] Oh, by the way, nice job, OP. Once again, the thread title misleads the reader into thinking it's yet another anti-games report, when it's actually much more objective than that.
 
A Black Falcon

A Black Falcon

Member
Kilrogg said:
It's the Wii all over again! Or, should I say "the Wii is the NES all over again"? ;)

Seriously though, I like this kind of testimonies to the past (can you even say that in English? I'm not a native speaker). It's funny, because you can see girls and boys alike play the thing, and Stossel even hinted at the broadness of the appeal by saying that he and his wife play it.

It makes you wonder about the strategies of some companies, say, Ubisoft. They gloss over how they're geniuses because with the Imagine series and garbage like that they've "successfully" targeted girls. Give me a break. If anything, they're a bunch of idiots, because the NES already had games that appealed not only to girls, but to boys AND (in some cases) to adults. Ubisoft thinks they're capitalizing on Nintendo's success with new audiences, while in reality, they're narrowing their focus even more, because kids (including girls) have always been one of the most profitable audiences in the videogame industry, if not the most.

[EDIT] Oh, by the way, nice job, OP. Once again, the thread title misleads the reader into thinking it's yet another anti-games report, when it's actually much more objective than that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it does kind of seem like the NES had broader appeal than the systems after it... boys played more than girls, I think, but everybody played it. That doesn't seem to have been quite as true with systems afterwards, for some reason... though Nintendo systems always had great success with children, of course. The DS and Wii just expanded it to also include more adults than before.

And yes, it was actually a pretty good report, and the message was pretty much the opposite of the title's "menace" thing. Stossel is quite skeptical of the "videogames make kids violent" argument, and says that he enjoyed it. Oh, and Mario 2 is a great game... :)

As for the Ubisoft stuff, the theory isn't that bad -- make a game targeted at one specific market. The problem is the execution, and how they insult pretty much everyone by making such stereotyped games... Nintendo certainly has many much better models for how to grow the industry.
 
P

_PsiFire_

Member
JimtotheHum said:
those kids are all my age so that puts them right around 30 years old now! pretty crazy!
Click to expand...
I was thinking the same thing; although I'm still playing games, I wonder if any of those kids still do?
 
A

Anerythristic

Member
When I look at these people from the 80s I am confident that if I went back in time I would be the coolest person in the world. :lol
 
L

LCfiner

Member
Ridiculously inaccurate thread title.

It's not a "menace" report at all. It's completely even handed.

And I liked the mom's comment at the end of part 2. Her kids were playing it too much to the detriment of homework that she took an active role and limited how much time gets spent on the machine.


And only one man in the western world can rock a moustache better than John Stossel.




legend.jpeg
 
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