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VGHH Episode 126: A Fireside Chat with Gail Tilden
🕑 Added 2025-03-04 11:00:14 +0000 UTCGail Tilden, Nintendo of America’s marketing mastermind, takes Frank Cifaldi on a trip down memory lane in a panel at the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, reminiscing about everything from the early days of NES branding to the explosive rise of Pokémon. She shares behind-the-scenes stories about marketing mishaps (hello, Zelda Rap), strategic pivots like the iconic "Nintendo Seal of Quality," and how a quirky Game Boy RPG took over the world. From robotic flops to Pikachu-branded cars parachuting into Topeka, her journey is a testament to the creativity and unpredictability that helped shape the gaming world.
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript edited by Jeremy Seith
Frank Cifaldi 00:09
Hello and welcome to the Video Game History Hour presented by the Video Game History Foundation. I'm your host, Frank. Hi. Today, I'm proud to present a fireside chat with my friend Gail Tilden. Gail worked at Nintendo of America and was essentially their first marketing person. She worked on the Game and Watch and the NES and, oh, I don't know, other things, like Pokémon. She was, I don't know, the editor-in-chief of Nintendo Power magazine back in its prime. This conversation was actually recorded at the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo back in August 12 of 2024. I want to thank the show organizers for inviting both me and Gail to attend and have this conversation and allowing us to present it to you. So let's roll the tape.
Frank Cifaldi 00:54
Hi Gail.
Gail Tilden 00:55
Hi Frank.
Frank Cifaldi 00:57
Hi everyone. How are we doing? Welcome to the planetarium. I am planet Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation, and tonight I'm orbiting around the star that-- I just came up with that! That's pretty good! Tonight we are all orbiting around very special guest, Gail Tilden, formerly of Nintendo of America. So give both of us a round of applause. Thank you.
Gail Tilden 01:27
Yay!
Frank Cifaldi 01:27
So Gail being Gail, has actually provided some slides for us, which is great. And you know, let's just start at the start, Gail, so you joined Nintendo in 1983. Nintendo of America, let's specify. What was Nintendo of America in 1983?
Gail Tilden 01:51
Yeah, when I started I was the advertising coordinator, and we were primarily marketing arcade games and Game and Watch and then the tabletop game that looked like a little mini arcade game. Those were the three types of product lines that we were working on at the time, and the person who hired me had been my boss previously at Britannia Sportswear, another Seattle-based company at the time. So we were living in Britannia, and then we were living in Donkey Kong world, and it was a very small company at the time. The smallest head count we had was about 35 people. And I thought, Oh, this is going to be exciting. It's a Japanese company. It's going to be so high-tech. We had, like, some kind of very small Apple computer in a closet that could do the invoicing. That was about it. So it was not high-tech, but it was really fun. And people whose names you would recognize, of course, people like Howard Phillips worked in the warehouse. He always talks about riding a skateboard back and forth, converting Radar Scopes to something and Sky Skippers. I don't know what they turned into. I can't remember anyway. So when I started really, very shortly thereafter, we were working on Mario's Cement Factory, and that's the first time, first Nintendo commercial. And I wish I could show you. But we actually did a commercial. We had an ad agency in New York that-- oh, I assume everyone knows that Nintendo is in Redmond, Washington, near Seattle. So it was my first trip to New York, which was super exciting, because now I love New York City, and my daughter's here, and she lives here and it was my very first trip, and that ad agency was Densu. So I think Nintendo of America thought they had to use the same ad agency that Nintendo of Japan was using, and it was this small company in Redmond selling arcade games, you know, with print advertising. And we were using this extremely expensive New York ad agency that, you know, was taking me to the Russian Tea Room and all of these flowers in my room. Anyway, they soon got fired and--
Frank Cifaldi 04:24
Related?
Gail Tilden 04:25
Yeah, and we got-- no, we got a grip on the idea that we really weren't ready. We weren't quite ready for that prime time yet.
Frank Cifaldi 04:35
That is such a diplomatic way of saying we didn't have enough money.
Gail Tilden 04:38
Yeah, more or less. Anyway, so in the arcade world, which Donkey Kong 3 was the game that was being offered at the time that I started. And when you-- there's so many arcade games here, and I'll tell everybody my favorite game from when I was like, just out of college, was Tapper, not Root Beer Tapper, regular Tapper. So I gave it a try. It wasn't that good, but I need to try again tomorrow. So when you're marketing an arcade game, distributors sell the games to people called operators. Operators wore big key chains because they had to be able to open the games and collect all the quarters, and then they split the take with the restaurant or arcade or grocery store or wherever it was. So that was the business that we were in. We would do trade shows like in Chicago, where there would, you know, all the distributors, and then the operators would come by and check out the games. And of course, there were games that were way sexier than the ones that Nintendo had. You know, Data East is a company that used to have a lot of fancy, like, driving games. And you're seeing games here that are like, sit down or ride on type of games. So at the time, after we had games like Donkey Kong 3, one of the products that I put a picture up there that we had was Punch-Out!!. And the innovation was that it had the two screens, one above, with the scoring, and one below, you know, with the action. And we ended up getting Larry Holmes, who was the world champ at the time, to come to our trade show and kind of endorse the game by being there. So Mike Tyson was not the first person to box or to endorse Punch-Out!!. It was actually Larry Holmes. And you can see in that picture, the staff of Nintendo that was there working at the trade show.
Frank Cifaldi 06:41
Was that, I mean, most of the staff?
Gail Tilden 06:45
It does look like most of the staff, about half of the staff, I think.
Frank Cifaldi 06:48
So was your job in the marketing department? Or, like, was it a marketing team, or even at the time, were you wearing more than one hat?
Gail Tilden 07:00
Well, so the marketing team was three people, and the marketing team reported to the vice president of sales and marketing, and Ron Judy, and you know, so when we worked on a trade show, my job would be anything from creating brochures or flyers and the people that designed or redid the things like the side sticker after would be produced in Japan was in another department, and that art department would help make sure I had the right assets to create things like brochures. There were a couple of gaming publications actually that focused on arcade games, and so I would try to get press from them about the product. And, you know, it was a-- since I was working on Game and Watch and tabletop at the same time, you know, there was plenty to do, but it was pretty low tech type of stuff, and very hands-on.
