History of Video Games - Part 9
War Drums
Catch Up on the Series
3 - Have You Played Atari Today?
4 - The Great Video Game Crash of 1983
6 - Now You’re Playing With Power
Tom Kalinske
Senator Margaret Chase Smith was a force to be reckoned with. The Republican powerhouse has gone down as one of the most famous Senators in United States history, serving Maine with conservative principles but always willing to buck the line, such as being among the first to call out Joseph McCarthy. When Congress called upon companies and executives to question how they marketed products to kids, she set her sights on the Flintstones vitamins. These vitamins became popular overnight and her eyes were set on one of its main developers, a man named Tom Kalinske.
Smith wagged her finger at Kalinske, outright saying he was selling drugs to kids. The unknown Kalinske didn’t flinch and retorted that he sold nutritional vitamins. He then pulled out a letter from a mother thanking him for finding a way for her child to take their vitamins. He then declared he had five hundred others and asked if she wanted to hear them. In a rare moment for the vocal Senator, she said no and accepted she had just lost that battle. What the Senator from Maine didn’t know is that she had just gone up against the man who would become a toy industry king and eventually the man who almost brought Nintendo to their knees.
“I pulled out a mailbag and I said, ‘I have 500 more letters. Can I read some more to you?’ She said, ‘That will be enough, Mr. Kalinske’ and she didn’t ask me another question” - Tom Kalinske recalling the hearing
At the time, Kalinske’s claim to fame was the Flinstones vitamins, but the hearing got the attention of another major brand, Mattel. They hired him, and he quickly started working on preschool toys. Then, company founder and Barbie creator Ruth Handler found herself at Kalinske’s cubicle and told him about the Barbie brand taking a hit saleswise. To her surprise, Kalinske confidently stated Barbie would be around even when they were both gone. Loving his attitude, she assigned him to the Barbie division.
The Toy King
Barbie had gone from a $100 million dollar brand to about $40 million. The march for women’s rights and the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s questioned a doll that put stereotypes on little girls. Kalinske came up with the solution when he asked Handler why she created Barbie. Her response was that she created Barbie so a girl could be anything they wanted to be. He took that monicker and ran with it. He would market Barbie as a girl that could be anything.
The first order of business, the entire Barbie brand, was put in pink packaging and branding. The multicolor design of the past was gone, and even Ken would be put in pink packaging. Kalinske did this to give a brand personality to the toy line. He then expanded the line with a Barbie made for toddlers and eventually the famous Barbie house. From there, the Barbie line started adding multiple career versions of the icon, spanning over two hundred. The line was marketed under the slogan “Hey Girl, with Barbie you can be anything you want to be.” The Barbie brand became an over $500 million dollar juggernaut, and Tom wasn’t done.
Kalinske’s next move would have him search for something like Barbie but aimed at boys. That came in the form of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe toy lineup. Mattel had become the company for kids to get their toys, whether it was girls with Barbie or boys with He-Man. These decisions led to him reaching all the way up to CEO, but loving the challenge, he left to join Universal Matchbox. Under his leadership, Universal Matchbox went from losing money to making over $300 million. Tom Kalinske had become the toy king. With some rest needed, he took a vacation to Hawaii. As he lay on the beach, he saw Sega President Hayao Nakayama approach him, telling him he was there specifically for him.
Blast Processing
The Sega Mega Drive was struggling in Japan, and its North American counterpart, the Sega Genesis, wasn’t faring better. Despite having a superior console, the underpowered NES was still the face of video games. The Italian plumber had become a household name overnight, with a poll showing kids recognizing him over Mickey Mouse. Nakayama believed Sega had a better system, and he wanted Tom to help sell it. Not one to back down from a challenge, Kalinske agreed to come on board and become the Sega CEO.
When taking over, Kalinske surveyed the land and quickly saw some of the problems Genesis was dealing with. For starters, he felt the system was too much at $189 (about $450 in 2024 dollars). He dropped the system's price to $149 (about $360 in 2024 dollars). The system’s focus was already on an older audience, but Kalinske also decided to go after young adults, focusing on making Sega the “cool” brand in middle and high schools. Part of this was done by making Sega adopt an edgy image, with the now-famous Sega scream leading the way and marketing the power of Genesis through the buzzword of “blast processing.”
The anti-Nintendo ads that were already playing were only ramped up and Kalinske went after one of Nintendo’s biggest retail partners - Walmart. The big box store had formed a relationship with Nintendo so tight that they prevented competitors from selling in their stores. Kalinske got billboards around Walmart begging for Genesis to be sold at the store, and with the rise of sales and some annoyance with the billboards, they relented, and the system started selling at America’s biggest retailer. This gave Sega a presence, but Kalinske had one more trick to take down the big N; he needed a mascot that would rival Mario.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Even before Kalinske joined Sega, the company knew it needed a face to compete against Nintendo. Mario had a meteoric rise and quickly became the Mickey Mouse of video games, an image the character still holds today. The company sought out concepts and ideas for a character after the release of Super Mario Bros. 3, looking to have a game ready for its new Mega Drive / Genesis console. Yuji Naka, a young up-and-coming developer at the company, had developed a demo with a rolling ball going through winding tubes, made from his development of a sprite able to move smoothly as everything else went fast. The demo was so impressive that Sega greenlit the concept and assigned Naoto Ohshima and Hirokazu Yasuhara to join Naka on the massive project. The codename was “Defeat Mario.”
