Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

huge inflatables of Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot, in Japan it offers a live stage show, with a rock band fronted by performers in the cuddly, furry costumes of Um Jammer Lammy and Parappa the Rapper. These two forms of entertainment marketing have quite different functions: Sony’s American inflatables point backward inevitably, merely illustratively, toward the games from which they are taken; the prancing figures in Japan, however, imply that game characters have a continuing inner life elsewhere.

In fact, game characters are everywhere. For the Tokyo Game Show also features a contest for visitors: come dressed as your favorite videogame idol. Young Japanese men and women wander round as black-clad soldiers (many bandanna’d Solid Snakes this year after the huge success of Metal Gear Solid), scary-masked orcs from dungeon RPGs, or blond S&M princesses with fishnet stockings and leather harnesses. These game fans pay costume obeisance to their virtual heroes and heroines with a lack of self-consciousness that is remarkable to Western eyes. Game characters are also available everywhere in the form of Action Man–style figurines, or on collectors’ cards. They feature in posters, on T-shirts; in Japan, a videogame

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