1990: NINTENDO and the JAPANESE SOFTWARE boom | The Money Programme | Retro Computing | BBC Archive

[@MartinHannett_]

It’s funny to hear how incredibly dismissive they are of Japanese creativity. Clarkson said something similar in his Motorworld programme. How wrong we all were, Japan is a country steeped in incredible creativity and culture.

[@MartinHannett_]

@@BarryRerack147 Pfft, if that's all you have to try and beat Japan with then let it be. I'd quite happily live in a country with incredible cleanliness, employment rates and prosperity for that trade-off.

[@tomservo5007]

@@MartinHannett_ have fun staying late at work for the sake of staying late, as for prosperity, you are a decade or two late for that

[@aclark903]

Well, he did distance himself from the stereotype. But given Japan's overall inability to stay at the cutting edge of popular culture one would have to suggest that maybe the #Koreans are better at either songwriting, marketing #Kpop or just far better at English?

[@OtakuMan26]

@@aclark903 He opened with the established stereotype that had permeated stuffy business mindsets back then, and then proceeded to tear that stereotype down by talking about Nintendo and the creativity behind their software. He's actually subverting the stereotype, but doing so in a subtle way that can be lost if someone wasn't paying attention. EDIT: After finishing the video clip, they moved onto discussing business and office software separate from games. After thinking about it more, as a US Citizen, I can't recall any major business software or other non-gaming digital platform that I use on a regular basis that hails from Japan. My PC runs Windows, I use Microsoft Office, communication programs like Slack or Discord don't come from Japan, etc. So they may have been on to something there, but even so, looking at Japan's methods of making custom software for their own businesses I think became an example for modern software engineering business models. Instead of "packaging" software to sell en masse, most software is custom made for the people that want them.

[@aclark903]

@@OtakuMan26 I think Japan lost the internet. Speaks volumes to me that one of the biggest websites out here is #YahooJapan.

[@LapFox]

It's always a pleasure to see classic clips of Miyamoto. I don't think I've seen an English report with him in his uniform before! And wow, that interview with ASCII, if only they could see how far the character set they developed would go in universal computing.

[@leftyfourguns]

I think in the 80s and 90s all employees of Nintendo wore uniforms. But it's true, seeing the Nintendo employees actually working at Nintendo HQ is extremely rare, this is an amazing glimpse.

[@mattl_]

ASCII Corp named themselves after the character set.

[@LapFox]

@@mattl_ Is that true? Thanks Matt, you learn something new every day!

[@GhastlyCretin]

Please tell me he eventually ended up extremely rich in the end?

[@vrclckd-zz3pv]

@@GhastlyCretin He became CEO of Nintendo. He died a couple of years ago. 2018 if I recall correctly. The Nintendo Switch was the last console he worked on.

[@MrMallum]

It's amazing to see Shigeru Miyamoto is STILL designing games at Nintendo to this day!!!

[@joeswanson733]

his days of designing games at nintendo are long since over. Representative Director at Nintendo (2002-present) Fellow at Nintendo (2015-present) the last game he actually designed was Steel Diver in 2011.

[@WorldwideWyatt]

Miyamoto-san is still as cheerful and wonderful as he was all the way back then. Ever since I first started up the NES even before this video was made that man has given me countless hundreds of hours of joy. Long live Miyamoto-san.

[@NorthWalesKid]

Myamoto is one of the greatest genius’ of all time. Think of how many children’s lives he has positively influenced

[@dannnsss8034]

Who?

[@Psquared2324]

@@dannnsss8034 Shigeru Miyamoto, responsible for Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Star Fox and more. He was an employee in this video but he is now President of Nintendo. Dudes a legend in the gaming industry.

[@BadgerBotherer1]

@@Psquared2324 Kids used to be out interacting and playing with their friends. Now they just sit in front of computers playing childish games all day, becoming obese and depressed in the process. Myamoto has a lot to answer for.

[@Nathanatos22]

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Oh wait you already did

[@ooxx1xxoo927]

I watched this when it came out many years ago. Revenge of Shinobi (the opener) blew my young mind at the time. Great to see the artists and designers at work creating the magic. History in the making 🙂

[@jakehands]

Revenge of Shinobi was my first game on the Mega Drive.

[@retromuel]

Absolutely love these old tech videos. Fascinating little snapshots. They're in great quality too. More please!

[@MartinHannett_]

It’ll be taken from the master tapes. I’d love the BBC to offer a streaming service of the archive.