Frank Cifaldi 08:06
So in addition to handheld products and coin-op products, Nintendo in Japan around this time, had a home system that we should probably talk about. I don't know if anyone knows this one.
Gail Tilden 08:19
Yeah, there's not a picture of the Famicom there, but the Famicom, you know, had come out in Japan, but right when the market was crashing in the US. So in 1983 would have been-- '82, whatever-- a terrible time to introduce a video game system. There's stories like about the game E.T., where they over-manufactured so much that it, you know, ended up filling up landfills.
Frank Cifaldi 08:46
Was that the story even in the 80s? Or did that evolve like, was that the rumor you had heard back then? Or is that, like, something that was a product of the Internet era?
Gail Tilden 08:58
You know, I have a hard time remembering the exact answer, but it seems like it's always been with us, yeah, although it was great when the payoff was that they found the actual hole with all the games in it that you know when you think something's just folklore, and then they're really there, so.
Frank Cifaldi 09:16
So, you have the Famicom coming from HQ in Japan, right? And are you being asked to market this for Americans?
Gail Tilden 09:28
So initially, you know, of course, we thought that there was not an opportunity right at that time. And although we all got to get one for Christmas, and we got to have it modified to work on a US TV and pick out a game. And that was really --
Frank Cifaldi 09:44
They gave you one game?
Gail Tilden 09:46
Yeah, you could pick one game. I think we just didn't have enough manpower to convert things to work with the English version. But when we were first evaluating the Famicom and how it would sell in the US, there were a couple of experts that were hired and had been involved, like analysts in the industry, that consulted a lot with the executives, and we did do research. And again, some of these stories, I'm sorry if you've heard them before, but we did this research with kids, and you know, they seemed like they were kind of paying attention, kind of having fun, goofing off, answering the questions. And then after the session, some of the executives came to one of our sessions in New Jersey, and they said, Okay, so to the moderator, what do you think? And they said, I've never seen something go so poorly. I would never introduce this product.
Frank Cifaldi 10:48
You mean you feed kids pizza and video games, and it seems like they have a good time? But--
Gail Tilden 10:52
Yeah, we thought they were having a good time. And he was sure no one was going to buy it. But it took some time, and the AVS that you can see the picture here-- so what became obvious at the beginning was we could not just launch another system similar to what, let's say Atari or Intellivision or someone else had launched before, we had to somehow have a point of difference. So the first direction, and the one that we showed at CES was this Advanced Video System. And it had, of course, it looks kind of sleek and more electronic, but it also featured components that are a little bit of a combination of the Famicom evolution with the Disk System and with what would have been electronic component. And I put a picture there showing a wireless controller that looks a little like a Wiimote. And it is interesting that that was a direction that we were trying to represent when we were showing all of the people at a trade show. These are all the industry people like people at retail stores that might carry the product. And at the time, there wasn't really-- there were the toy stores, like Toys 'R Us. There was not really a Walmart or Target type of presence. There was Sears, and then there were electronic stores. So we were trying to convince these people that they would get back into the video game business and carry this product. But Japan, soon after, said that that is they didn't want to go that direction, and they came back with what you know as the NES and what we knew as the lunch box, so it wasn't as cool or sleek, but we ended up going that direction. You can see at one point it was a little-- we came with the same feel, but then we were showing off the robot, and at one point we were showing off a knitting machine. So anything to set a point of difference, nothing like a knitting machine attached to your video game.
Frank Cifaldi 13:03
So it wasn't like you went to CES and reception was cold to the AVS. It was a decision that came from Japan that they didn't like the creative direction.
Gail Tilden 13:13
It was a design decision, and I think it was also a technical decision. There were some things about it that wouldn't have worked in mass manufacturing, and also just things like any kind of lag or delay of a wireless controller at that time.
Frank Cifaldi 13:33
It would have been really bad.
Gail Tilden 13:35
It would not actually have worked. So that would have been a good reason not to do it that way.
Frank Cifaldi 13:41
Acclaim did do it that way during then. There was a third party from Acclaim wireless controller, and just famously, doesn't work that well.
Gail Tilden 13:49
Well, even things like R.O.B. the Robot didn't work that well.
Gail Tilden 13:55
Poor R.O.B.
Gail Tilden 13:56
I know, much malign.
Frank Cifaldi 13:58
Are these your sell sheets?
Gail Tilden 14:00
Yes. Well, again, I was just talking to someone earlier in the merch hall. But, you know, I am not an artist, so when I say that I did something I might have worked giving direction to an ad agency who would present ideas to us and look and feel and make modifications, get executive approval, that kind of thing that an ad manager would do. But I don't want to misrepresent that somehow I made these brochures.
Frank Cifaldi 14:29
So this is not your, like snooty, high-falutin copy.
Gail Tilden 14:34
No, but it's my reviewed, approved and edited copy.
Frank Cifaldi 14:38
So when I look at Nintendo advertising from this era, like print advertising, like I see Apple Computer. Is that something that you were maybe tapping into?
Gail Tilden 14:50
I think everyone might have been. Apple had a really famous Super Bowl commercial called 1984 in 1984 and it would have had that look and feel. So it was kind of a trendy design look, sure.
Frank Cifaldi 15:04
So none of this comes to fruition, of course. So was anyone here last year for the knitting panel? By the way? Yeah, my people. So of course, the system that we all know is the NES, and this launched in 1985, little bit of a different direction. I bet you've never thought of that system as a lunch box before now, right? Like looking at it?
Gail Tilden 15:30
Maybe somewhere someone either licensed or created a lunch box that looked like that.
