Article 16—seta controlpad newsletter
(1991)
 | ||
About 60 different companies published
licensed games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, but few
of them flew as far under the radar as Seta. Even though it
published multiple titles on the NES, Game Boy and Super NES,
its most popular game was never released! (I’m referring,
of course, to Bio Force Ape, which was previewed in an early issue of Nintendo Power magazine
and inexplicably became the subject of an Internet meme in
2005.)
Seta’s ControlPad consumer newsletter was usually just folded in
half and mailed “as is,” but Volume VI arrived in
an envelope with an unexpected bonus: a “Rad Dude”
sticker featuring Ned Zoomie, star of Seta’s Game Boy
puzzler Q Billion. The article on page 6 apologizes for the
delay of this issue and explains that the ControlPad was
changing to a bi-monthly schedule, which suggests that previous
issues were mailed more frequently. The author of this
editorial—a recurring character known as “the guy
in the back”—claims that the frequency change was
the result of increased membership in the “Q Billion
Club,” but the sparse contents suggest that they just
didn’t have enough material to fill a six-page newsletter
with any regularity. The top story tells of a recent arcade
trade show, but the recap is only three sentences long and
doesn’t even identify a single product on display.
There’s also a front-page article about a peach-sorting
robot that may or may not have been invented by Seta. Why
couldn’t they have used this space to hype the upcoming Bio Force Ape?
 | ||
While being interviewed for author David
Sheff’s book Game Over, Nintendo’s Howard Phillips revealed that
Nintendo faced some anti-Japan sentiment when it introduced the
NES to North American retailers in 1985. It’s rarely
discussed today, but this must
have been an ongoing concern as more
Japanese publishers established U.S. offices in the late
’80s/early ’90s. It would explain why so many NES
games were promoted with “Americanized” artwork and
characters that looked nothing like the original Japanese
designs. I mention this here because—in my
opinion—Seta tried harder than most publishers to
disguise its Japanese roots. All of its advertising and
packaging had goofy, generic artwork; it went out of its way to
develop games based on quintessentially American properties
like The Wizard of Oz and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer;
and its American “mascots” (a middle-aged, balding
Caucasian man and a muumuu-clad rodent with ears that resembled
human testicles) were probably hand-drawn by one of the six
people who comprised the entirety of Seta USA’s staff.
 | ||
From a purely artistic standpoint,
it’s unfortunate that these companies’ American
employees didn’t do more to stand up for the reputations
of their games’ creators. But I guess if they had, we
might not have that bad Mega Man box art to laugh at.
______________________________________________________
© 2011 Chris Bieniek. Certain video
game images, characters and logos on this Web site are
copyrighted or trademarked by their respective publishers.