Pretty much everyone has some Nintendo-related memory to share. The company has long been ubiquitous in gaming for iconic series like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon, among many, many others. However, fewer people know about the company's extensive, 131 year-long history and transformation from playing card manufacturer to video game giant.
That's where Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story comes in. The new docuseries, directed by Video Games: The Movie's Jeremy Snead, breaks Nintendo's long history in five parts, covering its early days, lesser-known business ventures and rise to prominence with iconic systems like the NES, Wii and Switch. CBR was able to speak with Snead, along with actress Alison Haislip, who is featured in the series, about making Playing With Power and their Nintendo memories.
CBR: Nintendo has played a huge role in the lives of so many gamers over the course of several generations now, so I'd like to start by asking what is your first Nintendo memory, and what was your first console?
Alison Haislip: My first Nintendo memory was receiving the original NES for Christmas. I was probably seven, and my brother and I had a system where we opened our gifts from smallest to largest. One of the small gifts we opened was the DuckTales Nintendo game. We were too young to realize that meant one of the larger gifts would be was a Nintendo so we could play said game. So when we finally got to that and we opened it up, we were like "YES!" and our parents were like, "How did you not figure that out?"
Jeremy Snead: It's funny, Alison, as you're saying that, I was born in '77. We got ours in '86, so I was around nine. And I think something similar happened with us, because we got Gyromite and Duck Hunt in the package -- or at least ours. But we got Super Mario as a separate deal, and I think my eight year old brain was just...I just remember still being really surprised when we got the NES.
So I asked about your first memories, but do you also have favorite over-all Nintendo memories that stand out?
Haislip: So it's me and my brother, and then we have two cousins who are brother-sister -- we're all very similar in age. Growing up, we were set up for a four-way tournament with Mario Kart. That was always a big thing in our family -- the holidays, when we all got together, it was Mario Kart 24/7.
Snead: Favorite memory for me of the NES would probably be playing Ikari Warriors by myself. It's a multiplayer game. I got a copy of Nintendo Power, and you could see the whole game laid out. It was the first time I made the connection between the drawings and the little map, and I said, "Oh! Somebody makes this. Somebody draws this, and that's what makes it on my TV." It felt like a year in my little kid brain, but it was probably about a two week period of playing Ikari Warriors all night when I got home from school.
What is it that keeps you coming back to Nintendo games and systems after all these years?
Haislip: They're the only one that does what they do. You can go to the other consoles for these big AAA titles if you want to play games that last 120-140 hours, or you can go back to your roots with something Mario-based. They never disappoint with these Mario games. We grew up with them, and they're such a part of your childhood. They're just always willing to be more unique with their gameplay than any other console out there.
Snead: I think Alison nailed it there. It's the spirit of innovation that Nintendo has had for literally 130 years now. People can talk about how Nintendo's secret sauce is the characters; it's Mario. That's true. But look at the Switch. These are weird things that no one would have ever thought to make. So the secret sauce is the consoles, too. It's something that we explored in the show.
As a company, they've had ups and downs; we all know there have been systems that Nintendo's released that are just not great or didn't sell as well, like the GameCube and Wii U. There are some great games on those, but [Nintendo wasn't] at the top at that point. Whatever the spirit of innovation is, which obviously comes from the designers, I think that's the secret sauce. And that's what keeps people coming back.
Haislip: I was thinking of E3 -- I want to say was, it was 2007, 2008, maybe 2009. Xbox and PlayStation were both saying "HD! HD! We're going high-res! HD!" Nintendo said, "We do movement now!" They had the Wii, and then the following year, Xbox said, "We can do movement too!"
Snead: I remember that E3 too. I remember seeing Steven Spielberg there. I was 20 yards away. I never got close. But I said, "That's Steven Spielberg playing a Wii! That's what's happening right now."
I just noticed the little Mario under [Snead's] desk, and I love him just sitting there.
Snead: He traveled with me. I've retired him here to my office, but all throughout filming Playing With Power, I put him in my suitcase. When shooting a documentary, a lot of times, you never know. Alison and I have shot in different locations and different places. You have to embrace what's available, and so you try to dress up the background a little. That Mario would always go with me. I'd think, "Where could he go?"
Speaking of the documentary itself, how did Playing With Power come about, and what inspired you to make it now?