Frank Cifaldi 15:34
So let's talk about the branding of the NES, right? Because it's, it's actually like, very different than you know what you'd see. I mean, these are trade ads, sure, but like, this is the product that consumers would have seen. And there's sort of a black background, a starry background, right? There's very, like, sort of accurate, like, pixel, graphic imagery. And this was, I mean, was this your domain like to oversee, like, the sort of branding of this stuff?
Gail Tilden 16:04
Yes, again, We talked about--
Frank Cifaldi 16:07
I know you drew every pixel on the box.
Gail Tilden 16:09
Right. I took every photo. You know, of course, yes, it was my job to make sure that the ad agency had all the direction and strategy and to work on getting something that we thought fit the point of differentiation that we were trying to make with really putting R.O.B. forward. And as an aside, R.O.B., it was very difficult to come up with a name for the robot. I don't remember all about Robotic Operating Buddy, I think was a suggestion of the agency. But we had, you know, so many. O.T.T.O. was one because O-T-T-O looked like his eyes with the little marks in the forehead.
Frank Cifaldi 16:53
That's cute.
Gail Tilden 16:56
But, yeah, that was a little bit of a challenge. And naming also-- localization wasn't what it is today, so just making sure all the games had an English-sounding name.
Gail Tilden 17:13
Like Clu Clu Land. Clu Clu Land is one of my favorites. But also I like of those first 17 games, I really like Ice Climbers. And I know that he's made another appearance, but the polar bear with the sunglasses and the pink shorts, that's a really good one.
Frank Cifaldi 17:20
Like Clu Clu Land.
Frank Cifaldi 17:29
That's your guy.
Gail Tilden 17:29
That's my guy.
Frank Cifaldi 17:33
Was R.O.B. something that you believed in, meaning Nintendo, not you specifically, necessarily, although feel free to answer that way as well. But is this like, did you think you had a hot product with this robot, or was it, you know, or is this the story of it being a sort of Trojan horse to get video games back in homes? Is there any accuracy to that?
Gail Tilden 17:55
I think initially that the idea that robots are cool, we did all believe that and that it would be attracting attention to use a robot. I don't even think when we first started using the robot and in terms of having imagery of it or samples of it, I don't think that we knew how lame it was in terms of gameplay. And so, you know, was-- of course, it's lame, but it wasn't that we thought, Oh, we're just fooling everyone and we're going to stick this in here and make them pay for it. I think, you know, truly thinking people will see the point of difference. It didn't take long before we didn't include the robot as the only pack-in option. So when we launched in New York in the fall of '85 it was this picture that you see, which is a deluxe, what we end up calling a Deluxe Set. But within four to six months, our next test market was LA and then we had something that was like a base set with Mario. There were a few derivatives, one had the Zapper in it, but we did not stick with this for long, with the idea that you were forced to buy both the robot and the Zapper.
Frank Cifaldi 19:14
Can you walk us through the aesthetics of what we would kind of call the black box era of these games.
Gail Tilden 19:22
Yes, so the artwork on the software is something that people pick up on as really a true NES retro style, and the point was to not oversell. So the first generations had used what you might use traditionally on packaging with really nice illustration. And you know, if it was a tennis game, it could show a photo of a tennis player, etc. And so we thought that that had contributed to the downfall, the fact that what you were sold was not what was inside the package. And in a little bit of an exaggeration, but saying, essentially all the games looked like Pong, but really had different packaging. And so we came up with this idea of using something that gave you the impression of something computerized or digitized, but didn't oversell the graphics. But there's a lot of other elements on this package that were important. So one is that you can see on the lower left side is the symbol of what category of gaming was there. So we had, like, I think maybe five categories for people to choose from, or again to feel there was a lot of variety. Because remember when the NES came out, this library that we offered was the only library. There were no licensed games or games developed by someone else, even if it had been in Japan, there was no localized version for the US. So we had a couple of educational games. One was Donkey Kong Jr. Math.
Frank Cifaldi 21:08
I was expecting at least one woo for that.
Gail Tilden 21:12
And it didn't sell very well. What a surprise. And so, you know, things like that really helped steer things that happen in the future. So it showed variety, and that it wasn't just a particular type of video game, but also, you know, as things progressed, we just didn't continue down that path. I think one that was interesting that we didn't continue was Excite Bike was kind of a version, I think, of maybe a disc game. It had the ability to change the track around, and we didn't keep doing that. I think it was the programmable series. The programmable series. We didn't keep offering that type of game. And from a macro sense, I know that Nintendo's developers, someone, let's say, like Mr. Miyamoto, they felt that you wanted to offer the best play experience and that it had to be professionally designed and tuned would deliver a better experience than the consumer doing it themselves. But that was another type of game category that we started with that showed variety, but that didn't actually get continued.
Frank Cifaldi 22:33
You know, I have to think that at this time, you know, again, like the video games as a product category is basically dead right? And the idea of reintroducing them, I can imagine that you don't really know what the audience might be this time. You know, it might be a new audience, like, I made that point last year, in fact, with the knitting machine, which we showed here, is like, for all you knew, you know, like, if you brought games back, like, the audience might have changed, and there might be-- you're smirking at the knitting machine.
Gail Tilden 23:04
I would say we knew the knitting machine was not going to be the target audience. It's at least, let's just say the US people certainly knew.
Frank Cifaldi 23:12
Alright, fine! Like, screw the knitting machine. But like, yeah, for all you knew, like, maybe people wanted to make things. Maybe people wanted to learn things, right? No? I really thought I had something here!
Gail Tilden 23:25
Somewhat, you know. So we really showed in the original TV commercial was a whole family. It was two boys and parents, and they were all playing. So one of the things was to present it as a product that would be of value to the whole family, and that the thing is that we really had to make sure that the parents who are the gatekeeper and the people who are going to spend $149 on this that they felt that they would get their money's worth and that it wouldn't just end up in the closet. So a lot of the things that we did were to make sure that the parents, that the adult would feel that they got their money's worth on behalf of the child or the player. I think that thinking of people like prior to them having their own children, so that kind of older than high school, younger than married with children, that wasn't really the audience for this type of home video game system. So we really were worried about families and children. It wasn't until the later systems, where they went head to head against Nintendo really going after that a little bit older male audience with heavy sports action or games that had like Mortal Kombat that had violence. It wasn't until later that that would come up as a key target, but not when we launched.