[@rogeliolarronda]

4:34 Is that SOYO OKA?? Thank you Ms. Oka for the wonderful music from Super Mario Kart

[@martinevans1206]

Fascinating to look back on after 32 years!

[@davidhole8175]

Great to see the Goldmans analyst playing the game when it says "game over" on the screen...

[@JosephPlummer-c6n]

That loyalty question posed to miyamoto, what an answer from him!

[@joeswanson733]

miyamoto couldn't really tell the truth which is getting a full time job in japan is hard. especially a job that pays decent. miyamoto himself had a hard time getting a job after graduation. online sources said he graduated in the early 1970s with his degree in industrial design. he didn't get any work until his father who had a mutual friend who was friends with hiroshi yamauchi of nintendo arranged for a job interview with the owner/ceo yamauchi. miyamoto had to really standout so he showcased some toys he made in his own time to yamauchi which impressed yamauchi enough to offer him a apprentice job in the product planning department. so imagine going up to 3 years with no work which would have stressed the sh-t out of miyamoto and well there you have it. he got steady pay steady work and was too scared of looking for another job and probably owed nintendo some kind of loyalty for taking a chance on him.

[@leftyfourguns]

@@joeswanson733 That's a good point. Yamauchi was also quite hands off with the products. He did have final approval of every game but during development he pretty much let the teams do whatever they wanted to. Yamauchi was also fiercely protective of his company, its IP, and his employees. So as stressful as making a video game can be, it was still probably quite fun and exciting to work at Nintendo at that time

[@H76Pro]

I miss the days when I was a kid and just had to study and play video games in my free time! Now as a father and having a full time job I have way too many responsibilities!

[@darthlasopotter5404]

Amazing document. This is pure gold😃!!!

[@krunkle5136]

That's what happens when your government has an economic ministry that works closely with industry that makes sure it's competitive by providing administrative assistance, controlling imports and exports, help with creating new plants, getting equipment, acquiring licencing, etc. The East Asian development model.

[@soluciones.logisticassac3171]

i like this piece video to speak about japan's century. good report

[@theeternalgus9119]

This is pretty interesting to watch.

[@Odessia-ij5ys]

Amazing all those games on One mini console

[@livvy94]

4:52 I wonder what this piece of hardware is, it looks like he's adjusting loop points! I make music for the SNES as a hobby so I'm racking my brains to think of what this could possibly be!

[@Speccymemories]

Neo geo?

[@euphony5552]

I think I recognise that guy from another interview. I recall him saying that breadboarding was part of the process so that might be something he made on the spot. That also sounds like a specific mario OST forgot which one.

[@Vissepisse11]

I believe it is the Ghost house theme from Super Mario World. The hardware/breadboard is likely a dev-kit of some kind with the SNES music chip,

[@MrRudePolite]

@@Vissepisse11 came here just to say this! Glad I wasn’t the only one to notice

[@kaitlyn__L]

I paused and stared at it too!

[@izumo4283]

この動画の1990年頃までの日本はまだ元気だった。ゲームに関しては1980年前後には既にTAITO、SEGA、KONAMI、NINTENDO、CAPCOM、、、、などが様々なアーケードゲームを作っていた。NINTENDOは1983年にファミリーコンピュータ(米国ではNES)で家庭用ゲームの覇者になった。 1991-1995年は様々な意味で日本の曲がり角だった。土地バブルが崩壊し日本の金融機関に余裕がなくなり、企業は新しい投資が出来なくなった。ゲームを除いて。 2008年のリーマンショックは日本の多くの企業から余裕を無くし、儲からない事業は整理することになる。この時に合併したり買収されたり分割したり事業転換した大企業はそこそこ多い。

[@AdamTheMan1993]

1990 年代の日本経済の崩壊にもかかわらず、ソニーは 1994 年に PlayStation を発売してビデオ ゲーム市場に参入しました。

[@JasonB808]

old school 8 bit Japanese games didn’t need much localization because games were so simple. Now days they need dedicated teams to localize a Japanese game. But I think American and European game developers have retaken the video game market. There a more popular games made in the west than from Japan.

[@McCaroni_Sup]

Yeah, Japan really failed to adapt properly to the HD in 7th gen consoles compared to Western devs who had proper PC experience. They were either sticking with old consoles, leaving their games as Japan exclusives, or making mediocre games at that time, like RE5 and FFXIII in an effort to emulate Western games. Thankfully they bounced back in 2017 with all those amazing Japanese games that proved the Japanese still remember why everyone enjoys their games. I don't think they'll be as popular as Western games, but that doesn't matter to me. In fact they might be better off for it, they don't have to tick boxes to conform to the whims of investors and instead focus on good game design, which is what really brings in money for them. In other words, Japanese games nowadays, just like indies, actually have to try and stand out unlike a lot of Western franchises that tend to put out the same old thing every year.

