Changing Industries: Nintendo pursues Manga instead of Video Games

[Jaiken]

We all know the classic titles of Nintendo and the legacy of their characters that have persisted throughout the video game industry.

But what if Nintendo instead pursued a different venture. What if Nintendo followed through the manga and anime business?

1970: Nintendo, a small playing card company in Japan, is approached by Magnavox to develop and market their new gaming console, the Magnavox Odyssey. However, Nintendo's management decides to decline the offer, as they see limited potential in the console market at the time.

1974: Riding the immense popularity of their playing cards, Nintendo decides to expand into other forms of entertainment. They acquire several manga publishing companies and set up their own lineup of manga series based on their Hanfuda cards.

1977: Artist Shigeru Miyamaoto joins Nintendo and starts pitching ideas for a Manga.

1981: Miyamaoto is struck with the idea of a Popeye inspired manga starring a man named Mario and his pet Gorilla Donkey Kong.

Continued at a later time. We will focus on Nintendo and the gaming industry as we progress throughout this Timeline.

 

[Sonny912]

Oooh, color me intrigued. So basically Nintendo characters from the 8 bit era become manga characters? And without the nes gaming becomes practically dead in the usa?

 

[Marco Incognito]

We gotta balance this out. Shonen Jump pursues Video Games.

 

[Jaiken]

The year was 1984 and the video game market has crashed in the North American region. A new company by the name of Service Games or "SEGA" has entered the console arena and posted its own arcade titles for players to enjoy. The only problem? Nobody is buying due to an oversaturation of video game consoles to choose from in the market. With no other option than to weather the storm, SEGA just waits hoping the market will get better in due time.

Third party game developers such as Capcom, Namco, Konami, Square and many others have just entered the North American video game console market, but don't know which console to make games. Without clear guidance they split up their development amongst consoles like the Calico vision, Atari 2600 and SEGA Master System. Sure the games stand out but customers do not want to own multiple consoles to play different games and instead want one place to play the games they like. Having no defining place to play all the games proves to undo any advancements that the third party developers have made and they decide to pull back to Japan to develop games for the Japanese video game console market.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Kyoto Japan, artist Shigeru Miyamoto has secured Nintendo a hit series with Donkey Kong and decides to give Mario a brother to go on adventures with to track down the koopa (anthropomorphic turtles) army lead by the nefarious King Koopa, Bowser. Mario's brother is named Luigi and together they take on the King of Koopas to save the Mushroom Kingdom's Princess, Princess Toadstool. The series is a hit with audiences of children everywhere in Japan and becomes the Manga of choice in1984 throughout 1987.

Lastly, Shonen Jump’s publisher, Shueisha, would open a game making branch of its younger company Shonen Jump to make money developing and publishing video games.

 

[Sonny912]

Called it! Course now i realize that without Mario's presence sega won't replace Alex kid with sonic so the blue blur is now Butterflied.

 

[Nivek]

Called it! Course now i realize that without Mario's presence sega won't replace Alex kid with sonic so the blue blur is now Butterflied.

Alex Kidd was a reskinned Goku from a failed DB game so even him could be butterflied away too

 

[Sonny912]

Alex Kidd was a reskinned Goku from a failed DB game so even him could be butterflied away too

Really? I didn't know that. So that means that sega's mascot at this time would be that spaceship upa upa or something right?

 

[Nivek]

Really? I didn't know that. So that means that sega's mascot at this time would be that spaceship upa upa or something right?

it was Upa Upa. they tried to make Alex Kidd works but didn't

 

[Jaiken]

With video game consoles stagnating sales grinding to a halt, many console manufacturers went bankrupt such as Atari and Calico. SEGA saw little to no profits so they moved back to Japan and focused on the arcade business.

With consoles in such dire straits what would happen to video gaming? The year 1985-1986 made the console market look like a ghost town. That was until a little thing known as the PC caught the attention of gamers.

Sure they were a little more expensive but gaming could not have gotten any worse for enthusiasts of the medium. The PC in mind? The MSX which was distributed by Microsoft still had some Japanese titles being developed for it before they left the region. Garnering interest of Japanese video game developers most came back and developed titles exclusively for the computer console. Gaming was slowly gaining interest back.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1986 Miyamaoto creates the Legend of Zelda series. A story about a young hero chosen by destiny to rescue the world from the evil clutches of the demon pig King Ganon. It is a major hit with teenage audiences and those that like fantasy adventures.

