I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform (Platform Studies)

Description

In the 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System videogame Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, a character famously declared: I AM ERROR. Puzzled players assumed that this cryptic mesage was a programming flaw, but it was actually a clumsy Japanese-English translation of "My Name is Error," a benign programmer s joke. In I AM ERROR Nathan Altice explores the complex material histories of the Nintendo Entertainment System (and its Japanese predecessor, the Family Computer), offering a detailed analysis of its programming and engineering, its expressive affordances, and its cultural significance.

Nintendo games were rife with mistranslated texts, but, as Altice explains, Nintendo s translation challenges were not just linguistic but also material, with consequences beyond simple misinterpretation. Emphasizing the technical and material evolution of Nintendo s first cartridge-based platform, Altice describes the development of the Family Computer (or Famicom) and its computational architecture; the "translation" problems faced while adapting the Famicom for the U.S. videogame market as the redesigned Entertainment System; Nintendo s breakthrough console title Super Mario Bros. and its remarkable software innovations; the introduction of Nintendo s short-lived proprietary disk format and the design repercussions on The Legend of Zelda; Nintendo s efforts to extend their console s lifespan through cartridge augmentations; the Famicom s Audio Processing Unit (APU) and its importance for the chiptunes genre; and the emergence of software emulators and the new kinds of play they enabled.