Game Over

In one sentence: David Sheff's history of Nintendo, explicitly recommended by David on the show — it supplies the Miyamoto/Yamauchi conversation behind Donkey Kong in the Nintendo episode and Howard Lincoln's Atari-lawsuit line in the Console Wars episode.

Overview

The book preserves what Miyamoto told Yamauchi when assigned to make a game: that the shoot-'em-ups and tennis games in arcades of the time were "unimaginative, simply uninteresting," and that he'd always wondered why video games couldn't draw on great stories the way books and movies did — King Kong, Jason and the Argonauts, even Macbeth. That conversation is the direct source for the episode's claim that Donkey Kong is "the first narrative-driven video game." In the Console Wars episode, the book supplies Nintendo counsel Howard Lincoln's private line about the Atari lawsuit: "I thought to myself, you have no idea what you've taken on Atari. We are a tiger who will skin you piece by piece."

Why It's Worth Reading

David recommends it outright on the Nintendo episode: "There are quite a lot of books written about the history of Nintendo, some of which are very good, and we've read basically all of them at this point. In particular, I would highly recommend Game Over."

Source

Referenced in Acquired's Nintendo episode (2023-03-16, the Miyamoto/Yamauchi conversation and Donkey Kong's narrative origin) and Nintendo: The Console Wars episode (2023-04-11, Howard Lincoln's Atari-lawsuit quote).