 

[Jaiken]

Even with the North American market being a wasteland a new console in Japan was making waves. It was a 16-bit console that played Megaman 2, Bomberman and platformer Bonk. With these games Hudson Soft thought it would be a good idea to release the console in the North American market.

Hudson Soft thought with original games and with Capcom backing them, due to moneyhatting the project, they would be able to break through the North American market. The goal was to make console gaming popular again. With their plan laid out Hudson Soft made its move:

In North America the Turbo Graphx 16 was released but to prevent over saturation Hudson Soft controlled the market and that Capcom and Konami could not make games for other consoles. The games released would be Megaman 2, Contra and Castlevania and they caught the attention of audiences. The console was manufactured by NEC.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-———

In Kyoto Japan Nintendo just released its next franchise called Metroid. Metroid was based on the Alien franchise and proved to help Nintendo’s foray of more mature themed manga.

 

[Sonny912]

Ah so Hudson soft becomes the new face of gaming in America. And why just megaman 2and contra ? What happened to megaman 1 And castlevania? Also does Nintendo have their own anthology book like shonen jump or corocoro comics or do they publish it with other manga? How many do they have besides mario, loz and metroid who are obviously their big 3 at the moment? Will punch out become their next big manga do they have a ratings system to decide which comic is popular and which is cut?

 

[Jaiken]

Ah so Hudson soft becomes the new face of gaming in America. And why just megaman 2and contra ? What happened to megaman 1 And castlevania? Also does Nintendo have their own anthology book like shonen jump or corocoro comics or do they publish it with other manga? How many do they have besides mario, loz and metroid who are obviously their big 3 at the moment? Will punch out become their next big manga do they have a ratings system to decide which comic is popular and which is cut?

Megaman 1 failed to draw in audiences to an extent, but Megaman 2 did better to draw in fans to the platformer and shooter gameplay like Contra did. Forgot to mention Castlevania.

As for Nintendo they do have an anthology book called Nintendo Chronicles which is a collection of their top manga.
Other Manga includes:
Famicom Detective Club: A mystery novel about a teenage girl solving the murder of her friend.
Punch Out is another big hit for Nintendo and is their sports Manga about overcoming challenges.

Nintendo’s other franchises have yet to be made but the Ice Climbers was canned and Kid Icarus did not draw in the audience that Nintendo needed. So far based on ratings those are the only manga that have not done so well.

 

[Sonny912]

Megaman 1 failed to draw in audiences to an extent, but Megaman 2 did better to draw in fans to the platformer and shooter gameplay like Contra did. Forgot to mention Castlevania.

As for Nintendo they do have an anthology book called Nintendo Chronicles which is a collection of their top manga.
Other Manga includes:
Famicom Detective Club: A mystery novel about a teenage girl solving the murder of her friend.
Punch Out is another big hit for Nintendo and is their sports Manga about overcoming challenges.

Nintendo’s other franchises have yet to be made but the Ice Climbers was canned and Kid Icarus did not draw in the audience that Nintendo needed. So far based on ratings those are the only manga that have not done so well.

I'm guessing the American boxart played a big part mm1's failure like it did in real life huh?

Never heard of Famicom detective club before but nice to see punch out is as big as it should. Wonder if it competes with Hajime no ippo as the top boxing manga? Shame that kid icarus flopped, I liked uprising on the 3ds. Maybe it could get rebooted into that down the line. Do you think nintendo could strike a deal to make manga adaptations of capcom and konami's hottest games at the moment?

 

[Jaiken]

I'm guessing the American boxart played a big part mm1's failure like it did in real life huh?

Never heard of Famicom detective club before but nice to see punch out is as big as it should. Wonder if it competes with Hajime no ippo as the top boxing manga? Shame that kid icarus flopped, I liked uprising on the 3ds. Maybe it could get rebooted into that down the line. Do you think nintendo could strike a deal to make manga adaptations of capcom and konami's hottest games at the moment?

