Christmas, 1994. Relatives have been and gone; presents have been opened, briefly appreciated, and thrown aside. But after the last aunt is waved off home and my stepbrother and I have been roped into shovelling discarded wrapping paper into a bin bag and clearing the table, my dad exclaims that something’s been forgotten down the back of the sofa.
I jump on the cushions and lean over, my brother close behind, my hands tightening on the well-worn fabric as I catch sight of a large, rectangular mystery object wrapped up behind it. Could it be . . .?
Inside is a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, bundled with Super Mario All-Stars – a gift beyond our wildest six-year-old dreams. If you’ve ever seen that early viral video of a pair of siblings screaming with joy as they unbox a Nintendo 64, you’ll have a fair idea of our reaction. Within ten minutes the box is raided, the chunky grey machine has been connected to our little CRT television (by us, not Dad, who insisted on performatively studying the manual even as we were plugging it into the TV and turning it on), and we are playing one of the greatest video games ever made.
📚📗📕
45 years since Donkey Kong first appeared in arcades in Japan, Nintendo have been a stalwart in the gaming industry.
Giving us iconic games like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Pokémon and Animal Crossing as well as helping to legitimise the concept of family gaming through the likes of the Game Boy and the Wii, the near 140-year-old company keeps delivering time and time again when their peers have disappeared (Sega, Atari).
So it would seem that the time would be right for a book looking at the history of the company, the development of the games that are known the world over and where the company is in 2026.
And we get this in Super Nintendo: How One Japanese Company Helped the World Have Fun.
Currently working as a games editor for The Guardian as well as having written for IGN, Edge and Eurogamer, Keza MacDonald seems like a suitable choice for such a task. She’s a few years younger than me, which is crucial as my generation would have spent the 90’s playing the likes of Mortal Kombat, Doom and Half-Life and so the likes of Pokémon and Mario Kart were for our younger siblings.
Cards on the table moment: I was a gamer throughout the 1990’s (from the age of five to fourteen) before losing interest when I became a teenager. This roughly coincided with the runaway success of the aforementioned Pokémon and Mario Kart so the position I take in reviewing this book is as someone who was more than aware of these games/trends but was a little too old for them.
Written with unconcealed joy, MacDonald tells the story of company that began life producing Japanese playing cards (karuta) before producing toys, arcade games and then video games.
Although there is not a terrible lot know about the early years of the company, what we do know is fascinating: Japan had banned most forms of gambling in 1882, a particular type of playing card known as hanafuda was tolerated and had become a favourite in areas run by the Yakuza. After several other companies stopped producing them (not wanting to be associated with gangsterism), Nintendo had cornered the market. By the 1920’s, the company was the largest company in Japan producing playing cards.
Funny how such a family friendly operation has its roots in organised crime but that’s history for you!
Each chapter deals with a different aspect of Nintendo history (Mario, Zelda etc) and MacDonald goes through her journalistic back catalogue to bring us interviews with the creators, game developers and executives responsible for these games and consoles. What comes across to the reader is how Nintendo is both representative of and different from traditional Japanese society: youth very much respect their elders but both young and old are involved in the creation of games and consoles. Indeed, seemingly everyone in the company has played the product before it has gone on sale!
As a result, Nintendo can legitimately claim that their items are timeless and family friendly but also still allow room for innovation.
I have to admit that this is an odd book for me.
There’s no doubt that I enjoyed the hell out of it (if you can enjoy a book around a subject you’ve not much interest in, that makes it a winner). However, despite MacDonald’s mixture of positive musings and autobiography, I remain unconvinced by her overall cases for Nintendo being art and Pokémon being something akin to religion.
Maybe I just missed the boat, in which case I can live with that. At the same time, I can’t help but think of something Ross Benes wrote in 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America And Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times:
There are one or two moments that reinforce this comment: when discussing the Pokémon Go phenomenon, MacDonald writes about how it took people’s minds off the “horrors of 2016: Brexit and Trump” (yawn). Retreating into childhood gaming may have been good for the mental well-being of such people, but it hardly changed the world, unlike Brexit and Trump which genuinely did (for better and worse).
Indeed, when I read about how the game was bringing disparate groups of people together to socialise outdoors, I couldn’t help but think of those notions people had in the late 90’s of having shopping centres integrate exhibitions, historical displays as well as having them featured in the high street in order to bring culture and history to the unwashed masses.
Likewise, there’s a moment where the author recollects how some gamers used Animal Crossing to signify their disgust at the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. Easily the most 2020 moment in the book and I couldn’t help but cringe. Once again, capitalism serves as a replacement for genuine political action and offers up dopamine hits for saying the right thing while keeping you glued to the product.
