'Super Nintendo' review: History of a company that's got game

If Silicon Valley likes to move fast and break things, Nintendo prefers to go slow and preserve its history. The Japanese game and console maker also always protects its "sense of fun," Keza MacDonald explains in the spirited new history "Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play."

Nintendo’s approach to developing games and devices over decades — from the Game Boy to the Wii to the Switch — make it a distinct foil to Big Tech. It’s a company that favors harmony over disruption, enjoyment over endlessly increasing profit.

MacDonald, the Guardian’s video games editor, retraces the company’s history, from a humble playing-card manufacturer to video game behemoth. The lively book is structured around major franchises, including Donkey Kong, Pokémon and Animal Crossing, chronicling the game design and creative thinking behind each. MacDonald weaves together old and new interviews with Nintendo executives and gaming enthusiasts to reveal how these colorful, family-friendly games are first imagined and then remain so beloved for so long.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 in Kyoto, Japan, when entrepreneur Fusajiro Yamauchi began producing wood and cardboard hanafuda, cards emblazoned with floral images for entertainment at home. These cards had been banned in Japan for several centuries for being "closely associated with gambling and, therefore, with organized crime," and it was a savvy business decision to make them when the ban eased in the late 19th century. Starting in the 1960s, the company shifted to toys, including the Ultra Hand, a plastic hand-extender that sold in the millions. Then, in 1980, the Game & Watch arrived, a primitive version of the Game Boy that set Nintendo on course in the burgeoning world of handheld electronic gaming devices.

The arcade was the next frontier to conquer — and Nintendo certainly did. The release of Donkey Kong in 1981 proved a major windfall, earning more than $1 billion (in current dollars) over the course of two years and firmly establishing Nintendo in the lucrative American market. "The game was unlike anything at the time," MacDonald writes, with a "cartoonist’s eye to game design" and "characters with personalities and relationships." The game’s love triangle between an ape, a carpenter and his girlfriend — creator Shigeru Miyamoto married "King Kong" with "Beauty and the Beast" — exemplified the company’s penchant for narrative-driven gameplay and whimsical, lovable characters.

When games moved from the communal arcade to the private home, it was thanks in large part to the Nintendo Entertainment System. The console launched Super Mario Bros., a blockbuster that allowed players to orient intuitively — around movement and story — on first play, a quality that would define many later Nintendo games. Against a psychedelic landscape of floating turtles and roving mushrooms, the peppy plumber "embodies the joy and playfulness of movement," MacDonald writes, and the idea that "curiosity should always be rewarded."

A sense of grand adventure infused other games, especially The Legend of Zelda (1986), which encouraged open-ended exploration and immersed players in fantastical worlds. But Nintendo did have the occasional misfire, such as "black sheep" Metroid, released the same year. The game was premised on exploring abandoned planets but often created confusion and boredom in players, owing to no direct combat with alien foes and a loose overall narrative. But it did have redeeming features, MacDonald explains, including its heroine, Samus Aran, one of the first female protagonists in a video game.

In recent decades, Nintendo has displayed its acumen by diversifying and finding new fan bases. The Wii console boom of the 2000s broadened the audience to adults (and even seniors), encouraging easy physical activity in the comfort of home. Pokémon Go rebooted the franchise for the smartphone era. During the early days of COVID, Animal Crossing: New Horizons became a bestseller thanks to its promise of slow, structured routine and sense of control.

"Super Nintendo" offers acute and entertaining analysis of the company’s many game franchises, but it sidesteps closer examination of the business side. Nintendo is notoriously private — retaining staff for decades and remaining cagey about its finances — so MacDonald can be forgiven for leaning heavily on old interviews with top brass for corporate intelligence.

Super Nintendo stresses the gamemaker’s magnetism and global success, and the company does deserve admiration for its lasting commitment to building "colorful miniature universes." Although the book occasionally veers into hagiography, it does pull back part of the curtain on a secretive gaming company that mass-produces fun.