Snead: My studio, Media Juice, has been producing video game trailers, TV spots and advertising for almost 17 years now, so I've worked in and around the video game industry. After doing that for five or six years, I got bit with the filmmaking bug. I did Video Games: The Movie, which is when I met Alison and heard her story. Anybody who's seen that movie knows that it's very much a 30,000 foot view of video game history and culture -- kind of a celebration of gaming.
I've always loved Nintendo, like most gamers do. After Unlocked, another docuseries that Alison also was in (she's kind of my good luck charm), I thought there was more to say after Video Games: The Movie, but I didn't want to just go back and do more of that. I wanted to get specific. But if I'm going to get specific, what's the subject matter? What's the focus? It's not just that Nintendo was the obvious choice; they were the inevitable choice.
It all starts to whittle down to Nintendo. Like the first project, I was surprised while doing research that this didn't [already] exist. I thought, "How is this not a thing? How is there not a definitive, deep-dive documentary on Nintendo?" I think spring of 2017 is when the first germ of the idea started marinating. Sean Astin, who's my good buddy and ended up being the Executive Producer, and I talked about it too. All those conversations led to this being a thing now.
Nintendo's well known for holding its secrets quite close to the chest. What was it like getting a little peek behind the curtain?
Snead: The short answer is, "Really cool!" Talking to all the Nintendo veterans like Perrin Kaplan, Ron Judy, Howard Phillips and Gail Tilden -- I could go on and on -- was really cool. As a filmmaker, I've got my list of questions, and you don't know what people are going to answer or not answer. You might get what you want, you might not.
With some of the "dramatic" stuff -- like the infamous court case between Universal Studios and Nintendo where Universal said, "Hey, Donkey Kong, looks like King Kong, so you owe us a bunch of money," and Nintendo valiantly said, "No, we don't. That's ours, that's different," and they won -- when you ask people who worked at the company at the time or after, you don't know if they're going talk about it. In every case, everybody said, "Nothing to hide. That happened. We stood up to them, and we won." They're always standing behind their product, behind their games, behind their systems, so it was really cool.
Now, having said that, anyone who knows the games industry knows that Nintendo Co. Ltd., basically Nintendo Japan, doesn't do a lot of interviews. We requested to get Miyamoto and all those folks, and they've been aware of the project and supportive. I think, since the focus is directly on them, they're eager to watch it, but we had to embrace the Nintendo veterans and the archival stuff. Sean and I are still very proud, despite that limitation, of getting all the Nintendo veterans.
Speaking of the cool people you talked to, in addition to the Nintendo veterans, you interviewed people from across the industry, including major figures from competitors like Xbox's Phil Spencer and Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell. Was there anyone you were surprised to get on board, and did anything any of them say shock you?
Haislip: You were super surprised to get Alison Haislip!
Snead: Yeah, I was gonna say, "She's a diva. You never know what she's gonna say." (laughs) It's funny. Alison was one the first people I reached out to because we're friends, and she's been in my other projects. And I know Alison's a gamer. She was hired at G4 for being a Nintendo fan. Right, Alison?
Haislip: Well, for being a super nerd in general. But yeah, I had never hosted a day before in my life. I was just a super nerd. And they said, "You need to be on our network!" And I was like, "All right!" I had a Nintendo controller necklace that I happen to be wearing when I was bartending one night. A guy who worked in development at G4 saw it and said, "I think you need to be over here."
Snead: Alison was one of the first people I reached out to, then Cliff Blenszinski, because he's been in previous projects. But you mentioned, Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox. [With him] I just kind of shot the moon and said "I know, Phil. He's been in previous projects, and who doesn't like Nintendo?" We're not really in the era of the console wars anymore. Of course, there's competition for dollars, products and games, but everybody is what they are. Sony has their thing. Xbox has their ecosystem. And, of course, Nintendo is Nintendo. I reached out and I was really surprised. They said, "Yeah, he'd love to talk about it."
Pretty much every Nintendo veteran was a huge get, because those are stories that specifically haven't been told with a focus only on Nintendo. People like Howard Phillips and Gail Tilden -- some of those folks have been in other documentaries where Nintendo was a part of it, but not in one that's squarely focused on Nintendo. So every person that ever worked at Nintendo that we got was a big coup.
Pivoting back to the larger Nintendo conversation, we actually happen to be speaking on the fourth anniversary of the Nintendo Switch's launch. Obviously, that console has been a massive success, and a huge turnaround for Nintendo post-Wii U. So my question: were you guys among the lucky ones who were able to get in day one?