Frank Cifaldi 24:56
Let's talk about that seal. What are we looking at?
Gail Tilden 24:58
Yeah, my boss, whose name was Ron Judy, he said one day, You know, how can we do something that will be, like, the Good Housekeeping seal of approval?
Frank Cifaldi 25:10
Oh, it does look like that!
Gail Tilden 25:11
So that's really literally where it comes from. And in every box, it also had a card that went even further in detailing out what types of quality it would have. It said something about not just in workmanship, but in anyway, something about the way that it worked, or the fact that we would not be having video games that were X-rated. I'm not sure how it was--
Frank Cifaldi 25:43
Probably not very explicitly.
Gail Tilden 25:46
So yeah, but it appeared on everything. It got simplified. I think I reread in getting ready for this talk, in 1987 I think. And it's just a few words now, it just says, like, Nintendo Seal of Quality, but it's on all the product and it's on licensed products. So people who make a t-shirt or a figurine or anything, their packaging also has to carry that seal, and so people do, I'm assuming you do, recognize that it's on everything that is officially authorized to be either from Nintendo or work with their systems.
Frank Cifaldi 26:24
So is this coming from a place of trying to prevent the mistakes of the past with the video game industry?
Gail Tilden 26:33
Again, it's all about this consumer confidence. Not only did we want the marketing to give them confidence, but then, when they bought the product, we were very concerned that everyone felt good about the value, so that a lot of the effort, everything from the packaging look, you know, and especially if you, if you talk about R.O.B. not being the highest level of gameplay, most everything that we were doing was focused on consumer satisfaction.
Frank Cifaldi 27:06
Got it. So, time progresses. Nintendo progresses. Tell us what we're seeing on the screen here.
Gail Tilden 27:13
Yeah, I guess I just wanted to show how things went from being strictly the digital packaging to moving forward with some things that were a little bit different from a marketing perspective. I think that Zelda is an example of a game. In fact, the first couple Zeldas being a new style of game for the US audience, weren't that successful in terms of quantity sold and--
Frank Cifaldi 27:45
At first.
Gail Tilden 27:48
In their time.
Frank Cifaldi 27:49
Okay.
Gail Tilden 27:50
In their time, not meaning reissues of them now. And you know, although Nintendo people, you know, really like the games, and I'm sure they did a little bit better in Japan, although I believe that Zelda one was on the Disk System.
Frank Cifaldi 28:06
They both were.
Gail Tilden 28:07
So we marketed it in a different way, with the gold package and the gold cartridge. And, you know, really tried to give this kind of royalty kingdom type of look. And so it was an expensive endeavor. And, of course, none of the parts or pieces could have been swapped or used in any other manner. And with the hole in the box fitting with the gold, seeing the gold inside, it was, you know, it was a major endeavor. We did, I wish we did have this TV-- we did a TV commercial that's kind of crazy. So if you get a chance to look at it, it's the first Zelda commercial, and it's a crazy comedian in a padded cell.
Frank Cifaldi 28:57
Oh, is it the screaming guy?
Gail Tilden 28:58
He's screaming. He says, Ahh, peahats! And so at the time, since I was still working in the advertising department, I think at that time, maybe-- again, we were once again, only with three or four people. And when the agency pitched that there would be a stand-up comedian doing something about all the fun things in this game we all said yes. So then I go to this shoot in Los Angeles, and it's this crazy guy in a padded cell, and I'm like, This, I can't go through this, because this is not what we agreed to. This is not what we were expecting. We thought a guy standing at a mic in a spotlight. And so we called the agency, we called back and to the executives, and they said to go ahead, maybe because we were there already, but very quickly after that, we did another Zelda commercial, so you'll have to look at the two knowing in that order and what happened, and that one is called, is called Zelda Rap, and I really don't think that probably neither of them is very appealing.
Frank Cifaldi 30:11
I was going to say, that that one much better represents the tone of the Legend of Zelda than the crazy guy.
Gail Tilden 30:17
[singing] The Legend of Zelda is really rad--
Frank Cifaldi 30:20
Go on.
Gail Tilden 30:23
[singing] Tektites, peahats--
Gail Tilden 30:25
Anyway. So, yeah, I don't think that that was any more helpful. Then came Punch-Out!! with Mike Tyson, and the person who actually said that we should get Mike Tyson for an endorsement was Mr. Yamauchi, the head of Nintendo, whose family founded Nintendo in Japan. Like he sent some type of fax or some phone call to our president, and then they were walking around like at CES, Do you know who Mike Tyson is? Do you know Mike? And everyone's like, No, we don't know who Mike Tyson is. And anyway, he was certainly up and coming in the boxing scene. And so we got the endorsement, and I went to the shoot, and he was really, you know, screwing around. So this picture that you see, the guy in the bow tie that's doing being the ref, he actually worked for the ad agency. He wanted to do the role because he wanted to be on the set with Tyson. And so the person who was our art director, his name was Lou, Tyson's screwing around and trying to impress people on this and he punched him, and he, like, knocked the wind out of the art director to be funny, which wasn't very funny. Anyway, the next day, we have to do the TV shoot, and he shows up late. And, you know, the endorsement was really expensive, like more than six figures in the multiple six figures. So anyway, then he sees that I'm standing there, and he's like, oh, okay, you know. And again, that's a fun commercial. Really good at the end. He's like, laughing, but it really this commercial starts in the direction of using the term in a big way of Now you're playing with power. The whole thing repeats that line. So if anyone, which we'll get to soon, but if anyone wondered why we call it Nintendo Power, maybe you don't wonder because it's just part of your lexicon, but that phrase, Now you're playing with power, put that word and the word Nintendo together.
