Over at his blog, MIT's Henry Jenkins has interviewed Wired News' Chris Kohler about all things Japanese video game-related, after reading Kohler's book Power Up.

There's all sorts of interesting stuff in here, but here's what I'll quote from Kohler - something about Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents: "What's interesting to note is that although certain Ouendan fans were angry that Nintendo was "Americanizing" the game, that's not really what happened. Yes, iNiS went back and re-tooled the game for Western audiences, but if you look at the final product it's still very much a crazy, manga-styled presentation that's going to appeal most strongly to the kind of gamer who reads manga, plays Katamari Damacy, etc. It's only "Westernized" enough to remove the sort of "cultural odor" that would prevent it from doing well in the US, not the things that made it appealing in the first place." Yum, cultural odor!

Kohler adds: "That's something I also get into in Power-Up as it pertains to Donkey Kong. The breakout Japanese video game (at least in the context that I explored in the book, that of the development of games as a storytelling medium) was designed for America. Miyamoto was told that the US branch of Nintendo was in trouble, and could he please make a game that would succeed in America. Who knows what kind of story and characters he would have come up with if his primary intent was to appeal to his fellow Japanese?"