Books : Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life

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by: Chris Kohler

: Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.81536
EAN: 9780744004243
ISBN: 0744004241
Label: BRADY GAMES
Manufacturer: BRADY GAMES
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 312
Publication Date: September 14, 2004
Publisher: BRADY GAMES
Sales Rank: 413392
Studio: BRADY GAMES



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BradyGames' Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, by Chris Kohler, is a unique book that gives readers an entertaining and authoritative look at the indelible influence the video gaming, particularly, Japanese gaming, has had on the world.Power-Up is the first English-language work of its kind to examine the reasons behind the success of Japanese video games, rather than focusing on the history of video games. Just some of the features readers will find in this book include:

  • Profiles of some of the most fascinating Japanese video game designers in the industry, along with a critical look at Japanese video games from their earliest beginnings to new, exciting trends that ride the bleeding edge of popular culture.
  • Explanations on why Japanese video games are unique and why they resonate so well with young American players.
  • Fresh insight into classic Japanese video games and the elements that made them so different from American games, the origin of Nintendo, Japan's oldest and largest video game producer, Japanese Role-Playing Games, and much more!
  • In addition, the future of the Japanese gaming industry is also explored.




    • Customer Reviews
    Average Rating: out of 5 stars

    Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Great Read.
    This book was an excellent read. Kohler does a terrific job of showing the culture links video games have created between Japan and the Western world. It also shows the stark cultural contrasts. It made me reflect on how much Japanese culture I've been exposed to without knowing it.


    Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Great reading, but touches only the mainstream games
    This is a good book about japanese videogames and their impact in the western world. The problem, and I agree with the other reviewers, is that the focus deals only with the mainstream and most popular games like Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy. Sure it talks about Dragon Quest(relatively unknown in America until recently) and ICO, but still left many open holes.

    But if you forget this flaw, it's really a great and satisfying reading, and the author constructs the text very well. Worth your time. It's a four star book, but I'll give four and half stars (five in Amazon) because it's a good and very little explored theme.




    Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Gaming History in the eye of the beholder...
    History in the eye of the beholder

    The boot has very useful information for video game collectors and researchers who are looking for information related to mostly Nintendo oriented lore. I stress its for game collectors and researchers vice enthusiasts. Enthusiasts are looking to be entertained as well as informed and this book does very little entertaining. I found my self reading parts of the book over the course of several months. It just wasn't the page-turner that some other visual treats like "High Score" were. All in all it was worth 13 bucks, however I liken it too a History book on the 20th Century, with key events missing like World War II! Sega is not even mentioned as a footnote! Phantasy Star, Shining Force and several other important events in Gaming History never even captured the interest of the author, and it painfully shows here. Three Stars.


    Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - narrow scope, but an interesting read.
    other people have commented thoroughly about the generalities of this book, and i by-and-large agree. i'd like to add, however, that some of the most interesting parts of this book are the omissions.

    for example, they author segues straight from talking about Ninja Gaiden to NOJ/NOA's localization process and standards for content. he mentions that religious iconography, drug use, etc, are all prohibited from being portrayed in Nintendo software, and the list of prohibited content includes cigarette smoking.

    the author fails to note the irony, however, that in the aforementioned game there's a bad guy leaning against a light post smoking a cigarette he throws aside before dashing at you. i can only assume it slipped past the censors without them catching it, but my friends and i had noticed it years ago and marvelled that it had been made it through the review process intact.

    it's these kinds of things that make me feel like this book is a good general source, but anything deeper than a surface look at the topics covered would require some additional reading/sources.

    there are quite a few nuggets of interesting trivia in here - more than enough to make a gamer smile (dragon quest being legally prohibited in Japan from selling on any day except Sunday or a holiday, for example). my copy was a gift; i can attest that it makes a fine one.


    Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Too short and too shallow, but basically worthwhile
    I enjoyed this book, mostly. Within its scattershot set of chapters about Japanese games in general, there's a fascinating, albeit sketchy, history of Nintendo that contained many small revelations for me, despite that I've been playing video games incessantly since 1987 or so. But the rest of the material was less compelling for me. The chapter about music games and music in games actively frustrated me--it gave only a brief survey of either topic, and seemed to spend most of its words on a tedious, obsessive examination of Final Fantasy albums. A chapter about Akihabara, Japan's premier consumer electronics marketplace, pushed the trivia-to-insight ratio similarly high. In his effort to treat video games as if they deserve the attention of artists, Kohler concentrates too much on material that is only interesting to fans.

    Still, on the whole I'm glad I read this book, and I hope Kohler's stated desire to encourage further such works is satisfied; there is clearly much more to say.

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