2015/06/09 by Benjamin Nicoll · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Digital Games and Media #Cinema and Media Studies #Japanese History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1177/1555412015590048
openalex publication_date 2015/06/09 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article recovers the popular imaginaries surrounding an obsolete video game platform, the Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES), through a thematic discourse analysis of British and North American gaming magazines from the 1990s. Released in Japan in 1990, the Neo Geo AES was marketed as a home video game system capable of bridging the gap between the public space of the gaming arcade and the domestic environment of the home. “Imaginaries” in this context refer to the dreams and fantasies that accompanied the Neo Geo AES’s negotiation of arcade and home spaces as well as the discourses, images, ideas, and beliefs that helped mold its identity as a cultural object. Gaming magazines, I argue, help articulate how the system’s failure was tied to its unsuccessful navigation of cultural tensions during a period when gaming culture underwent a rapid relocation from the arcade to the home.