Power-Up How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life Chris Kohler ISBN 0-7440-0424-1 review by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu) Created: Jan 8, 2005 Updated: Aug 25, 2013 http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/powerup.txt This is a hard book to like, but also a hard book to hate. Whenever a book can teach me something, it can't be all bad. And when it covers a wide variety of topics including video game soundtracks and contains interviews of many important people, again, it's tough to toss it on the compost heap. But dear me, there are some low points. Let's hit them first. I'll start at the title. _Power-Up_ is fine. _How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life_ is embarrassing. Sure, it's a lovely play on words in the same vein as _Game Over_, but I have to admit to being more than slightly offended by the title. Perhaps if the book was about a video game simulation that laid the foundation for curing cancer or for discovering a way to feed everyone on planet Earth or for allowing people to live in peace, the hyperbole would be excusable. But it's not. Video games are fun, they are (IMHO) good for you and the world would be a much poorer place without them, but to use such a title is to trivialize the truly important. From page 1, it's a long road to the good bits and the road is very bumpy: * Quotes directly from the text are bolded and splashed right in the middle of the page, forcing the reader to read around them. Normal paragraphs are fine for me, thanks, and for most adults as well. * Small b/w pictures in the text usually (but not always) have 3 large "pixels" taken out of them from one of the corners. I'm sure the author and publisher want to mark their territory, but this is just silly. It borders on inane for the Pong picture, for example. * In-line footnotes are put in a small box on a gray background on the side of the page and sometimes aren't even on the same page that the footnote occurs. * It takes all of three pages to get to the first inaccuracy and there are many more as we move along. This does not bode well for taking the rest of the book seriously. * When an author recommends _Joystick Nation_ and _Game Over_ without any mention of the zillions of inaccuracies in both books, it also does not bode well for taking the book seriously. * When an author uses the phrase "... perhaps the Japanese video game is the exception that proves the rule," we are in for some *serious* trouble. 99.9% of people who use this phrase use it incorrectly. For the record, exceptions don't prove rules. They blow them to bits. Indeed, exceptions *disprove* rules. In the correct use of the phrase, "prove" means "test" as in the phrase "proving ground". Consider: all odd numbers are primes. 3 is certainly prime. So are 5 and 7. 9 isn't prime, but it's "the exception that proves the rule", since 11 and 13 are prime too. To use this phrase to make any point is simply ludicrous. * We also see other "proofs" in the book, such as Proof by Assertion. By the time we get to some meat (wherein the author starts to focus on the cinematic techniques in Japanese video games and the games' authors and history), we are starving for it and thankfully much of it is good. We are given insight into the Mario, Dragon's Quest, Final Fantasy and Pokemon Universes and the history of a few other interesting games and people (Gitaroo Man and Starfox and their authors among others). There is also an interesting chapter on game soundtracks and on the translation of Japanese games to English. Still, while it's tasty, chunks of it are pretty tough. Under Sins of Omission, while talking about a 3-D game for the Game Boy called _X_, the author writes: "Recently, the Japanese weekly game magazine Famitsu voted it (_X_) as one of the four most influential Game Boy games ever created." This is very interesting to me. In typical David Sheff-ian fashion, however, he doesn't bother to list the other three. Unfortunately, many of the good bits read like a love-letter to Nintendo, Square, Enix and the creators of the author's favorite games. Some of it is forgivable, as the author's passion does come through in many of the pages. However, Final Fantasy is simply gushed over and given an overwhelming amount of space. Finally, it at first appears we're about to be treated to a nice overview of game soundtracks when the author writes on page 136: "To get a sense of the scope and variety of his [Nobuo Uematsu] work as well as the many, varied types of game music soundtracks released by the hundreds every year in Japan ..." But, it was not to be. The author finishes: "... it is highly useful to look at each of Uematsu's Final Fantasy albums in turn." followed by seven pages of detail of each of the albums. Now, I'm not one to snuff out someone's passion, but geez, even I know a pad when I see it. You don't have to tease me about "the many, varied type of game music soundtracks" when really what you had in mind all along was discussing the FF soundtracks. Please, be honest, ok? [Aside: In college, I took a History of Science class. Coming from a math background, I was hoping for a nice, well-rounded course that would cover a wide variety of disciplines but would also cover at least a couple of mathematicians. What I got was the History of Biology plus Darwin and Newton as physicist. Leibniz? Sorry, can't help you. Gauss? Nope, none in stock. A mention of the Calculus, for crying out loud? No, but we have seven weeks to cover _The Double Helix_. Bait and switch at its best. History of Science and varied types of game music soundtracks, my butt.] Which brings me to another issue: I'm unclear as to how these game soundtracks relate to "giving the world an extra life." Sure, there isn't much to argue about regarding the influence of Japanese games on games in general and some/much of that influence includes music. But given the fact that game soundtracks don't register even the faintest blip on most of the world's radar, I'm not sure how they themselves contribute to "an extra life." I also don't understand how a list of places to buy games and soundtracks in Japan (that goes on for pages) contributes either. Certainly, if I am ever fortunate enough to visit Japan, that section of the book will be the first I look at, and indeed, it was interesting and informative. Again, however, it has left me rather confused. Had the book been titled _I Love Japanese Video Games Especially Final Fantasy, The Japanese Culture, Anime, Manga and Game Soundtracks Because They Are So Cool And Here's Why_, perhaps I'd be a bit less critical. In short, some of _Power-Up_ may be good enough to be used as a reference. Mr. Kohler gets double points for an extensive bibliography and many end notes complete with references. But the many errors in the other parts of the book make me continually wonder whether the parts that are "good" really are accurate. _Power-Up_ goes on the shelf above _Game Over_ and _Arcade Fever_, but not much higher than that.