Name: The Rise of Nintendo’s Original Gaming Master
Uploaded: 2018-05-10T10:28:57.000Z
Duration: 6 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

- [Narrator] Finding the master sword in Zelda,

as a kid with your first Nintendo system.

For most of us, playing games was a pastime.

But for one lucky man, this wasn't some hobby,

In the U.S., a new decade of technology and pop culture

was approaching, making it a promising land

America had said hello to a kitty a few years earlier,

but it was a gorilla that stole the attention

Donkey Kong was Nintendo's first big breakthrough

The game helped the Japanese company climb its way

up to America, eventually establishing a new headquarter

in Seattle, Washington, to bolster their hit.

This is the story of one of their first employees

This is Howard Phillips' original 1989 Game Boy

and this is how Howard started working at Nintendo.

It was really just the five or six of us.

My role was to bring in all of the arcade games

and unload them and record all the serial numbers

but working in the warehouse came with one pretty big perk.

Whenever a new game came in, I could open it up

- [Narrator] But playing games could never

The company was looking to break into the U.S. market

- The Japanese are very, very attentive to the customer

I was their, kind of, gateway  into the U.S. zeitgeist,

I used to know what players really wanted to play.

- Who knows why out of the few people working

in the company at the time that I got selected

I think it was just my enthusiasm for play.

You know, I'm a player's player, I love to play games.

- [Narrator] In 1985, Nintendo was ready to move

out from the arcade and into the living room.

“What do you think are the best games?”

I played them all, and I said, “Mr. Arakawa,

- [Narrator] And so the game master was born.

- Howard Phillips, also known as Mr. Nintendo.

It's his job to test every Nintendo game that comes out.

It was really just a focus on what it means

when a player meets a game, it's that connection.

He was like a grownup, but he was still like a kid.

He gave you the impression more of a character

- [Howard] I think the connection that I had with players

and they would say, but they're not educational

or whatever the negative association was that they wanted

- It may be the most addictive toy in history:

- Shame on people that produce that trash,

that's how parents perceived their kids' joy

but Howard could see the positive effects

or being really, really frustrated at something

but just trying and being patient and persistent,

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The Rise of Nintendo’s Original Gaming Master

perceive

approach

negative

accurate