Game Over (Sheff book)

Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children

Cover of the first edition
Author	David Sheff
Language	English
Publisher	Random House, Inc. (New York)
Publication date	1993
Publication place	United States
Media type	Hardcover, paperback
Pages	445 (First edition, including index)
ISBN	0-679-40469-4
OCLC	26214063
Dewey Decimal	338.7/617948/0952 20
LC Class	HD9993.E454 N577 1993

Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children is a non-fiction book written by David Sheff and published by Random House, New York in 1993.

Overview

The book details the modern history of Nintendo and its rise to become the most powerful electronic gaming company in the world as of 1993. The book also provides a history of the worldwide electronic gaming industry as a whole from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Although bearing a very specific title, the book is fairly neutral; it mainly relates the history of the company while looking at both the positives and negatives of their business practices. Sheff does suggest that many of Nintendo's successes are attributable to what reviewer James Fallows termed "the Japanese system’s tolerance for monopoly". Sheff also defends the accuracy of the "enslaved your children" portion of the subtitle, stating that "kids will play the games compulsively and non-stop".

The author extensively interviewed numerous established figures in the industry, such as Howard Lincoln, Nolan Bushnell, Shigeru Miyamoto (misspelled as "Sigeru" in the book if one regards Hepburn romanization as definitive), Alexey Pajitnov, and others, including people who spoke anonymously. This level of access to major figures in Nintendo's history, which US Gamer described as "unprecedented", made Game Over "the definitive work" which was referenced by nearly all other subsequent books and articles about Nintendo's history.

Portions of the book were originally published in San Francisco Focus, Men's Life, Rolling Stone, and Playboy magazines.

Revisions

Since its initial publication, Game Over has been reprinted with many different subtitles. One example is Game Over: Nintendo's Battle to Dominate Videogames.

Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World, an edition published by Vintage Press in 1994, contains a new foreword written by author David Sheff pertaining to the controversy over video game content in the early 1990s.

In 1999, a revised edition of the book titled Game Over: Press Start to Continue – The Maturing of Mario (referencing Nintendo's famous character Mario) was released. Among error corrections, photographs and new chapters written by Andy Eddy were added.

An edited version was printed by Coronet Books and given away free with the May 1999 issue of Arcade magazine.

Reception

The book had positive reviews. Christopher Lehmann–Haupt, writing in [[The New York Times]], called the book "irresistible. . . almost as hypnotic as a successful video game.”

The Houston Chronicle review said, “For business moguls who someday want to corner their markets, this book is a must–read… Game Over is about as readable as a business book can be." Alex Kozinsky, writing in The Wall Street Journal, called the book "the bible of the videogame industry," said, "Game Over…is ultimately less absorbing than ‘Tetris,’ but not by much.”

Other positive reviews were published in the Chicago Tribune, which said the book is "a cross between Barbarians at the Gate and The Soul of the New Machine.” People Magazine said, "Writing with the playful pluck of Mario, the little protagonist of the Super Mario Bros. games, Sheff unfolds an engrossing tale.” The LA Daily News reviewer called the book "A fascinating look at the Japanese way of doing business ... At times, Game Over reaches the pitch of a Cold War spy novel."

In a feature in the New York Times Review of Books, “Mr. Sheff is comprehensive and instructive…The game might be over for this generation of technology, but the future of computer entertainment is still wide open for entrepreneurs as daring as Hiroshi Yamauchi was in the early 1980’s. Whoever those future billionaires are, they would do well to read this book.” The TImes of London said, "Sheff writes with an almost Dickensian tastiness.” The Fortune reviewer wrote, "Finally, a book as provocative as its title, Game Over is a detailed, fascinating, and instructive case study of the management practices and corporate culture behind Nintendo’s extraordinary success. Read it and you’ll never again discuss this Japanese giant as a mere toymaker…. Game Over is a fine and worthwhile read. Don’t wait until your Game Boy burns out its batteries from too much Tetris playing to check it out.” Writing in the New York Review of Books, James Fallows wrote, "In his beguiling Game Over, David Sheff, a reporter who spent two years interviewing Nintendo executives in Japan, Europe and the United States, makes it dramatically clear why the company seems so promising. Game Over tells a remarkable series of stories…. And maybe that is its hidden message. Maybe that is what makes it, at its best, almost as hypnotic as a successful video game.” Next Generation gave the book a positive review, praising the breadth, quality of research, and easy readability. They remarked that the one flaw is that the frequent detours from the Nintendo story give the reader the feeling that the book is an overview of gaming history in general with an unbalanced focus on Nintendo. They concluded, "Next Generation uses Game Over as a reference guide on a day-to-day basis, and we really can't give any higher recommendation than that."