Despite these telling moments, Super Nintendo is a genuinely enthralling read that will help you see and understand the longevity and ubiquity of Nintendo.
Keza MacDonald, 2026, Super Nintendo: How One Japanese Company Helped the World Have Fun. Guardian Faber Publishing. ISBN-13: 978-1783353057
Giving us iconic games like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Pokémon and Animal Crossing as well as helping to legitimise the concept of family gaming through the likes of the Game Boy and the Wii, the near 140-year-old company keeps delivering time and time again when their peers have disappeared (Sega, Atari).
So it would seem that the time would be right for a book looking at the history of the company, the development of the games that are known the world over and where the company is in 2026.
And we get this in Super Nintendo: How One Japanese Company Helped the World Have Fun.
Currently working as a games editor for The Guardian as well as having written for IGN, Edge and Eurogamer, Keza MacDonald seems like a suitable choice for such a task. She’s a few years younger than me, which is crucial as my generation would have spent the 90’s playing the likes of Mortal Kombat, Doom and Half-Life and so the likes of Pokémon and Mario Kart were for our younger siblings.
Cards on the table moment: I was a gamer throughout the 1990’s (from the age of five to fourteen) before losing interest when I became a teenager. This roughly coincided with the runaway success of the aforementioned Pokémon and Mario Kart so the position I take in reviewing this book is as someone who was more than aware of these games/trends but was a little too old for them.
Written with unconcealed joy, MacDonald tells the story of company that began life producing Japanese playing cards (karuta) before producing toys, arcade games and then video games.
Although there is not a terrible lot know about the early years of the company, what we do know is fascinating: Japan had banned most forms of gambling in 1882, a particular type of playing card known as hanafuda was tolerated and had become a favourite in areas run by the Yakuza. After several other companies stopped producing them (not wanting to be associated with gangsterism), Nintendo had cornered the market. By the 1920’s, the company was the largest company in Japan producing playing cards.
Funny how such a family friendly operation has its roots in organised crime but that’s history for you!
Each chapter deals with a different aspect of Nintendo history (Mario, Zelda etc) and MacDonald goes through her journalistic back catalogue to bring us interviews with the creators, game developers and executives responsible for these games and consoles. What comes across to the reader is how Nintendo is both representative of and different from traditional Japanese society: youth very much respect their elders but both young and old are involved in the creation of games and consoles. Indeed, seemingly everyone in the company has played the product before it has gone on sale!
As a result, Nintendo can legitimately claim that their items are timeless and family friendly but also still allow room for innovation.
📚📗📕
I have to admit that this is an odd book for me.
There’s no doubt that I enjoyed the hell out of it (if you can enjoy a book around a subject you’ve not much interest in, that makes it a winner). However, despite MacDonald’s mixture of positive musings and autobiography, I remain unconvinced by her overall cases for Nintendo being art and Pokémon being something akin to religion.
Maybe I just missed the boat, in which case I can live with that. At the same time, I can’t help but think of something Ross Benes wrote in 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America And Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times:
Capitalism may lead to the creation of rather silly and useless commodities, but it also encourages people to indulge in their fantasies. Guardian editor Joe Stone received an ‘inordinate amount of joy from hoarding pop merch.’ He had ‘no regrets’ about covering his adult bedroom with wallpaper featuring the Spice Girls…Although consumption is materialistic, it’s often joyous. Marketers might sway them, but by and large, entertainment sucks a large portion of many people’s budgets because they find it rewarding, at least in the short term. For all its faults, materialism keeps dopamine rolling, which can be a gratifying aspect of living in a capitalistic society.
There are one or two moments that reinforce this comment: when discussing the Pokémon Go phenomenon, MacDonald writes about how it took people’s minds off the “horrors of 2016: Brexit and Trump” (yawn). Retreating into childhood gaming may have been good for the mental well-being of such people, but it hardly changed the world, unlike Brexit and Trump which genuinely did (for better and worse).
Indeed, when I read about how the game was bringing disparate groups of people together to socialise outdoors, I couldn’t help but think of those notions people had in the late 90’s of having shopping centres integrate exhibitions, historical displays as well as having them featured in the high street in order to bring culture and history to the unwashed masses.
Likewise, there’s a moment where the author recollects how some gamers used Animal Crossing to signify their disgust at the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. Easily the most 2020 moment in the book and I couldn’t help but cringe. Once again, capitalism serves as a replacement for genuine political action and offers up dopamine hits for saying the right thing while keeping you glued to the product.
Despite these telling moments, Super Nintendo is a genuinely enthralling read that will help you see and understand the longevity and ubiquity of Nintendo.
Keza MacDonald, 2026, Super Nintendo: How One Japanese Company Helped the World Have Fun. Guardian Faber Publishing. ISBN-13: 978-1783353057
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
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