That last one if for Tyler. It was the Japanese version of the Nintendo 8-bit NES that rescued the video game industry back from the jaws of death. I saw it in a store window, though it is only for decoration, and not for sale.

I’ve been reading about the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii on both Slashdot and in The Economist, and it is interesting the different ways in which they cover the video game industry. They quoted a Nintendo exec as recognizing that the video game market, in Japan at least, is shrinking and that Japan, unlike Sony, is trying to engage non hard core gamers, rather that trying to fight to regain supremacy from Sony or Micro$oft of a shrinking market. Why I think this is historically interesting, is because Nintendo flourished in a market considered dead in the early 1980s, largely due to the way the marketed the NES. That and the fact that the hard core gamers have turned on Sony recently means that Nintendo has an opportunity.