Knowing their character had to be fast, the trio brainstormed several types of animals, including rabbits and kangaroos. They narrowed it down to armadillos and hedgehogs because they wanted their character to be able to roll into a ball. Naoto Ohshima pushed for a hedgehog character, and his idea won. He went to New York City and showed several designs to people to see which seemed to pop out the most, with his design of a hedgehog beating out a Thedore Roosevelt-inspired human. The hedgehog went through several changes, but it all came together. He had a dark blue color to match the Sega logo, his body was like Mickey Mouse, boots like Michael Jackson, and when he jumped, he spun. After being given the name Mr. Hedgehog, the team settled on a name that represented speed - Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog. The runner-up design of the Teddy Roosevelt character would be tweaked and given the name of Dr. Eggman in Japan and Dr. Robotnik in the West. This would be Sega’s answer to King Koopa.
The development was rough. The game received a lot of changes as the team experimented with several concepts. Making things worse, Yuji Naka, the lead programmer, was going through a rocky time with Sega of Japan. There were ideas such as Sonic having a rock band and a human girlfriend named after Madonna that were scrapped. The soundtrack was composed by Masato Nakamura, the member and songwriter of the Japanese group Dreams Come True. He was excited to work on a video game project and battled the fact he didn’t really know how to make music with a computer to create the iconic soundtrack. After long days and effort, Sonic the Hedgehog was ready to release.
When the game was released, Tom Kalinske decided to package the title in time for the 1991 holiday season. It got critical acclaim and Sonic proved to be a new star Sega could bank on. The faster gameplay and more “edgy” attitude of the character made him popular with a lot of American teenagers. Sega surprised Nintendo by essentially winning the 1991 holiday season. Kalinske had done it again; Sega was now a force Nintendo had to take seriously. But Nintendo wasn’t waiting to respond, they had just launched a console successor to the Famicom and NES that was about to shape its own legacy.
Now You’re Playing With Power - Super Power
Nintendo saw what was happening in the market. Competition was starting to appear, each with a console more capable than the last and far outpacing the Famicom / NES. Just as Steve Jobs would do for Apple a decade later, Nintendo President Yamauchi adopted the philosophy of replacing your own successful product before the competition does. Development of the next Nintendo console began around 1987.
First order of business, Nintendo secured a powerful 16-bit chip from Ricoh, based on the same microprocessor technology that had been on the Apple IIGS. This system would be a monster for its time, with a total color palette of a whopping 32,768 colors, 256 on screen at once, and 128 sprites on screen at once. It had tiling and simulated 3D effects, as well as scaling and rotating effects, thanks to what was called Mode 7 graphics. This enables pre-rendered 3D backgrounds as a possibility for games, with the 1994 release of Donkey Kong Country being the best example.
The sound chip was designed by Ken Kutagari of Sony, a company that had become popular for its music and electronics design, who went behind their back to do the deal and avoided being fired due to the trust he had with the then CEO (more on Kutagari and Sony in future parts of the series). This gave the system a superior sound compared to the more 80s synth sound the Genesis would become famous for. Put simply, Nintendo had built a beast of a machine for 16-bit gaming.
In November 1990, the Super Famicom was released in Japan with Super Mario World and F-Zero as its launch games. Super Mario World was everything people expected from Mario but turned up to eleven. The game had a massive graphical jump and let Shigeru Miyamoto add more gameplay mechanics he couldn’t do with the original NES. The game added a new sidekick, the green dinosaur Yoshi. A mountain of small side levels and secrets were added, making every experience different. The game’s soundtrack was also upgraded, with Koji Kondo again proving why he is the greatest in the game, delivering some of the most iconic music in video game history. F-Zero was a futuristic racing title that showed off the Mode 7 graphical effects of the system and got a cult following that persists to this day. Nintendo wasn’t behind anymore and had entered the 16-bit market.
The Japanese launch of the Super Famicom had been such a success that it created problems with roads blocked off from people looking for the new system in stores on launch day. The Japanese government asked for gaming companies to launch hardware on weekends in the future to avoid these problems again. Nintendo of America worked on their own Super Famicom, which was made to be blockier and more sharp edged, with the color scheme around grey and purple. The American version would be called the Super Nintendo and launched in August 1991.
Holiday 1991 was a battle between Sega and their newly packaged mascot going up against Nintendo’s new console, packaged with their well-known mascot. This was the first shot in a console war that would change the industry forever, forging rivalries, making consequential moments, delivering some of the greatest games of all time, and helping ironically bring in a new challenger that would come to dominate the console space.
SOURCES
Wikipedia (Tom Kalinske, Sega Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Nintendo, Super Mario World)
This is Tucson (Article - Meet the Tucson man who saved Barbie)