[@NightFlyStudio]

Nintendo is still a huge player in the market. Their 1st party software outsells Sony's and Microsoft's 1st party software. 3rd party software that's available on almost all platforms like GTAV, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc. are huge but their diversity in platforms plays a huge role in that. It's easy to dismiss Nintendo in the west but the truth is, they're ruling the roost right now world wide. Especially in hardware. It's expected that the Nintendo Switch will outsell the PS4 by the end of the year and outsell the PS2 and DS by the end of the decade if not earlier than that. While not all Japanese developers experience the same success as Nintendo, they are still very popular.

[@MaxRager80]

""There are more popular games made in the west than from Japan" , I really hope you are joking. All the US is good at, is creating woke trash games and that sucks.

[@McCaroni_Sup]

@@MaxRager80 he is right about them being popular, especially compared to western AAA games. Though being popular doesn't mean they're better. I mean Yakuza > GTA as a crime drama. It's got better characters, better story, better side activities, better music, better combat and a better and more compact world. The only thing it isn't better at is graphics. And yet it's been a niche series for years. That said, Elden Ring is a Japanese game.

[@SkitBitProduction]

Other then Nintendo they still are strong

[@alexkidd_miracleworld]

宮本茂氏と西和彦氏と坂村健氏、Web関係者にはNORENで馴染み深いビル・トッテン氏・・・ この顔ぶれが一つの番組に収まってるとか、ちょっと凄すぎて意味わからない。

[@mattsephton]

Great to peek behind the Nintendo curtain but the real surprise for me was to see the Tron (aka BTRON) operating system featured! It wasn't as successful as they expected.

[@ifwiff1452]

Think I was most surprised to see that somebody bought a macintosh

[@jonwayne70]

The Japanese were once the best game designers in the world, but during the mid 2000's the UK, USA and Europe started to take over as the leading developers. But Japanese companies like Capcom who were at 1 point making sub par games have made a massive comeback.

[@garminbozia]

Capcom had a really bad streak in the late 2000s to mid 2010s but they still had some good games like Street fighter 4 Marvel vs Capcom 3, monster hunter 4, dragons dogma

[@burgertim7878]

They're still making subpar games, not everything they put out is gold.

[@jonwayne70]

@@burgertim7878 Yeah but companies like Capcom had an awful period where they were pumping out crap light shooting games and sub par sequels to Resident Evil.

[@burgertim7878]

@@jonwayne70 Are you saying you didn't enjoy Operation Raccon City or Umbrella Corps? ;)

[@jonwayne70]

@@burgertim7878 Oh mate, loved em 🤣

[@twinkletale5548]

Tron was Amazon before Amazon was a thing.

[@Felicia_mmm]

4:34 個人用！！岡素世さんかな...？

[@とふこ]

1:08 i think the games are creative.

[@RyanParreno]

Jeez it's really depressing that Miyamoto is still a salaryman at 1990

[@apollosungod2819]

You're pretty clueless about humility... that journalist making those claims also made false predictions and had nothing to match what Miyamoto San had accomplished.

[@someoneelse1534]

and yet he's the most notorious game developer to date

[@RyanParreno]

@@apollosungod2819 So, just to put this in context, Miyamoto worked under Yamauchi as a Nintendo employee since 1977. He was one of the company's most important employees, but never given a serious salary raise matching his value to the company or a position higher than game development. That goes on for nearly 25 years. May 2002, Satoru Iwata replaces Yamauchi as CEO and President of Nintendo, by 2003 he promotes Miyamoto alongside three others to the board of directors. Immediate jump in salary and position in the company fitting him. So Miyamoto does get what he deserves, not because I personally like him, but as one of the most important figures in video games and someone crucial to Nintendo's success. But it happens two decades after he should have gotten it. This is what I'm pointing out.

[@krunkle5136]

Maybe the president thought giving an employee a higher salary too soon would spoil him and remove the creative drive?

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@krunkle5136 Yamauchi was just an old-fashioned penny-pinching businessman. Iwata was the exception, the only president to come from games design. That’s why he valued other games designers enough to promote them. The businessmen leaders just view their teams as a human resource. Albeit as Miyamoto said they got plenty of “research” perks as team leaders.

