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This chapter uses the mobile game Pokémon GO as a case study of how video game developers have successfully harnessed the self-centering power of ludo-Orientalism, using augmented reality and GPS technology to construct virtual spaces ripe for playful exploration as well as economic exploitation. In focusing on Nintendo’s sophisticated marketing and aesthetic strategies to erase all signs of Japanese “cultural odor” from its games, scholarly appraisals of the Pokémon franchise have largely followed the traditional reduction of race to an explicit visual or linguistic feature of games. This chapter instead uses Pokémon GO’s seemingly inadvertent exposure of U.S. racial fault lines as an opportunity to explore how race is not erased but rather embedded in the game’s disorienting technology. It reveals the unacknowledged legacy of Japanese racial ideologies, imperialist ambitions, and atomic history that lurk beneath the game screen. The chapter argues that this illusion of ahistorical universality crucially buttresses the fantasy of Pokémon GO as a truly “free” game, masking the invasive and dehumanizing data mining structures that make it enormously profitable for its developers.

This chapter traces the development of handheld games. The discussions include Mattel’s release of its first popular handheld game—Football—in 1977; the emergence of portable consoles; the popularity of Nintendo’s Game Boy and the Nintendo DS; the Tamagotchi; Floodgate Studios’ Mo-Pets; the advent of cell phone games; location-based games; and alternate reality games.

Matthew Thomas Payne’s chapter considers the role of franchise management through video games. He uses the case study of Nintendo’s NES and SNES micro-consoles. His essay posits that franchises can refer to both software and hardware, as the built-in games on Nintendo’s mini-consoles function as a form of franchise management and corporate canonizing by privileging certain video game texts over others.

The North American video game crash of 1983 made it difficult for Nintendo to break into the American market with its new console, the Nintendo Entertainment System. When it finally did gain a toehold in 1986, it was the Nintendo ‘Seal of Quality’, a graphical rosette that was emblazoned on every official Nintendo release, that encouraged consumers to buy video game cartridges once more. This chapter explores how the difficulties in getting the Nintendo Entertainment System to market, coupled with a strong sense of house style, played an important part in creating a consistency in the 8-bit sound, in terms of both quality and style. The chapter focuses on Super Mario Bros., the game that defined the Nintendo Entertainment System. Its catchy soundtrack captured the qualities of the gameplay. It discusses how the game’s composer, Koji Kondo, defined the formal grammar and style of a new form of media music, the interactive game underscore, and worked with the hardware to create a light, jazz-inspired sound.

This chapter examines the cultural phenomenon that was Nintendo’s Game Boy and suggests that its portability and low cost was pivotal in taking chiptune from primarily a desktop activity to something that could be taken onstage and gigged. Crucial to the Game Boy’s success was Tetris, the machine’s ‘killer app’. It was such a hit that its music made the transition from silicon to vinyl, demonstrating that video game music could be popular music in its own right. After the release of Nanoloop and Little Sound DJ in the late 1990s, musicians realized that the Game Boy was more than just a handheld gaming device; it was a cheap and very portable music workstation. The chapter concludes by looking at how this idea has driven a new wave of equipment hacking, as users have rediscovered and reinvented vintage consoles as musical instruments.

This chapter considers how girls and boys view the conflict between media consumption and learning in class, focusing on uses of portable media in classroom that take place mostly in secret in the classroom. It compares listening practices in school and at home to bring the institutional structure of kids’ listening practices into relief, and it compares kids uses of portable video gamed devices with MP3 players to explore the gendering of kids’ media consumption. The contrast between discourses of “multitasking” that are volunteered differently by boys and girls suggest that each group sees the fine-grained details of their media interactions as deeply tied up in their social identities in school.

This introduction establishes the core concepts of the book, setting the stage for the chapters that follow. It describes the significance of replaying both in video games and in classical music and introduces the concept of replay value. The chapter offers some instances of classical music appearing in 1980s video games, such as the opening theme of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by J. S. Bach, which is used in a key moment in the game The Battle of Olympus. It then sketches an outline of the organization of the book, including a brief description of each of the later chapters.