Table Of ContentAtari to Zelda
Atari to Zelda
Japan’s Videogames in Global Contexts
Mia Consalvo
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2016 Mia Consalvo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Stone Serif Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed
and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Consalvo, Mia, 1969–
Atari to Zelda : Japan’s videogames in global contexts / Mia Consalvo.
Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, [2015] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015039702 | ISBN 9780262034395 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Video games—Japan. | Video games—Social aspects—Japan. |
Video games industry—Japan.
Classification: LCC GV1469.3 .C646 2016 | DDC 794.80952—dc23 LC record
available at h ttp://lccn.loc.gov/2015039702
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Floating World Travels West 1
1 Playing with Cosmopolitanism: Japanese Videogames and North
American Players 19
2 Unintended Travel: ROM Hackers and Fan Translations of Japanese
Videogames 41
3 Playing Japan’s Games 65
4 Much Ado about JRPGs: Square Enix and Corporate Creation of
Videogames 97
5 Localization: Making the Strange Familiar 121
6 The Japanese Console Game Industry: Capcom and Level-5 149
7 A Game’s Building Blocks: Western Developers and
Japanese Games 179
8 Conclusions 209
Notes 221
Index 253
Acknowledgments
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
It feels as though I have been writing this book for a very long time, and
I doubt it will stop feeling like that even after it has come out in print. I
still check the game industry news for reports of Japanese companies, and
I gather stories of players who find their games compelling in some way.
Yet I needed to stop writing at some point, and so you have this book now,
an investigation of how Japanese videogames and the Japanese videogame
industry have affected the North American industry and its players and
developers. I have been successful in one sense: I still find the topic of
Japanese videogames endlessly fascinating, so I doubt this will be the last I
write on the topic.
Parts of this book have been published in different forms and altered as
this book took shape. Much of chapter 1 was published as “Cosmo-Play:
Japanese Videogames and Western Players” in Critical Social Policy and Video
Game Play; a shorter version of chapter 2 was published as “Unintended
Travel: ROM Hackers and Fan Translations of Japanese Videogames” in
Gaming Globally; pieces of chapter 4 came from “Persistence Meets Perfor-
mance: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, ” published in Well Played 1.0: Video
Game, Value and Meaning, and from “A Localization Shop’s Tale: Bringing an
Independent Japanese RPG to North America,” published in T he Routledge
Handbook of Participatory Culture; and an earlier version of chapter 5 was
published as “Dubbing the Noise: Square Enix and Corporate Creation of
Videogames” in A Companion to Media Authorship .
I need to thank many people and places for helping me think through
the ideas presented here. They have made this a much better book than it
would have been, and any faults that remain are entirely my own. First,
I need to thank Doug Sery and the anonymous reviewers of the book’s
manuscript. This book is better for their comments, and they all pushed me
viii Acknowledgments
to find my own voice and add theoretical depth and richness throughout
the manuscript. I also thank my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–
Milwaukee, where the book idea first took shape, even if I did not begin
to write it until long after leaving there. Matthew Weise, Karen Riggs, and
Tasha Oren: thank you for the support and conversations as I determined
that writing about videogames was, in fact, a valid academic option. At
Ohio University, I met more supportive colleagues, including Todd Harper,
Nathan Dutton, Matt Falk, Roger Cooper, Greg Newton, Paula Carpenter,
and Cynara Medina. I was then lucky enough to spend two years as part
of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, where I found a studio full of
interested, smart, and helpful peers who started reading drafts of chapters,
providing feedback on early conceptual ideas, and helping me narrow my
theoretical foundations. Thanks go to Clara Fernandez Vara, Philip Tan,
Abe Stein, Konstantin Mitgutsch, Doris Rusch, Geoffrey Long, Rib Eber-
hart, Michael Rapa, Sara Verilli, and Henry Jenkins. And now at Concordia
University, I again have an embarrassment of riches in terms of gracious
colleagues who have been happy to read another draft, comment on a pre-
sentation, or just inquire about the status of the book generally. Another
set of thanks to Bart Simon, Lynn Hughes, Jason Begy, Carolyn Jong,
Joachim Despland, Kelly Boudreau, Thorsten Busch, Nic Watson, Pierson
Browne, Allison Cole, and everyone else affiliated with Technoculture, Art
and Games (TAG). Along the way, I also have received support and help
from a number of colleagues around the world, including Ian Bogost, Jesper
Juul, T. L. Taylor, Martin Picard, Lisa Nakamura, Nina Huntemann, Jona-
than Gray, Jennifer Henderson, Aaron Delwiche, Drew Davidson, Talmadge
Wright, Ren Reynolds, Josh Fairfield, Tom Boellstorff, Greg Lastowka, and
many more. Thank-yous also go to those in the game industry who gra-
ciously gave of their time, as well as the many game players I talked to over
the years.
And in saving the best for last, I thank my family. They have patiently
supported me and wisely knew when to ask about the book’s progress as
well as when not to ask about the book’s progress. Thank you to my par-
ents, Fran and David; my sister Jen and brother-in-law Frank; and their
respective furry friends, Elliot, Wolfgang, and Honeybadger. Lastly, I owe
this book to the three who kept me sane, made me laugh, and remember
that there is life apart from my laptop. This book is for you—John, Jasper,
and Sam.
Introduction: The Floating World Travels West
I n t r o d u c t i o n
I n t r o d u c t i o n
The roots of my career as a game studies scholar took hold when my sister
and I received our first home game system—an Atari 2600—for Christmas
one year. My favorite game for it was S pace Invaders. Although I was never a
hardcore player, I occasionally got into the zone of playing the game, hold-
ing the perpetually descending horde of aliens at bay as my cannon slid
left and right, shooting and fleeing shots at the same time. I also remember
playing Pitfall, Combat, and the disappointing Atari version of Pac-Man .
Sometimes I went to the local drug store’s arcade, usually after school
report cards had been given out because the store rewarded each A grade
with a certain number of tokens. Given my strong academic status at the
time (I was a nerd), my pocket bulged with tokens, and I usually played
Centipede or P ole Position until the tokens were gone. I also played the cabi-
net version of P ac-Man at our favorite pizza place while waiting for dinner
to arrive. After a few years, I put away my console and stopped playing
games, at least until I bought a PC in graduate school and discovered the
world of CD-ROM games. During those early experiences, I never thought
about where the games or consoles came from or who had made them. Yet
even the few games and systems that I was familiar with reveal a mixture of
American and Japanese games and systems comingling at the beginnings
of a global game industry.
When I came to game studies in the early 2000s and wanted to reac-
quaint myself with the world of console games, I first bought a Sony PlaySta-
tion along with games from Square, EA, and other major global publishers.
There was a curious absence in early scholarship about games, however.
Where was the discussion of Japan’s early influence in the industry? How
could Nintendo be criticized for its depiction of gender roles without any-
thing being said about the origin of many of the company’s games? How
