The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World

by Steven Kent

  Lincoln went on to extol his company’s virtuous endeavors. He said that thanks to the security chip, companies had to get Nintendo’s permission to create games for the NES and Super NES. “Nintendo has video game guidelines which control game content, and we have applied these to every one of the more than 1,200 games released into the market by Nintendo and its licensees.”14

  In the past year, some very violent and offensive games have reached the market and, of course, I am speaking about Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. Let me say for the record, I want to state that Night Trap will never appear on a Nintendo System. Obviously, it would not pass our guidelines. This game, which, as you have indicated, promotes violence against women, simply has no place in our society.15

  —Howard Lincoln

  When Lincoln mentioned that Nintendo had been criticized by children and parents alike for “sanitizing” Mortal Kombat, Senator Lieberman interrupted him to ask about it. “We have received letters, we have received literally thousands of phone calls,”16 Lincoln responded.

  If Lincoln was the welcomed guest, Bill White of Sega was the man on the hot seat. Both of the games that had prompted the hearings were made for Genesis, and without ever mentioning Sega, Lincoln had pointed a scathing finger at the company during his testimony. White tried to improve his company’s image by restating the vital information that Lincoln and the senators seemed to have ignored. He started by stating three points: Sega’s customer base was older and broader than the previous experts had suggested; Sega already had a rating system; and Sega was trying to encourage the rest of the industry to adopt a rating system.

  In recent days, the glare of the media spotlight on this issue has resulted in the circulation of a number of distorted and inaccurate claims. The most damaging of these distortions, in my view, is the notion that Sega and the rest of the digital interactive industry are only in the business of selling games to children. This is not the case.

  Yes, many of Sega’s interactive video titles are intended for and purchased by young children. Many other Sega titles, however, are intended for and purchased by adults for their personal entertainment and education. The average Sega CD user is almost 22 years old, and only 5 percent are under age 13. The average Sega Genesis user is almost 19 years old, and fewer than 30 percent are under age 13.17

  —William “Bill” White, former vice president of marketing/communications, Sega of America

  White went on to explain Sega’s “three-pronged approach” to informing parents. According to White, Sega not only placed ratings on all Genesis games but also included a toll-free hotline for consumers to get ratings, and informational brochures about the ratings were made available.

  Listening to White, Howard Lincoln was apparently seething. Years later, Lincoln said, “I heard him saying these things that I knew he didn’t believe, and I’m not sure what came over me.” He sat quietly through Rosenthal’s, Wiener’s, and Johnson’s testimonies, preparing a response to Bill White. Lincoln’s anger may have been aroused by the way White tried to speak for the entire industry, and it may have been in response to the way he characterized Sega as being on the forefront of protecting children from adult material.* It may also have sprung from their past relationship. White had been Nintendo of America’s director of advertising and PR and had joined Sega a few months after an ugly split from Nintendo. Whatever his reasons, Lincoln waited until the question-and-answer period after Johnson’s testimony to speak.

  Lieberman directed his first comment to White, stating that the clip he had seen of a woman being attacked in Night Trap was “gratuitous and offensive and ought not to be available to people in our society.”18 White responded by reiterating his message about the market maturing and the importance of ratings. Senator Lieberman continued to pick at White, pinning him down on whether or not Night Trap was a product for adults, then pointing out that if it was indeed being marketed only to adults, Sega should be obliged to enforce the ratings. He then proceeded to show the commercial for Mortal Kombat and commented that the boy in the commercial appeared to be under thirteen years of age—too young to buy the game, according to Sega’s ratings.

  Senator Lieberman then turned to Lincoln and threw him a softball question. After faintly praising Nintendo for its limited self-regulation, he asked if Nintendo would be willing to display ratings on advertisements and in brochures as well as on games. Lincoln said he would, then changed the subject.

  Let me make just a couple of other points. I can’t sit here and allow you to be told that somehow the video game business has been transformed today from children to adults. It hasn’t been, and Mr. White, who is a former Nintendo employee, knows the demographics as well as I do.

  Furthermore, I can’t let you sit here and buy this nonsense that this Sega Night Trap game was somehow only meant for adults.

  The fact of the matter is this is a copy of the packaging. There was no rating on this game at all when the game was introduced. Small children bought this at Toys “R” Us, and he knows that as well as I do. When they started getting heat about this game, then they adopted the rating system and put ratings on it.19

  —Howard Lincoln

  What could Lieberman say? He thanked Lincoln for his “forthrightness” and praised Nintendo for “having been a damn sight better than the competition.”

  Well, the truth is that those statistics were very true and I think Howard knew those statistics were true. He would have to if they kept the same records that we kept. And having worked there [Nintendo], I imagine they did. Those were the primary player demographics that we measured, based on warranty card returns from our games, both software and hardware. And they represent the actual reported age of the people that play the games.

