Review: "Power Up" by Chris Kohler

When I was 7 years old, my parents got me a copy of Nintendo Comics System, a short-lived U.S. comic series featuring all my favorite Nintendo characters. Hidden in the pages of that decidedly child-targeted magazine was an ad for a Game Boy game called Fist of the North Star. The ad featured two small, black-and-white screenshots against a large drawing of a black-haired male martial artist standing amid a desolate, red plain. The game screenshots were wholly unimpressive, but I couldn't stop staring at that exquisitely drawn full-page image that was like nothing I hadseen before. The unique look of that picture stuck with me, but I could never quite put my finger on exactly why.



Chris Kohler's Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life goes a long way towards helping me understand.



Power Up's main thesis -- that the export of Japanese video games to America has brought the cultures closer together -- will resonate with any video game fanboy that has gone on to develop a love of Japanese anime, manga, or culture in general. The discussions of what makes Japanese game design unique will appeal to players that grew up with The Legend of Zelda and wondered why the Grand Theft Auto just felt different, despite the similar core gameplay. The details of Japanese gaming life and culture will satisfy any American who longs for the almost mythical gaming utopia of Japan. In short, Power Up is a pocket guide to understanding and appreciating Japanese culture through video games.



Unfortunately, it takes a little while to get to the best parts of this guide. The book spends a bit of time at the beginning giving a very abbreviated summary of video game history, both eastern and western, using information largely borrowed from more in-depth video game history books. Reader's of David Sheff's Game Over and Steven Kent's Complete History of Video Games will recognize many, if not most, of the historical events and trivia. Though Kohler adds the occasional unique observation or factoid, the history portions have in general been covered better elsewhere.



The book also struggles when Kohler tries to discuss the cinematic elements from a variety of classic Japanese games and analyze what makes them important. These analyses are relatively original and touch on some interesting ideas, but the sheer number of games discussed and the large amount of space given to simple description of the scenes (presumably added for a non-gamer audience) prevent them from getting much farther than the surface issues. This type of analysis is intriguing and worthy of more discussion (perhaps in another book), but here it seems unfocused and overly sparse.



But these weak spots are almost necessary to set up the strong, varied look at the video games and culture that comes after. Power Up discusses in explicit detail how the design and aesthetic of Japanese games has affected and been affected by both eastern and western culture. Kohler's intimate understanding of Japanese language and culture is a big help here. Power Up has entire chapters devoted to the differences between the Japanese and American games and game markets, covering everything from licensed products and game soundtracks to garbled translations and where to find games bargains in Tokyo's Akihabara district. The book is packed full of information that will be totally new to most Westerners -- some of it eye-openeing, some of it trivial almost to the point of uselessness (i.e. the Japanese restaurant Segafredo has no relation to the game company Sega), yet surprisingly interesting nonetheless.



Kohler also plays to his strengths in interviews with famous developers, both Eastern and Western, that bring out the human side of what often seems like a sterile and artificial medium. These discussions show a journalist's eye for getting the story straight, but also show a fan's curiosity and sense of wonder at getting to sit down with a personal hero. The reader gets the sense that Kohler wants to understand game design by first getting to know the person behind that game design, a process that brings out some very interesting quotes.



Power Up is a great first attempt to more fully explaining a complex foreign culture that has been hiding in the plain sight of American gamers for decades. Here's hoping that the issues Kohler brings up in this book will be discussed further in other volumes to follow.