Frank Cifaldi 32:39
Well, on that note, let's talk about your, I mean, basically your sort of consumer relations, maybe, like, in terms of talking directly to your players. I'm just gonna shut up. What are we looking at?
Gail Tilden 32:52
Yeah, so from the beginning, we had something, I don't know, we called a bingo card or something in the box where you filled out a warranty card, which, of course, we didn't get very many but we paid a lot of attention to questions like, Would you recommend this product to a friend? And later we decided we evolved it into something where we promised a free newsletter if you would give us your name and address, which was extremely successful. But part of that, although, of course, we wanted to collect the data and information, was it allowed us to talk directly back to the player, and that's where Howard Phillips, who we had gotten involved with, helping with marketing, with his bow tie and saddle shoes, he was a perfect person to represent being a gamer, because, in fact, he was a gamer, and so we gave him the title of Fun Club President, which is like an honorarium. There was no fun club president. There's just Howard, but he always--
Frank Cifaldi 34:03
You just shattered so many illusions.
Gail Tilden 34:05
I'm sorry, yeah, but he was always helpful with anything that was gaming information, and at the time, providing information that is just selling the product isn't helping make sure that the person is satisfied with the product and so that they're going to be ready to buy their next title. So the Fun Club News went a little bit toward that direction, but really not very far. It was pretty light, but it could also inform you about things like customer service or game counseling. And these things were set up and the mission statement of Nintendo Power even-- well when we get there, but all these things had a mission statement of making sure that we ensure the longevity of the category. Like we really thought that it would ultimately could hit the wall, and we would not be sitting here today. So we really were working toward longevity. And one of the things that was created to help that was The Official Nintendo Player's Guide. I was in marketing and advertising, but in fact, I didn't work on that book. I maybe proofread it, but that was not actually my project, but it was a very important step between the newsletter and what became Nintendo Power. So sorry, I keep going, if you want to--
Frank Cifaldi 35:36
No, no.
Gail Tilden 35:38
So the Fun Club News ended up we were at about 600,000 subscribers at the Mike Tyson issue, and that was eating up a ton of marketing budget to print and mail out all those newsletters. And as the NES was heating up and we were selling more and more, we were getting more and more subscribers, and we had some database of names and addresses from earlier so Mr. Arakawa decided that he wanted to do a subscription-based magazine and they they did have these magazines in Japan, and that they would provide more information to allow people to finish the game. And of course, we didn't reveal the final scene generally, but it would allow you to get further. It would allow you to pick out games better, to make sure that they were games that you were going to like. And so Nintendo Power was born, and in order to get people to subscribe, we gave away the first issue for free. So by the time we had done a couple mailings, I think that it was 3.3 million, and we converted 1.3 million people to paid subscribers, which was--
Frank Cifaldi 36:56
That sounds insane.
Gail Tilden 36:57
It was insane. It was amazing. And, yeah, and we had a co-publisher in Japan, and that's-- what happened is that I was working in marketing and advertising, and I left to have a baby, and I didn't leave the company. I'm going on maternity leave, and they called me back in after a few weeks and said, We want you to come in and meet with these Japanese publishers, because we want you to start this magazine. So I brought my, like, four-week-old baby to the office and gave it to people who didn't even have a baby. They're just like, What do you want us to do? I don't know. I gotta go to a meeting. So we met with a couple people, and our co-publisher, Tokuma Shoten, had relationships with lots of magazines, and we used for quite a while, we used Japan to actually, they made all the maps and could take screenshots. They had developed certain types of technology that no one had in the US. And so we would fly back and forth to Japan, and sometimes DHL packages would bring the proofs. And yeah, it was a very-- at the time, since there's nothing that we then came to know as desktop publishing, there was no such thing. So everything was being done typeset by hand, all the little pictures of windows, all the maps are being pasted together. And we really did the cover and some of the advertising. We didn't have paid ads, but in the front, maybe we would use a game counselor promotion, something about the quality seal that type of thing. And so we started with producing it every other month. Then we moved to doing a full strategy guide on big games on the month that we were not doing an issue. And then ultimately moved to doing the magazine every month.
Frank Cifaldi 39:05
It was not that great for me as a subscriber to get a new issue and it's like, the only coverage is a game I don't have. It's like, Oh, thanks.
Gail Tilden 39:15
Oh, when you would get the players guide that was disappointing?
Frank Cifaldi 39:18
It was!
Gail Tilden 39:20
Why didn't you buy Super Mario 3? Geez.
Frank Cifaldi 39:23
Well, I bought Super Mario 3. We all bought Super Mario 3. But I didn't buy whatever this thing is.
Gail Tilden 39:27
Well, we wanted you to buy Final Fantasy and so that, actually--
Frank Cifaldi 39:32
I don't know what that is. What kind of game is that? I've never seen anything like this.
Gail Tilden 39:36
Exactly. So in the missions of Nintendo Power, Mr. Arakawa, he had a lot of belief that kids are kids anywhere, and that if a game is good, that the genre was less important. And the two hottest selling franchises in Japan were Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, and we were missing out. We weren't selling those games, and we wouldn't be selling the future versions unless we could figure out a way to interest players. So although they did a campaign to sell Dragon Quest there was, it is correct when you read about this, that there was a large amount of inventory. So he came up with the idea that we would give it away with a subscription to Nintendo Power and it came with a players, guide or strategy guide, and that that way, that would get it in more people's hands, they would have the information now in order to learn how to play, and it would help us move the RPG category forward. And I'm not sure if you all, I know many people got the free game, I'm not sure if you played it or if it made you an RPG fan, but a year later, when all those people who subscribed to get a free game were expiring, it was a very major subscription challenge.
Gail Tilden 41:12
Should've given them another free game. Just keep giving them free games.
