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Jeff Ryan: Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America (2012, Portfolio/Penguin) 4 stars

This is a history, review, and business analysis book, covering the Mario games by Nintendo, …

A little too cute, even for Mario

4 stars

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).