Game On! Quotes

“There are a lot of stories about where the name Donkey Kong actually came from—everything from a bad fax that made the Nintendo of America team misread Monkey Kong, thinking the M was a D, to its being named after King Kong. But in the end, Miyamoto said it was simpler than that. They wanted an English name because they knew the game would be a hit in America. The word donkey was used to imply something silly, or dumb, and in Japan, kong is a slang word used for an ape. Basically, Miyamoto and crew were naming the game Silly Ape, but they felt Donkey Kong was, well, just more fun to say.”
― Dustin Hansen, Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More

“Space Invaders was the first shooter game—Halo’s great-great-great-grandfather.”
― Dustin Hansen, Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More

“Space Invaders went on to set record after record after it invaded the planet. More than four hundred thousand arcade cabinets were made, and the game pulled in more than 3.8 billion dollars by 1982. If you factor in inflation, that would be THIRTEEN BILLION DOLLARS today, making it one of the highest-grossing video games of all time. Yeah. Billion. With a B!”
― Dustin Hansen, Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More

“Being a kid in 1978 was pretty amazing. Not only were arcades on the rise, but Garfield, that lovable lasagna-eating orange cat, was in just about every newspaper across the country, Superman was in theaters for the first time, the Bee Gees were topping the music charts with songs from Saturday Night Fever, and The Incredible Hulk was the number one TV show in America. Like I said, it was a good time to be a kid.”
― Dustin Hansen, Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More

“Also, the NFL asked EA to take out a fan favorite a few years back by having them remove the ambulance. Starting in 1992, when a player was injured, an ambulance would zoom on field, pushing (running over) healthy players out of the way to help the injured. It was a lighthearted feature, and while it was a fan favorite, it wasn’t the most sensitive approach to an injury. The ambulance last appeared in 2001.”
― Dustin Hansen, Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More