  —William “Bill” White

  White shot back with a videotape showing violent games on Super NES. Nintendo’s self-regulation did not go far enough, he argued. At least, Sega games had ratings. The tug of war continued, with Lincoln pointing out that without enforcement, ratings would not keep violent games out of the hands of children and White stressing the importance of ratings.

  One of the true highlights of the testimony, for me, was when after days of Nintendo claiming how pure they were in Lincoln’s sanctimonious testimony, White pulls out the huge bazooka-like gun that Nintendo sold for use with the Super NES and asked Howard if this was what he meant by saying that Nintendo controlled the product it made and protected families and kids.

  Howard was shaken, ashen, and furious.

  —Richard Brudvik-Lindner, former director of communications, Sega of America

  I really had not planned on taking Sega on, but it became such a delightful opportunity. It was broadcast twice on C-SPAN, and the part when I really took White on was broadcast on CNN. It was everywhere. I don’t remember what it was that he said, but it was so dumb. It just brought out the lawyer in me. I mean, it was a golden opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

  —Howard Lincoln

  I was surprised when Howard Lincoln and Bill White went after each other like that. I thought that it looked awful. And I was surprised at the intensity of it. I guess it gave me this message that this was obviously big business.

  —Senator Joseph Lieberman

  The meeting continued, with Senators Lieberman, Kohl, and Dorgan hammering Bill White, until it finally adjourned at 1:52 P.M. Before closing the meeting, Senator Lieberman called for a second meeting to be held in February to evaluate the industry’s progress toward adopting a rating system.

  In a lot of ways, the hearings really changed the industry. It was a coming of age for the industry. It really marked the arrival of Sega as the industry leader. It created alliances and engendered animosities that exist to this day. It also created the opportunity for the PC entertainment industry and the video game industry to check each other out and see if they could be married. It forced these companies to develop a political savvy that they never really had.

  —Richard Brudvik-Lindner
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  Many changes occurred during the three months between the first Senate hearing in December and the much more serene second hearing on March 4, 1994. Howard Lincoln was promoted to chairman of Nintendo of America, making him co-equal with Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa. Work had begun on a rating system. Despite Sega’s suggestion that the industry adopt its system, a new one was being created. Also, largely as a result of the publicity generated by the hearings, Night Trap had sold out all across the country. Sega CD had never been more than a niche product, with approximately 250,000 units sold in the United States. Had it not been for the hearings, Night Trap would have vanished as just another forgotten Sega CD game. Given new publicity from the hearings, it was later rereleased for both PCs and 32X.

  Sega wound up selling way more copies of MK1, probably as a result of the hearings. Night Trap came back to life. You know, I sold 50,000 units of Night Trap a week after those hearings.

  —Tom Zito

  New Organizations

  Two things became obvious to people pretty quickly. One was that the industry ought to attempt to come up with a self-regulatory response to congressional concerns about content; and the second was that it ought to consider creating a trade association to represent its interests, not just in Washington and at the state level but in a variety of forms.

  —Douglas Lowenstein, president, Interactive Digital Software Association

  Two organizations were formed as a result of the hearings. In 1994, game company executives decided that they had better create their own trade organization rather than depend on the Software Publishers Association.

  Seven industry leaders met to discuss the formation of the organization: Nintendo, Sega, Acclaim, Electronic Arts, Phillips, Atari, and 3DO. The meetings, intense and private, took place over a six-week period, punctuated with hostile power struggles between Nintendo and Sega. The fighting eventually led to compromise and the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), the interactive entertainment industry’s own dedicated trade and lobbying organization, headed by a seasoned Washington, D.C., veteran named Douglas Lowenstein. In later years, the IDSA would prove to be very effective when the industry was under siege.

  The creation of the rating system did not proceed without battles. In the beginning, Sega executives wanted the entire industry to adopt their rating system. When it became obvious that Nintendo and several other companies would not use the Sega rating system, Sega took a leading role in trying to establish a new system that would be mutually acceptable. Even this did not end the fighting. Several computer game publishers created their own rating system, which they used for more than a year before eventually accepting the video game ratings.

  Well, I think the real reason they didn’t go with Sega’s rating system was that it was Sega’s rating system and … at the time the notion of Nintendo and Sony as fierce competitors, with Sega adopting a system identified with Sega’s product, was … that was very unpalatable.

  —Douglas Lowenstein

  It’s somewhat ironic that Sega was criticized the way it was, for having actually taken a lead in producing a rating system that would provide the very information that the senators wanted to see on every package across the industry. I think Sega should have been congratulated publicly for having taken a lead in establishing ratings for games, albeit amongst games that were proprietary or running on Sega platforms. And, of course, Sega was instrumental in the formation of IDSA and was very proactive in helping bring the industry into compliance with Senator Lieberman’s requests.