Gail Tilden 41:15
Okay, I'll tell you what I pitched, another free game, and the game that I pitched was, working with Howard Phillips, we named what happened at the end of the Mario arcade game when you start again, the Lost Levels, the more difficult part. And so I gave a presentation, and we want to give this away, free, just the Lost Levels, which I was told no, in like, a very big way. And in fact, then they used that name and did introduce the Lost Levels later in Mario All-Stars, I think, anyway, trivia. So after the Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior offer we did work with Squaresoft to try to get Final Fantasy introduced. And not only did we do this strategy guide, but in Nintendo Power we had to do coverage like every month for three or four months. And one of the best things about my job in publications and with Nintendo Power was that we really had almost complete autonomy. There was not pressure of what game was going to be on the cover. It was based on the game that had been rated the highest by the game analysts, including Howard, and when Final Fantasy was coming out, someone at Square came up to me, like, at CES, I suppose, and said, Mr. Arakawa says you're gonna put Final Fantasy on the cover. I'm like, I decide what I'm gonna put on the cover, you know?
Frank Cifaldi 43:02
Oh, did he?
Gail Tilden 43:04
But, in fact, Final Fantasy, not only that, we had to continue to push the game many months. So we ran contests where you could, you know, win prizes, T shirts, a whole bunch of things. And in the end, what people now call LARPing, we had a thing where you won a trip to go to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands to experience a LARPing vacation. So Scott Pelland from Nintendo Power, he went in advance and set everything up with, like, restaurants and other things so that it would be a complete experience. Then when they went back with the kid, who somehow the family let, like, the 20 year old brother, take the three 12 year olds to Tortola, then another one of our writers, Dan Oswen, had just gotten married, and so his wife went, and she was laying in a forest. I'm not sure what character lays in the forest in Final Fantasy and they did all the things that-- kinda crazy.
Frank Cifaldi 44:11
Do you think the kids knew?
Gail Tilden 44:11
You know, things like that were super over the top, crazy things like that, or Players Poll contests, since we didn't accept ads, people would give us really exciting things in order to get more coverage in Nintendo Power.
Gail Tilden 44:29
Alright, you pushed it as hard as you could. How were sales for Final Fantasy?
Gail Tilden 44:49
Right. So, Earthbound, having a whole different theme, right? And being much, you know, having a kid, having it be set in a contemporary setting. You know, there was a thought that-- there was a few people that came together to form a group called Ape, and one of them is Mr. Ishihara, who's one of the founders of Pokémon, and not of the video game, but of the trading card game and Mr. Ito, if you've ever seen a picture, he's the leopard man. And let's see, I think it's Mr. Itoi. He's a famous artist. And so they came up, actually, with Earthbound, but Mother 1 versus the one we had, Mother 2 just was-- had way too many-- first of all, I think it was for the prayer system, but it had made way too many cultural differences. And by the time, I know everyone keeps pushing that this game, what happened, etc. But in order to change cultural differences, things that either would have been unacceptable or just wouldn't have made any sense. When you try to go back to a team that has now dissolved and a program that is no longer you know, they probably took the program and reworked with to make the second one, it just didn't ever end up working out. But to market this, another RPG, different theme, more contemporary, Nintendo Power was actually responsible for the game, and so the marketing, because we were doing a direct marketing campaign, and that was the way we marketed Nintendo Power, I can be blamed or credited for working with the agency on This Game Stinks, and I still think it's funny. I read something this morning, someone was talking about how it matched with kind of the humor of that time, and, you know, matched with the humor of maybe the age of the audience that we were going for, I don't know, that-- I guess I'll stand behind it, the scratch and sniff, but it came with the player's guide. It had a different size box. I know that was difficult for the sales department because it didn't fit on the shelf and it didn't sell that well. I don't think we over-purchased, but it didn't sell that well. And, you know, we continued forward trying to get the US audience to like games that don't have a lot of action, continued to be an effort that we had. And, you know, we ended up things like Super Mario RPG was another one that was, specifically that game was made to try to get us audiences to embrace RPGs a little further.
Gail Tilden 46:55
Maybe better than Dragon Warrior.
Gail Tilden 47:17
Not given out for free.
Gail Tilden 47:18
And good enough that they kept going, so that's, that's good.
Gail Tilden 47:19
Well, does that kind of lead us to Earthbound, in a way? Because that is sort of the next, you know, traditional RPG, that Nintendo introduces.
Frank Cifaldi 47:48
So let's talk about your job as we get into more of a digital era.
Gail Tilden 47:54
Yeah, so publications, when we were giving information that wasn't to market a specific game, like making an ad or doing a launch campaign, then often our group would get involved. And so it made sense when it came to creating a nintendo.com website that, and when that actually happened, that our group would create content that would be shared, in general, to the population about the games. So that picture in orange is actually what the nintendo.com website looked like, you know, because technologically, you just couldn't do very much. I remember at the very beginning, you could use 16 colors, I think. And you know, in terms of how many photos we would ever be able to put up that kind of thing, it was very limited. We also were super particular about any kind of forums or the ability of consumers to speak back to us. It wasn't just for no negative feedback. But they didn't want anything where someone might swear. There was very big concerns in Japan about just any bullying, anything where someone, you know, might be preying on a child, etc. So we were always hamstrung to how much could we have consumer involvement? So one of the ways that we did that was developing something called Camp Hyrule. AOL had something called AOL keywords, and people who had a keyword, you could find them easily, and you could put up content. So Camp Hyrule, I think, went until 2007. Every summer game counselors would assign people cabins, and they'd have tasks like coming up with their name or a flag or and they'd have Q&A's with guests on the-- something similar to what you might do in an open forum. And there were a couple of forums, and they did stop in 2007 when Future Publishing took over Nintendo Power, but that was one of the ways that we got involved with delivering content over the web. So another way that we used our mailing list to communicate was through videotapes. So we did this a couple times, but the first time, the big idea was to do it with Donkey Kong Country. We really needed to prove that these 3D graphics were, again, something different. So when you think of the kind of rotating theme, we really wanted them to see how far advanced these graphics were. And so that was sent out to the Nintendo Power mailing list and subscriber list. And everyone loves at the very end that there's a little sneak peek of Killer Instinct, but those games were made by Rare in the UK, who got the rights from Nintendo in Japan, and Mr. Miyamoto to use the Donkey Kong franchise in a new way.