Haislip: I was NOT among the lucky ones!
Snead: Me neither.
Haislip: I remember when that craze happened. My friends were saying, "I've got one! I've got one!" And I said, "How? How did you do that?"
Snead: I didn't either. For me, the big temptation is to reach out to somebody you know at a company and say, "You think I can get one?"
Haislip: You think that you're super cool until you find out you really are not.
Snead: But they say, "Oh no, you can't get one. They really are sold out."
Do you have a standout Switch memory that you'd like to share?
Snead: The one that sticks for me out is when I was traveling with a friend of mine. We had a delay on the tarmac flying back from LA. I'd had the Switch for a year or so, and I had never done what the commercial showed, where you take [the Joy-Con] off, and you have one, and I have one. We pulled the little tray down, and we played Street Fighter for around half an hour. The time passed really fast. I thought, "Wow! This is amazing that we're doing this, and it's possible." And it came from Nintendo.
Haislip: I have a great Switch memory, but it's not actually about me and the Switch. I got to watch my friend's kid get a Switch for his birthday. He was eight at the time, and getting to watch this kid get as excited at opening a Switch as I was opening a Nintendo all those Christmases ago...it was like reliving your own experiences through a younger generation.
Do you have a favorite Nintendo series, and do you have a favorite you think has gone overlooked?
Haislip: I always go back to the original. The Super NES definitely has a place in my heart because of Mario Kart, but I always find myself going back to the original games like Dr. Mario. Old school, classic, they're-not-complicated kinds of games are the things that always attracted me the most.
Snead: Yeah, I'm similar. It's funny, we're having a conversation about Nintendo, and I was about to say my answer is boring because it's Mario. But that's not boring! I've loved all the Mario games on all of the systems. And Super Mario Odyssey, at the end of New Donk City, I teared up, because it's a tribute to Donkey Kong.
Another little Easter egg: when he jumps on the taxis, Nintendo actually did taxis. Gosh, the attention to the artistry, and the detail in their own history -- which is in all the Mario games. I've got Nintendo Switch Online, where you can have the NES and the Super NES. I spend more time playing both of those that I do any of my cartridges.
Haislip: The thing we always forget is that, after the NES generation, there were no more unbeatable games. There were games on the original NES that, unless you became incredibly motor skilled at your peak, you couldn't beat it any other way. There were no cheat codes. There was no playing it on easy mode. There was no saving. You died, you had to start the whole game over.
Adventure Island is always the one that sticks out in my head. I don't think I've ever gotten past that second level. I played that game constantly! After that, games like that didn't exist anymore, because, clearly, they were so frustrating. But I think there's something to this. You either got really good, or you never saw the end of the game.
Snead: That's true. That was that was Gunsmoke for me on the original NES. I think I may have gotten to the third level. But level four and beyond is just insanity. I don't know how anybody can beat it. I've never seen it. I'm sure it's on YouTube somewhere.
One of the best parts about Nintendo games is how they bring people together and also ruin friendships -- but in a very fun way! Do you have a go-to Nintendo game for when guests come over?
Haislip: Go back a generation or so, and it was Wii [Sports] Bowling. For sure.
Snead: Yeah, I wish I still had my Wii hooked up. We've got the Switch, and it's great, but it's a little more complicated to explain to parents or you know, like or to you take this or whatever and sync it up. The Wii was great for that. Just take it, and you're good to go.
[Super] Off Road on NES, we always argued about that. For me, Street Fighter II on Super Nintendo, there were no more intense rivalries and literally punches thrown between me and my siblings and cousins than while playing Street Fighter II. Bar none. [We'd say], "You cannot play as Blanca because all they're gonna do is electric the whole time. Can't get close."
I have one last question, and this might actually be the hardest one for Nintendo fans: Mario or Zelda?
Haislip: Mario. That's actually easy for me. The Mario games always stuck with me more. I love the Zelda games, but the Mario games were the ones I would play over and over and over again.
Snead: Yeah. I'm the same. I love a great Zelda game, but Mario all the way. Super Mario Bros. always holds a special place in my heart. Super Mario Sunshine I really enjoyed on the GameCube. It doesn't get a lot of love, but I've played a lot of that. But I think my top Mario game would probably be Super Mario Odyssey just because it pays tribute to all of them. Such a great game.
Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story is available to watch for free on Crackle.