  —William “Bill” White

  Video game makers also created the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), an independent organization to rate games. Led by Dr. Arthur Pober, a highly respected educator, the ESRB won rave reviews when it presented its rating system to Senators Lieberman and Kohl. Though they resisted at first, computer game makers eventually adopted the IDSA’s rating system, which reinforced the industry’s new unity.

  At Williams Manufacturing, Ed Boon and John Tobias made a modification to their basic game formula as they created Mortal Kombat 2. They kept the blood, brutality, and fatalities, but they also added a new kind of finishing move called “friendship.” Friendships worked very much like fatalities—if a player defeated an opponent for two rounds, the opponent would stand dazed for a few seconds, during which time players had to tap in the right combination with their joystick and buttons. If the code was done correctly, instead of destroying the opponent in some gory way, the victor would give him a cake, a doll, or some other gift as the word friendship appeared across the top of the screen in rainbow colors.

  The “friendships” were a result of the hearings. They were put in specifically because we were getting so much publicity because of the violence in the game and stuff. We just thought we’d offset the fatalities with friendships.

  —John Tobias

  With the ratings in place, Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa decided that Nintendo no longer needed to sanitize games the way it had in the past. The Super NES version of Mortal Kombat 2 contained as many fatalities and friendships as Sega’s. This time, it sold better than the Genesis version.

  * Acclaim also released Game Gear and Game Boy versions of Mortal Kombat. Amazingly, Acclaim sold 1 million copies of the Game Boy cartridge.

  * It is interesting to note that if 11 of the 47 games were sports games and 40 of the 47 games had violent themes, then Dr. Provenzo considered a minimum of four sports games to have violent themes. In fairness, though, some psychologists have pointed out that although cartoonlike in nature, games such as Super Mario Bros. and even Kirby’s Dreamland are violent.

  * In fairness, a 1991 suit between Sega of America and a game manufacturer called RazorSoft centered on a game called Stormlord, which Sega rejected because it contained statues of naked women.

  The “Next” Generation (Part 1)

  Sega is sending a very confusing message to the customer, saying: “Buy Genesis,” “now it’s Game Gear,” “no, actually it’s Sega CD,” “no, it’s 32X,” “forget all of that stuff, it’s Saturn,” “maybe it’s Titan,” “how about Pico.”

  —Trip Hawkins, founder, the 3DO Company

  3DO a good value at $299? I’ll sell you mine.

  —Tim Stamper, cofounder, Rare, Ltd.

  You Oughta Be in Pictures

  Both Nintendo and Sega spun hit cartoon shows off their mascots. Nintendo went even further and worked on two movies: The Wizard, starring Fred Savage; and Super Mario Bros., with Bob Hoskins playing the title role. Neither movie left much of a mark at the box office.

  Sega’s introduction into the film world is less well known and a bit more brutal. In 1994, Shenobu Toyoda, vice president of licensing at Sega of America, signed the company up as a sponsor of Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival. Toyoda, who was said to be more interested in movies than games, saw convergence between the two media on the horizon, due largely to Sega CD. By sponsoring the film festival, he hoped to create some inroads into the industry.

  We were a significant sponsor of the Sundance Film Festival. These were heady times at Sega. This was a time period in which we really could see the merging of Hollywood and the filmmaking industry with the video game industry. We had the Sega CD, and we were the leading proponent of that marriage from the video game industry side.

  On top of all of that, it was really kind of a vision thing for Shenobu. A lot of people talk about his fascination or maybe his kind of … he was awestruck by Hollywood.

  —Richard Brudvik-Lindner, former director of public relations, Sega of America

  Before the festival began, Sega rented an enormous estate outside of Park City, the Utah ski resort where the Sundance Film Festival is held. Although CEO Tom Kalinske did not attend and Toyoda only made a brief appearance, Sega sent a top-tier team that included Richard Brudvik-Lindner, director of communications; Michaelene Cristini Risley, group director of licensing and character development; a
nd Joe Miller, head of research and development.

  As one of the sponsors of the festival, Sega was invited to make a presentation one evening. Miller was to deliver a speech and show video clips of games under development, after which there would be a reception. Knowing of the “politically correct” attitude that prevailed in Hollywood, Lindner decided to have Miller put an emphasis on Ecco the Dolphin, in an effort to show that there was more to video games than simple shoot-’em-ups. After making his presentation, Miller opened the meeting for questions. He had expected a little animosity—what he got, however, verged on hostility. Members of the Screenwriters Guild and other trade organizations pounded him through the entire session with questions about how game makers would work with unions and whether game designers got adequate credit for their work.

  The storm continued as the presentation ended and the reception began. Screenwriters and other movie people besieged the members of the Sega team.

  The questioning just continued, so much so, that I think most of the contingent of Sega people felt under attack. I noticed the Sega people getting more and more compacted together in this little group, and it was like they were surrounded. It got so bad that they wanted to leave before the reception was done.