Frank Cifaldi 51:15
So we're running a little short on time, and we should probably talk about what is this thing?
Gail Tilden 51:23
Yeah, so I don't want to talk faster.
Frank Cifaldi 51:27
No, don't.
Gail Tilden 51:29
I'll try and get there faster. So in January of 1998 I was asked if I would lead the team to bring Pokémon out of Japan to the rest of the world, other than China and Korea.
Frank Cifaldi 51:46
Another RPG, really?
Gail Tilden 51:48
another RPG. So prior to me getting involved that directly as, like, team lead, we had all seen the game, a black and white RPG on Game Boy with very Japanese characters and then our ad agency said, Could we just change the art and it'll be like, gritty, and we'll make like, you know, graffiti on the walls and stuff like that--
Gail Tilden 52:16
Blood in the streets.
Gail Tilden 52:17
There was also a thought like, are the-- is the way that the game is formatted, could we make it that they're all baseball players in a baseball league, but not like a Pokémon league? And as all this discussion and meetings were going on for a few months, Pokémon was heating up and heating up. Now there's TV shows. Now there's comic books. Now they get, you know, movies and more games and toys. And so finally, Mr. Arakawa said, Forget it. We're just doing it. We're doing it. And not only we're doing it, we're going to do it all. We're doing the whole thing. We want control of the whole thing. And so we need all the rights gathered up in Japan, and we want all the rights given to Nintendo of America. And we had a licensing agency we worked with, which was 4kids, and so we're going to work with them, and we're going to make sure that it's done the way it was in Japan, and we're going to make sure we can control everything. So we followed some of the techniques that we had done before we sent out a videotape. So the videotape told about the show and the game, a little bit about the card game and the toys, and it gave everybody the call letters and the station of where they should watch. And the show was placed through something, through syndication. It was placed on individual stations. It wasn't run on a network at that time. So we launched Labor Day weekend, and sorry, an aside, because my daughter's here. So it launched, and we got to go get two kittens, and she named her cat Misty, and she had orange hair, and so it launched on Labor Day weekend. The games launched two weeks later. We didn't know if, because of this black and white Game Boy RPG thing, whether it was going to work, we also had these-- we had made 10 of these Volkswagen Beetles, which was-- the Volkswagen Beetle comeback was brand new that year. So it was a coincidence that we could make it look like Pikachu. But it was a brand new vehicle type. So they all-- 10 yellow parachutes came down in Topeka, Kansas-- Topikachu, Kansas, and they ran off into the 10 yellow Beetles, and they drove around the country for two or three weeks and went to theme parks and beaches, etc. They popped the trunk. They had the video playing. They gave out toys. It was this huge grassroots effort, and then the cards didn't come out until a little bit later that fall. And the one we always talk about, the one failure, was Kentucky Fried Chicken got on board early, and they launched their promotion in November, and it was too early, and it didn't work. So their kids meal program was kind of a bust, but it didn't take long before the Game Boy games had caught on. And it was unusual that we would do multiple campaigns, but we went ahead and did a link cable campaign the first of the year, and when we did that, to really show that you couldn't catch them all unless you hooked up with someone else or got the special characters. What special characters are they giving away here?
Frank Cifaldi 55:49
Oh, at this show?
Gail Tilden 55:50
Yeah.
Frank Cifaldi 55:51
I thought you knew.
Gail Tilden 55:51
I don't know. How would I know? I don't know.
Frank Cifaldi 55:54
You're the Pokémon lady, I don't know.
Gail Tilden 55:55
Are they giving away Mew, or Celebi, or does anybody know?
Frank Cifaldi 56:04
So obviously this didn't work out at all.
Gail Tilden 56:06
No, it was a drag. So by 1999-- sorry, someone say something?
Audience 56:17
[inaudible]
Gail Tilden 56:19
So in that by 1999 it had taken off. It was a full-fledged phenomenon. We had moved the television show to Kids WB as a network. They were promoting it heavily, and we sold the movies to WB as well, the first three. For the first movie, when you went, you got a trading card with the movie. Our box office, it was in November, the biggest November box office at the time. It was like $82 million, I believe, but people were buying massive amounts of movie tickets to get the cards, to get the special cards. I don't know how valuable those cards are today.
Frank Cifaldi 57:06
Yeah, I was gonna-- does anyone know?
Gail Tilden 57:09
Maybe they're not as rare or something. Anyway, you had to-- you could get the cards. And it was a super successful promotion.
Frank Cifaldi 57:19
You had a movie the next year and it killed. That's like, I don't know, I knew it was huge at the time, but, like, just seeing it in context like this is like, dang.
Gail Tilden 57:29
Yeah, being on the cover of Time and The New Yorker.
Frank Cifaldi 57:32
I guess that's cool, too,
Gail Tilden 57:34
And, you know, we had Reader's Digest did four different covers and I think I saw at the store this year that they repeated that.
Frank Cifaldi 57:45
Yeah, they did.
Gail Tilden 57:46
So that's super cool. Anyway. That was the kickoff of the big Burger King campaigns. They did 50 some toys. They also had something you could buy, which was a Pokeball with a gold-plated card inside. And so it was just running on all cylinders. By then, we were having the console games and all kinds of things. And then also imagine it was launching in the rest of the world in, like, five languages. So the guy that can be credited for the localization, his name is Hiro Nakamura. He is the person who's responsible for all of the English names, and-- am I so-- I have 15 seconds.
Frank Cifaldi 58:30
No one has yelled at us yet. I think we're okay.
