61 Frames Per Second

Nintendo: Two Screens of Literature, the E-Book Trojan Horse, and Console Evolution

Posted by John Constantine

A week ago, I would have considered this topic to be outside of the general 61 Frames Per Second milieu, but after Shigeru Miyamoto helped me to readjust my conception of just what a videogame can be, I figure that this is worth discussion. HarperCollins, one of the last true publishing behemoths in the world, announced this week that they will be releasing 100 Classic Books Collection for the Nintendo DS. It’s a veritable library of public domain literature, vast enough to fill a Penguin Pocket Classics catalog and then some. Come the day after Christmas, and you live on that grand continent past its imperialist-prime called Europe, you’ll be able to get ten shades of Victorian with your touch screen device, indulging in a near complete collection of Charles Dickens alongside a little Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, and Oscar Wilde. There’s also a goodly selection of Bill Shakespeare to boot (but no Richard III. Denied!)

Ebooks in general are a conundrum. While they’re the format of choice for many a literate Japanese citizen, they’ve yet to become a commodity, or profitable outlet, for literature in the western world. HarperCollins, unlike most of the west’s biggest publishers, have made significant, if not effective, strides towards electronic distribution in the past twelve months. An ereader or an iPhone is $300 and a Blackberry isn’t exactly a cozy venue for a fifteen thousand word novel. But a Nintendo DS is cheap as hell and millions upon millions of readers already own one for playing videogames — not to mention how it actually resembles a proper book — so what could be a better venue to finally shove ebooks into the mainstream? Print may not be dying, but it is changing, and 100 Classic Books Collection is a very important event in the maturation of ebooks.

It’s also important in the maturation of game consoles. Many have accused Nintendo of damaging the market for traditional, hardcore videogames. Hell, I’ve accused them of that. But the flood of “non-games”, from Brain Training to My French Coach, does not represent a dilution of videogames as a medium; they’re representative of game consoles’ evolving role as a venue for art, entertainment, and education. Nintendo’s initiative to bring traditional print media, like manga in Japan and classic literature in Europe, to their consoles is helping redefine just what a game console can be and will, as a result, help redefine just what a game can be. Will visual novels finally escape Japan once westerners start thinking of consoles as a place to read? Will people start acting out Shakespeare’s plays via WiFi instead of awkwardly reading them aloud in a high school English class? Will game designers finally put more of an emphasis on good writing once console users develop refined palettes? I’m not sure, but I’m damned excited to find out.

The full 100 Classic Books Collection reading list:

Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
Jane Austen - Emma
Jane Austen -Mansfield Park
Jane Austen - Persuasion
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility
Harriet Belcher - Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin
R.D. Blackmore - Lorna Doone
Anne Bronte - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte - The Professor
Charlotte Bronte - Shirley
Charlotte Bronte - Villette
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress
Frances Burnett - Little Lord Fauntleroy
Frances Burnett - The Secret Garden
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking-Glass
Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
Carlo Collodi - Adventures of Pinocchio
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim
Susan Coolidge - What Katy Did
James Fenimore Cooper - Last of the Mohicans
Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge
Charles Dickens - Bleak House
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
Charles Dickens - Dombey and Son
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Charles Dickens - Hard Times
Charles Dickens - Martin Chuzzlewit
Charles Dickens - Nicholas Nickleby
Charles Dickens - The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens - The Pickwick Papers
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers
George Eliot - Adam Bede
George Eliot - Middlemarch
George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss
Henry Rider Haggard - King Solomon's Mines
Thomas Hardy - Far From The Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy - Tess of The D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy - Under the Greenwood Tree
Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter
Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
Washington Irving - The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Charles Kingsley - Westward Ho!
D.H. Lawrence - Sons And Lovers
Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
Jack London - The Call of the Wild
Jack London - White Fang
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Edgar Allen Poe - Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Sir Walter Scott - Ivanhoe
Sir Walter Scott - Rob Roy
Sir Walter Scott - Waverley
Anna Sewell - Black Beauty
William Shakespeare - All's Well That Ends Well William Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare - As You Like It
William Shakespeare - The Comedy of Errors
William Shakespeare - Hamlet
William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare - King Henry the Fifth
William Shakespeare - King Lear
William Shakespeare - King Richard the Third
William Shakespeare - Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare - Macbeth
William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare - A Midsummer-Night's Dream
William Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare - Othello, the Moor of Venice
William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew
William Shakespeare - The Tempest
William Shakespeare - Timon of Athens
William Shakespeare - Titus Andronicus
William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare - The Winter's Tale
Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
William Thackeray - Vanity Fair
Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers
Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain - Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Jules Verne - Round the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

(Link: These Bastards, Joystiq)

Related links:

Videogame, Non-Game, Old Game, New Game: The Miyamoto Rule
F**k Your Future: Mirror’s Edge, Blade Runner, and the Future City
Along Came a Gamer: James Patterson and Authors in Games
The Three Stigmata of The Halcyon Company: Philip K. Dick Comes to Games

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Posted Dec 11 2008, 07:00 PM

Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, nintendo ds, my french coach, charles dickens, oscar wilde, ebook, Harper Collins, brain training, william Shakespeare, jane austen, eye training

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

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