[@MilkShake]

Back in the day when TV was still inspiering. A casuall progrem could intrigue you for severl months

[@ThePsycoDolphin]

Boy, 1990, the crash and subsequent multi decade recession is only a couple of years away. That man touting the "Japenese century" really didn't know what was coming.

[@waverider1674]

Japanese economy neither crashed nor entered into a deep chronic recession. For a declining population still being the third biggest economy, topping an all time high gdp of 6trillion USD and a per capita GDP of almost 51000 USD from 25000 USD in 1990 ie. it got doubled during the last 3 decades is not a bad sign of an economy. The bad sign is the rapid decline in its population. Japan will become the Holland/Netherlands of Asia - a once prosperous economic and political superpower but now an affluent country whose industrial activities will be moved outwards to other poorer countries. Japan will itself transition to a financial powerhouse rather than take lead as a manufacturing base in the coming decades.

[@krashd]

Multi-decade recession, eh? The last recession before 2008 was in 1983

[@retromuel]

@@krashd I guess he means multi-decade stagnation. A lot of people genuinely thought Japan's "miracle" economy was going to end up bigger than the U.S's. You can see those kinds of anxieties in a lot of 80s American movies. It never happened of course.

[@PedroManX]

Woah, amazing.

[@Caolan114]

Incredible video

[@johnmc3862]

'Super Mario Brother'.

[@rogeliolarronda]

0:22 Does anyone recognize those 3 games?

[@AdamTheMan1993]

One of them is Taito's Chase H.Q.

[@HikikomoriDev]

Very nice their computers.

[@Hysteria98]

Nintendo dominated because Miyamoto and co. practically INVENTED game design. If not for them, the market would have likely been cheap sports games and basic text for years. 90% of all the most beloved and revered games ever made owe some part of their design to Nintendo; be it Metroid's power-up based progression and map routing, Mario's rich level design and aesthetics, Zelda's puzzles and worlds, or their overall sound design and optimisation, etc... The late Gunpei Yokoi trained Miyamoto with his 'Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology' approach, which was to be more creative with dated tech, to get the most out of it (especially as it ages and gets time to improve, itself), rather than chase the hot new tech for hype, which SEGA seemed more intent on doing instead of focusing on the games themselves (though developers gave the SEGA library a lot of classics).

[@BoomBoomEnemy]

3:03 Level design (it's a personal timestamp)

[@mashk]

typing this from my computer running Tron v 12

[@technicalmachine1671]

You joke, but TRON is still around and popular as an embedded OS. You can run BTRON on your PC, and it's very cool.

[@mariotaz]

Amazing

[@Mkaela90]

Tron the original IoT

[@danielwalker26]

Then: Japanese don't have any good ideas for video games. Now: Mr Miyamoto, please do not discuss your personal life because that is where all of your best games come from.

[@mth469]

Little did they know that Japan's economy was about to fall off a 33 year cliff.

[@thatdutchguy89]

Japanese will always create the best games ✌️

[@Emilya-A]

Making 0 to 1 or 1 to 1000, interesting ideas

[@Cus2omBuilds]

Why do most of the English think that "everybody" else is lagging behind. Take Nintendo for example, the chap said they were about 6 years behind. But now Nintendo is one of the biggest companies in the world ...

[@PaulMurphyMusic]

It looks like a milk mans Sunday car, you know when he wants to show off😅 *disclaimer, ‘milk person’ if you prefer!

[@cmdrpizpot.gargravarr4335]

now we know were the name for the film came from TRON

[@WorldwideWyatt]

The movie came out much earlier than this.

[@wengwong2650]

Tron movie 1982

[@tru2thastyle]

And South Korea is eating their lunch…

[@slottygw2wvw842]

Crazy to think JAPAN used to be so advanced up until very early 2000.......Then they went backwards 50 years from like 2005-now. Making other countries look so advance and them staying frozen in time.

[@AdamTheMan1993]

It's because Japan never did fully recover from the burst of the Japanese economy at the beginning of the 1990s

[@kokotheclown2588]

@@AdamTheMan1993aw the lost decade Mexico had a same fate as Japan call the Tequila crisis but now Mexico fear of growth has been banishing and now becoming a hub for international trade and industrial development as for Japan it seems they are headed to another lost decade

[@RapidVidsProductions]

"should the big american business software developers be worried?" aged like milk lol. microsoft still shitting on everything else, if all you care about is income :)

[@TeardropSidemarker]

Following the Video Game Crash of the mid-80s, there was a large vacuum for video entertainment systems that not only the Japanese, but Europeans filled. Investors just weren’t willing to buy into what was considered a fad. By the 1990s, I’d argue the Japanese and British were well ahead of the US in not only embracing theme video game industry, but also innovating soft and hardware. Microsoft would respond and catch up, but it took a while.

