Table of Contents

  1. Series page
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Series Foreword
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Introduction: Welcome to the Dark Side
  7. 1 Establishing the Nintendo Economic System (NES)
  8. 2 Minutes to Midnight: Devising and Launching a Platform
  9. 3 “Now You’re Playing With Power … Super Power!”
  10. 4 Beyond Bits and Pixels: Inside the Technology
  11. 5 The Race to 3-D
  12. 6 The American Video Game ReNESsance
  13. 7 The CD-ROM That Would Not Be
  14. Conclusion: Silver Linings and Golden Dawns
  15. References
  16. Index

List of Tables

  1. Table 3.1 Typology of the paratext derived from Lane’s figures (1991, 94–96).
  2. Table 3.2 Comparison of console specs, reproduced from Electronic Gaming Monthly #2 (July/August 1989, 39).
  3. Table 3.3 Dominant discursive stances on technology found in the press covering video games and their corresponding paratextual status.
  4. Table 7.1 Cost and price breakdown for producing a game on Super Famicom and Sony PlayStation, derived from Asakura 2012, chapter 4.

List of Illustrations

  1. Figure 0.1 Lifetime worldwide Nintendo home console sales, in million units, compared with competitors from 1983 to 2012.
  2. Figure 0.2 Nintendo’s market share derived from lifetime worldwide console sales.
  3. Figure 1.1 The walled garden model, regulated by the three-degrees structure.
  4. Figure 3.1 Display of “16-BIT” technology on the North American Sega Genesis model 1 (left) and the Japanese Mega Drive (detail, right). In addition to the central “16-BIT,” the Japanese has two mentions on the sides: “AV intelligent terminal” and “High grade multipurpose use.” Source: Evan Amos, Wikimedia Commons.
  5. Figure 4.1 Left: the Japanese Super Famicom; right: the Super NES. Source: Evan Amos, Wikimedia Commons
  6. Figure 4.2 Left: Super Famicom (top) and Super NES (bottom) controllers. (The L and R shoulder buttons are hidden by the photo’s angle.) Right: Famicom (top) and Genesis (bottom) controllers. Source: Evan Amos, Wikimedia Commons
  7. Figure 4.3 The Super Star Wars cantina stage (left) and the mountain cave in Soul Blazer (right) both resort to foreground elements to induce a sense of spatial depth, whether in side view with nearer patrons or in top-down view with hanging icicles. Emulated on Higan v0.95.
  8. Figure 5.1 Axonometric (“isometric”) graphics in the SNES titles Shadowrun and Equinox. Emulated on Higan v0.95.
  9. Figure 5.2 Linear perspective in the SNES port of Eye of the Beholder and F-Zero. Emulated on Higan v0.95.
  10. Figure 5.3 Illustration of a line-by-line transformation to simulate perspective in Mode 7, exported from F-Zero. Left: top-down view of the ground map. Right: progressive angling to reach the perspective shearing. Emulated on Higan v0.95.
  11. Figure 5.4 F-Zero’s playfield without the background skyline (left), and without the playfield (right). Emulated on Snes9X v1.53 for Windows.
  12. Figure 5.5 Racing against the Blue Falcon in F-Zero means seeing the car at various predrawn sizes and angles as the player overtakes it. There are more angles of view when the car is up close (in the top three rows) and a lot less as it is farther away. Spritesheet built by Solink, with contributions from Davias, downloaded from Spriters Resource (http://www.spriters-resource.com/).
  13. Figure 5.6 Flatness of mountains revealed when flying low in Final Fantasy III. Emulated on Higan v0.95.
  14. Figure 5.7 The 7th Saga’s transition from top-down overworld traveling (left) and perspectival fight scene (right) reveals the artificial construction of height as the mountains are reduced to a flat picture on the ground. Emulated on Higan v0.95.
  15. Figure 5.8 Inspired alternating between perspective and top-down views in Secret of Mana means the flatness of mountains is deemphasized by the top-down view. Emulated on Higan v0.95.
  16. Figure 5.9 NHL Stanley Cup and NCAA Basketball. Emulated on Higan v0.95.
  17. Figure 6.1 The American Video Game ReNESsance and its four phases: Appearance (1985), Rise and Apex (1985–1989), Decline (1989–1993), and Resistance (1993–1996).
  18. Figure 7.1 Publisher shares of total sales of million-sellers for the Famicom/NES. (Total: 233.68 million copies)
  19. Figure 7.4 Publisher shares of total sales of million-sellers for the PlayStation. (Threshold: 5 million copies; total: 426.65 million copies)
  20. Figure 7.2 Publisher shares of total sales of million-sellers for the Super Famicom/Super NES. (Total: 143.6 million copies)
  21. Figure 7.3 Publisher shares of total sales of million-sellers for the Nintendo 64. (Total: 142.75 million copies)

Guide

  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents