What struck me from reading this was the amount of failure and "suck" they had to deal with before they finally had any success:<p>"Despite middling results from titles like Wild Gunman and Battle Shark, Yamauchi remained committed to his new vision and continued to allocate a vast amount of resources toward videogames. "
...<p>"Space Fever was followed by Space Launcher (underwhelming), which was followed by Space Firebird (disappointing), which was followed by a slew of unsuccessful non-space-themed games. After this string of mediocre misfires, Stone and Judy were ready to quit, and Arakawa couldn’t help but reconsider his new vocation. "<p>...<p>"That foreboding was validated after the three thousand units finally arrived and Stone and Judy found that operators had little interest. Radarscope was fun at first, the consensus appeared to be, but it lacked replay value."<p>on and on through failure after failure they kept trying until finally, Donkey Kong.<p>It's a lesson: while consistent reliable and predictable success is what everyone wants to achieve, the reality is often "failure, failure, failure, failure... huge success that finally makes up for all of the previous failures".