❤

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

It's a shame that Nintendo never really caught on in the west...

[@Hysteria98]

It's a shame Nintendo mostly hate the west.

[@danielwalker26]

Too bad they didn't bring back interest in video games after the crash in 1983.

[@mrrationality2213]

Westerners trying to put down the Japanese it’s so laughable, they are the most creative and have advanced so much. Not only Japanese videogames are the best but other media like manga and anime have taken the world.

[@MacXpert74]

I never knew that Uncle Roger worked for Nintendo in the 90s. 🧐

[@roahnosh]

Such a shame that the Japanese video game industry has remained stagnated except some few studios like Capcom for their Resident Evil Remakes. Pokemon has just launched and it's so incompetent that only the IP is carrying it. Such a shame that the west has now overtaken Japan even China (Genshin Impact) and Korea are overtaking Japan in their own home country even. Also remember back in the day people used to import games from Japan because it's not released in your region. Well it's still happening to this day. Japan just need to be confident in releasing their product outside Japan but they treat global so bad sometimes people just refuses to play their game.

[@XanderCrease]

From Software, Atlus, Platinum Games, Capcom, Namco Bandai, Team Ninja, Sega. They have made far more experimental, varied and unique games than the west...And none of them were Shooters.

[@unicorntomboy9736]

@@XanderCrease You forgot Square Enix, who makes Final Fantasy, one of the most influential series to come out of Japan

[@AdamTheMan1993]

@@unicorntomboy9736 And Sony's Gran Turismo developed by Polyphony Digital becoming by far one of the biggest selling racing games series in the world

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

japanese always liked to reinvent wheel... and it was their downfall in IT

[@pinkelephantz286]

The Japanese struggle with creativity!?? Hahahahaha !

[@KakarotOwns]

Then Nintendo got it all wrong not making their console with Sony, the PS1 came out and the rest is history....Not to say they've done bad as their consoles are still popular today but thanks to them we have playstation.

[@KakarotOwns]

@Switch Box VR So garbage that everyone wants the PS5 😂

[@Hysteria98]

Like Lamborghini and Ferrari, lmao. Accidentally creating your biggest competitor.

[@kristianTV1974]

@@KakarotOwns why? They both have their pros and cons (own both)

[@unicorntomboy9736]

A blessing in disguise in my opinion It's like how Ferrari unintentionally created Lamborghini due to a disgruntled employee lol

[@swaneknoctic9555]

You can see why Sega failed in the console market. Back in the 80s/90s Nintendo games were far better, far more playable. Super Mario was a far better series of games than Sonic.

[@johnmc3862]

Sega didn't fail, they eventually ran out of stream. The Sega Genisis was later but actually sold more than the original NES.

[@viewerguy10]

@@johnmc3862 I can't find anything about the Original NES sales alone. Where did you find the number of units sold? It seems most search results say the NES sold more overall.

[@MediumHalf]

Check out the book "Console Wars"- it goes into the specifics with an insider's perspective. Sega didn't lose the console wars in the U.S. because of Sonic or anything singular like that, but if there was one constant issue at the root it was that leadership in Japan refused to listen to their Sega of America executive team- communication was very one-way. When you can't even communicate productively with your own parent company, successfully competing becomes very difficult.

[@krashd]

Maybe Sega lost in the US but in Europe, or at least the UK, they far outsold Nintendo and were anything but a failure, though no console could compete with home computers like the C64 and Spectrum. When I was 10 I only knew three people who owned a console and all three owned Sega Master Systems. Then the next generation arrived a couple of years later and what few people in the UK owned a NES decided to buy a Sega Megadrive instead of the Super NES and Nintendo were gone. They did have a slight resurgence with the N64 though.

[@とふこ]

@@krashd Sega only won in Europe, but in Taiwan ( /Asia in general) most people have a Nintendo famicom, and in the next generation the "consolewar" was happened between the super Famicom and the nec PC engine, megadrive was not really successful. After that the Sega Saturn was successful.

[@Konoronn]

Why did the Japanese used to have darker skin? Kinda weird.

[@JC20XX]

Film might affect this

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

more sun

[@PissMenn]

Lack of skincare and whitening cream back then.

[@colors6692]

Japanese software superior?!?!? I think not! Unix/Linux/Android/iOS/macOS/Windows/Office/GoogeOS/SAP/Java/C/C++....what software does japan have?

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

gatcha games and pachinko