When people think about the “origins” of Masahiro Sakurai, they will look at his early days with Nintendo and how he went from a game designer to a creator where he made Kirby and then a beloved fighting game starting with the Nintendo 64. However, that wasn’t his true start. Much like many other people who enter the industry, the question is HOW they get the “spark” or “desire” to make video games. Sakurai decided to take a small detour in his “Creating Games” series to talk about what was the item that gave him his desire, and it’s not what you think.
In his latest video, he talked about the “Family Basic.” What is that? Well, it was an extension of the original Nintendo Famicom, aka the “Family Computer,” that would essentially turn the game console into a home computer of sorts! It didn’t have the widest array of functions, but you could do basic coding in it, which Sakurai shows in the video.
Not only did he love this so much that he kept his original one from decades ago, but you can see the glee on his face and hear the joy in his voice as he talks about how he painted the device so it didn’t “yellow with age” or how he tried to remember everything that the system could do.
But if you’re not getting where the “spark” came from, that would be because, at the time, getting a home computer in Japan was incredibly expensive. Sakurai and his family couldn’t afford one. But because of the Family Basic, he could get it for a low price after working a whole summer, and it allowed him to make small programs on his own, create levels, and so on.
Hearing about the technical specifications of the device and what limits you had back then is fascinating. That includes how they would put batteries into the cartridge to act as a “saver of data,” albeit with a very short time span as the batteries would die out quickly, so you had to put them on a tape recorder instead. Oh, how things have changed.
As Masahiro Sakurai admits, if it weren’t for this device, his life might have been vastly different, and multiple franchises we adore today, decades after he got this spark, likely would’ve never existed.
This proves that you can get inspired by anything in your life. All you have to do is be on the lookout for it.