Gail Tilden 58:32
Anyway, okay, he would have to submit three names, the names of each of the Pokémon. So let's say it's Charmander, Charmleon, Charizard. He'd have to submit three groups of three and explain why they matched with the concept that was in Japan, and he was very diligent about he would canvas people, like, in game counseling or whatever, to make sure he was getting the right colloquialisms, etc. So anyway, you have him to thank for how well all of that turned out. And I think I know he made it through Gold and Silver. I'm not sure if he made it to the next set, but he then went back to Japan and works at Game Freak. But anyway, yes, this was happening in the US and Canada, but it also had started happening in the whole world. So it kind of became very an overwhelming task. Also about that time, which then we're going to move to the next thing, but about that time, Pokémon decided to start their own company instead of being Game Freak, and Creatures, and Nintendo in Japan, so they started The Pokémon Company, which now they have The Pokémon Company International as well in the US. So for my career, Nintendo of America then was really involved after that, after 2001 in the video game marketing, we also then did a stint when Wizards of the Coast quit having a license for the trading card game for a few years, we marketed the trading card game as well at Nintendo, while they were getting ready.
Frank Cifaldi 1:00:21
You had the whole thing.
Gail Tilden 1:00:23
We had the whole thing.
Gail Tilden 1:00:26
So I don't know that anyone's interested in an unproduced Metroid movie. We can skip that, but--
Gail Tilden 1:00:33
That's the 2000-- didn't finish that.
Frank Cifaldi 1:00:37
But you know, like, I don't know if there's a next panel. Does anyone know? There's a concert here at 8:30? Oh, you want to stick around a minute?
Gail Tilden 1:00:49
Five more minutes?
Frank Cifaldi 1:00:50
Yeah, I'm good with that. Yeah? We good with that? All right.
Gail Tilden 1:00:54
Okay, so life after Pokémon. Although we still had a lot of stuff going on with Pokémon because of the game, and we are considered one of the tentpoles, there was a group that did something called Pokémon Forever, and that we were involved in that initiative ongoing. But we had other things going on too, and as the brand group, we kind of took over both merchandise and entertainment of all the Nintendo brands. So the Kirby TV show that we localized and had on with 4kids, they had purchased their own TV network at the time, and we were doing toys, t-shirts. Nintendogs was a great brand for doing some licensing and extensions. So always wanting to do-- and people were always calling about doing a movie. You can imagine that the most common question is, you know, We're calling, we'd like to do a Zelda movie. So the answer was always no. And so, you know, even I personally said, Mr. Miyamoto, like, if Steven Spielberg himself wants to do a Zelda movie, what is the answer? He said, No. So that was it. The answer was always no. But the Metroid team, which is Mr. Sakamoto, is the person who created Metroid. He also made Kid Icarus, and he's the Wario creator and games like WarioWare, really fun guy, and he was open to pitches on Metroid. And his counterpart for Metroid Prime is Mr. Tanabe. So together, John Woo's company, Chinese director, had wanted to pitch to do a Metroid movie, and we had several meetings. It took a long time. We would talk about, sometimes about who should play, Samus should be Charlize Theron. Should it be? No, she's not right. Anyway, it was on and on about who the actresses that they could see as Samus, but which we never settled on anything. I think they thought she's not such a beauty, as opposed to kind of a athlete. So we had several story angles that were we pitched or presented, and finally landed on something and did a pitch kit and took it out. And the level of budget that would be needed to make the movie was significant. And at the time, the only female action movie that had come out was Halle Berry's Catwoman, and it didn't do well. And so the company, John Woo's company, they pitched for Metroid, but we did not make a sale. So that is the truth of why that particular project didn't happen.
Frank Cifaldi 1:03:58
Very cool. I had no idea about any of that. And this is sort of the end of your stint at Nintendo, right? It is this era of games. And this is when you had a new CEO in Japan, right?
Gail Tilden 1:04:13
Right. When Mr. Iwata took over as the head of all of Nintendo. He came to the US, and he brought all of us a copy of this book, The Blue Ocean Strategy. And you said, Oh, he talked about it at--
Frank Cifaldi 1:04:32
At the Game Developers Conference, and then gave us all a free copy of BrainAGE. That was a neat talk.
Gail Tilden 1:04:37
Yeah. So what his theory was, and Nintendo had been different, but you know, most of the attacks on Nintendo's products and games was how, you know, the things that were the top sellers were action games or things that were much more male-dominated, you know. Of course, we were no longer a factor when, you know, John Madden Football would come out things like that. So what his philosophy was, everybody's fighting for the same customer, fighting in the same-- sharks fighting in the same small territory. And we went, Everybody else like, let them fight it out for that group.
Frank Cifaldi 1:05:20
We're doing a knitting machine.
Gail Tilden 1:05:22
We're doing a knitting machine. And so I worked on-- we had a committee, and we would get together. I led this committee, and we would get together and talk about, you know, what we should go after for non-traditional games, because in Japan, they were really producing a ton of them. So we wanted to come up with games that made sense in the US. I think New York Times crossword puzzle was one that I wanted. I don't think we ever got it, but I was telling Frank that we--
Frank Cifaldi 1:05:55
She told me about a very fun-sounding game. It sounded awesome.
Gail Tilden 1:05:58
Yeah, very fun. Not fun sounding, but fun project. Warren Buffett had a cartoon that was about financial literacy, so we wanted to do a cartoon-based Warren Buffet program, and we could not make it fun. So it never happened, because we made prototypes. We tried, but we-- Warren's fun, but we couldn't make it fun. Anyway, by the time I-- in 2007 Nintendo made some big changes, and the marketing team moved to California, and Nintendo Power was sold to Future, and although I wasn't part of either of those groups, it was just really time to move on and kind of do something different.
Frank Cifaldi 1:06:46
Gail, thank you so, so much for coming out and talking to us. That's right. Give her a hand.
Frank Cifaldi 1:06:52
Thank you so so much for listening to the Video Game History Hour, brought to you by the Video Game History Foundation. If you have questions or comments for the show, you can email us at podcast@gamehistory.org. The Video Game History Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and all of your contributions are tax-deductible. You can support us right now by going to gamehistory.org/donate, or by joining our Patreon at patreon.com/gamehistoryorg, one word. This episode of the Video Game History Hour was produced by Robin Kunimune and edited by Michael Carrell. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.
–Transcript edited by Jeremy Seith