Nintendo could try, but they have not established themselves as that big of a player in Manga yet to garner trust to make Manga adaptions of other characters owned by different companies. Maybe down the line it could work. The next chapter will explain why Kid Icarus and Ice Climbers Flopped and what Famicom Detective Club (new name is Detective Club) is about. Other Manga will be talked about but the biggest one is yet to come. Nintendo has about 5 more series to go through.

 

[Jaiken]

Hudson Soft's Turbo Graphx 16 was doing good for itself. Games such as Contra and Megaman 2 were huge hits. Castlevania was also a huge hit in the video game console business. PC gaming companies were not happy with the turn of events as the Turbo Graphx 16 ate into their sales. One such man was Trip Hawkins and he would have big plans to put into motion later on down in the line of video gaming. As of now, Hudson Soft's caveman Bonk was the face of gaming and the company enjoyed being the sole reason that video games revived in the North American market.

Another video game was released and it was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game. It was a hard video game but the popularity of the kids tv show proved to be good for sales. Not everything was good for Hudson Soft's console as having only two buttons to play with caused problems with some games. Not having enough buttons and options to pull out maneuvers for some video games made them less enjoyable to play. Regardless of the limited button layout game companies were coming back in droves and one such company was Square with their Final Fantasy series, mainly Final Fantasy III (the actual III and not a different title).

———————————————————————————————————————————————-———---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back in Japan Nintendo's latest series Punch Out was drawing a huge crowd in and from rival manga artists. Hajime no Ippo was one said rival manga and it was losing sales because of the opponents that titular boxer, Little Mac, faced. The most popular opponent was King Hippo and his large stature. Sadly not all was happy in the world of Nintendo. Titles such as Ice Climbers and Kid Icarus had failed.

Ice Climbers was about two children climbing daring mountains together to collect eggplants at the top of a summit. Readers had expected the series to be about the treachery of climbing ice cold mountains and weathering terrible snowstorms and other harsh winter conditions. With that Nintendo scrapped the series. A different title was Kid Icarus and it was a mystery to Nintendo as to why it failed. Maybe it was because the main character Pit was not distinguishable to readers to be interesting? Who knows, but Nintendo thought about giving the series another try.

A series that kept some readers hooked was Detective Club. Starring a young middle schooler, Ayumi Tachibana, the goal of the manga was trying to figure out a long mystery of the death of Ayumi's friend. The sales did ok for Nintendo to warrant a sequel to the series and to make more mystery novels in their collection.

Lastly, one big title was a series called Mother (Earthbound in other regions besides Japan) and it focused on a physic boy whom was tasked to fight off an alien invasion. The boy was named Ninten and along with a gifted girl named Ana and a genius boy Lloyd they took on the evil alien Giygue. The story took place in the town of Eagleland, a stand in for America, Nintendo thought it to be a good idea to release the title overseas in the region to test how well the series did. But for that they would need a translation team.

Nintendo also had interest in making manga adaptions of other series like Contra, Megaman and Castlevania, but right now Capcom and Konami were not willing to play ball. Maybe one day when Nintendo got more successful would they recommend doing it.

 

[Ninja2006]

This is cool! Might make a TL like this.

 

[Sonny912]

Hey it's mostly been about what's going on with Hudson and their partnership with capcom and Konami, what's sega and the rest doing right now? Mind if I share something I've been pitching for a while now? Both the sega genesis and snk's neo geo used the Motorola 68000 for their arcade and console games so what if both sega and snk agree to a merger to make single console to compete with Hudson over the US market?

What happens when kirby and pokemon comes into play? And when will Nintendo start making their manga into anime? Will dic and/or Saban entertainment be the ones to dub them for American audiences? Wasn't shonen jump pursuing the game industry earlier, what are they doing now? When do f zero and starfox become hits?

 

[Ninja2006]

What happens when kirby and pokemon comes into play? And when will Nintendo start making their manga into anime? Will dic and/or Saban entertainment be the ones to dub them for American audiences? Wasn't shonen jump pursuing the game industry earlier, what are they doing now? When do f zero and starfox become hits?

I'd rather they import the shows themselves.

 

[Sonny912]

I'd rather they import the shows themselves.

Import?

 

[Ninja2006]

Import?

Dub & license the shows themselves......