Super Mario

I found this book entertaining and informative, and a little bit personal since I worked on a GameCube title, but it is slightly blemished by occasionally wandering into gibberish when the author tries to get technical (I don't know what "alias coding" is - there is a thing called "antialiasing", you can google it), and his attempts to get cute with the prose borders on the offensive occasionally ("flopping like koi", "in the land of the rising sun" - we get it, Nintendo is Japanese). The book is also a bit dated already - rather than take the author's theme park idea, Nintendo went with the Switch, which apparently has done quite well (and actually reinforces the recurring theme in the book of Nintendo's approach toward innovation).

It's only fitting if I'm going to devote this much time to gaming that I should re-familiarize myself with the difficult business narrative of how gaming in North America really came to be. My favorite book on this subject is David Scheff's GAME OVER, from which this book heavily borrows its first-half structure. (Ryan cites Scheff's work at least one time, indicating that yes, he read it, and decided to follow the timeline almost exactly).

Entertaining paean to Nintendo and Mario! The audiobook is well-read.