Quote:
In a way, though, I was lucky. I wasn’t told this during the interview, but they were actually right in the middle of developing the System 10. It was released in 78, and I helped with the sales then too. The thing is, you see, no one had ever connected a video game to their TV before, or knew exactly how that would work: not Epoch, not our customers, not the industry. Today we have video inputs but before that you had to use the switchbox and turn to channel 2, where the signal would be broadcast wirelessly. We all know that’s how it works today, but at the time we were gripped with anxiety on a daily basis: what if consumers turn it on, and nothing shows up on-screen…?
In an era before the Famicom, therefore, I was actually breaking new ground in my job. We ran an amazing info campaign to help people understand how these new games worked. I was working out of the Osaka sales office then, but if a customer was having problems, we’d almost always go to their home directly. It was too difficult to explain how to fix it over the phone. We worked in the area from Osaka to Wakayama. There’s so many nice people in Kansai. Talking to them on the phone I’d sometimes feel a little scared, but the people I visited were very kind. They would even treat me with beer and dinner sometimes!
Old television screens were smaller than they are now and the corners were rounded off, so lots of times the entire game wouldn’t fit on screen. I often had to open up the TV and adjust the horizontal and vertical pots. I’d have to get back behind the TV, use a vacuum to get all the dust off, make my adjustments and then move everything back in place. Nowadays we’d call it an occupational hazard. (laughs)
That Osaka sales job was the best place to learn those technical things, though. I had to write a lot of reports!
…I thought it had a source there, but if anybody knows, let me know.
