Comments on: Steve Ballmer ate my balls?

Steve Ballmer ate my balls?

dhoyt — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:05:01 -0800

Hiroshi Yamaguchi to Steve Ballmer: Suck My Tiny Yellow Balls • Now that he's retired and, er, mellowed, the former Nintendo CEO has a lot to say about Japanese business culture, Western business culture, and the gaming industry.

By: unreason

unreason — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:10:45 -0800

This was posted to Fark, and I think the general conclusion was that this was some kind of The Onion-esque joke.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:10:59 -0800

Classy, dhoyt. And did you mean to link to an all-Spanish page?

By: unreason

unreason — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:12:35 -0800

rushmc, the article is in English if you scroll down.

By: Dr_Perhaps

Dr_Perhaps — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:13:16 -0800

It's bogus...

By: FormlessOne

FormlessOne — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:15:56 -0800

Indeed bogus. Depressing when Fark catches this before we do, isn't it?

By: FormlessOne

FormlessOne — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:17:44 -0800

'Course, I've been known to fall for a bogus article or several...

By: dhoyt

dhoyt — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:27:06 -0800

Classy, dhoyt. And did you mean to link to an all-Spanish page? Huh? I got it from here two days ago. What difference does it make it the rest of the page is in Spanish? I was linking to the interview. I guess I didn't go over it with a fine-toothed comb, but why would I assume it was bogus? Is it?

By: Prospero

Prospero — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:28:56 -0800

This story has been floating around gaming boards for a while now--it's bogus.

By: Gyan

Gyan — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:29:31 -0800

FormlessOne: Indeed bogus. Depressing when Fark catches this before we do, isn't it? Heh. Guess what I found in the fark thread:

elevationlord: Voramyr, is it really fake? Yeah. It was debunked 2 days ago at (of all places) 4chan.org

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:30:39 -0800

Real or not, I can't read this without picturing Yamaguchi wearing an ice bucket, ala Brando in Island of Dr.Moreau, on his head.

By: veedubya

veedubya — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:30:39 -0800

What a drama queen.

By: Count Ziggurat

Count Ziggurat — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:32:07 -0800

Yeah, it is. It's been around the loop a couple times already. On preview, yeah.

By: FormlessOne

FormlessOne — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:41:55 -0800

veedubya: Has to be the funniest thread I've seen in awhile here.

By: FormlessOne

FormlessOne — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:43:23 -0800

Gyan: Figures. That's what I get for not running it to ground. :grin:

By: u.n. owen

u.n. owen — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:43:46 -0800

veedubya, I demand a fifty-comment long apology for your homophobic slurs, at which point I will decline to believe your apology is valid or honest anyway. Please commence sending me long-winded apologetic emails immediately.

By: dhoyt

dhoyt — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:45:49 -0800

Sorry, guys, I just found this. Oh well. Wishful thinking that an interview would be that silly or wanktastic. 'Course there's always this one.

By: pemdasi

pemdasi — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:55:43 -0800

CR*PT*STIC

By: aerify

aerify — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 10:21:23 -0800

Could a moderate either delete this post or add something to the effect of "satire"? We don't need to be spreading misinformation.

By: bobo123

bobo123 — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 10:25:19 -0800

I'm glad I read this before I found out it was fake, I laughed so much. The image created in my mind of that meeting with Ballmer was great. Though if you want to read a (real) funny interview with someone in the Japanese games industry, read this interview with Tomonobu Itagaki.

By: revgeorge

revgeorge — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 10:35:54 -0800

December 28, when this was posted, is the "Massacre of the Innocents," which is the Spanish equivelant to April Fool's Day.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:29:03 -0800

I guess I didn't go over it with a fine-toothed comb, but why would I assume it was bogus? Is it? Um, did you read it? Could a moderate either delete this post or add something to the effect of "satire"? We don't need to be spreading misinformation. As far as I know, mefi has only one moderator, and posts are rarely (to the point that I've never seen it happen) edited. Anyway, anyone with half a brain can see that this is satire, and helarious. ---- Not that it could ever be real to begin with, but, how would Yamauchi know all these american cultural refrences ("i love lucy") and not throw in any japanese ones.

By: eurasian

eurasian — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:32:55 -0800

Wow, I TOTALLY thought it was real. Detecting satire is apparently not one of my strong suits. The aggressive nature of his responses was surprising, but reasonable (i suppose, although that canadian comment was out of whack). Dangit, I SOO wanted it to be real.

By: dhoyt

dhoyt — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:59:12 -0800

Anyway, anyone with half a brain can see that this is satire, and helarious. It's impossible for me to read criticism like that and not hear it in the voice of the Comic Book Guy. In any case, I didn't make assumptions whether it was real or not--I posted because I thought it was funny, that people hadn't seen it, and if they had, they might have some backstory on it.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:59:21 -0800

Satire or no, Yamauchi is a nut. Nothing in this article would be out of character for the man.

By: Gnatcho

Gnatcho — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 12:03:37 -0800

I thought it was posted as satire. It is pretty funny, especially because this sounds like an interview with a Japanese executive in the games industry, except slightly exaggerated. But I think it treads the line of plausibility pretty carefully. But if you definitely want to know it's fake, read Yamauchi's comment about disks in the Virtual Boy. The Virtual Boy had cartridges, the Famicom Disk System had disks and was a modification of the Famicom (NES). I love debunking an article through a fanboy analysis. Of course, now someone is going to tell me that Japanese Virtual Boys had disks. But it certainly didn't in its US incarnation. On preview: Like Faint of Butt said.

By: bobo123

bobo123 — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 12:04:04 -0800

Anyway, anyone with half a brain can see that this is satire, and helarious. Actually, when I showed this to someone who was familiar with Nintendo's history and knew who Yamaguchi was, he said "Oh yeah, that sounds like Yamaguchi all right."

By: Gnatcho

Gnatcho — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 12:05:32 -0800

That middle paragraph should have been enclosed by recovering fanboy /recovering fanboy But I didn't pay enough attention to realize it was taken out.

By: eurasian

eurasian — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 12:06:50 -0800

oh thank god! I mean, nintendo really DOES push the borders, and is incredibly brave in so many of the things it does. So for the leader (former) to be like he is in the article, it really didn't set off any alarm bells.

By: bshock

bshock — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 14:52:34 -0800

Obviously bullshit. I don't doubt that the gentleman in question might hold some or all of the opinions mentioned in this article, but I have never read about a Japanese person voicing his opinions in this fashion. I've gotten the impression that, to the Japanese, there's nothing questionable or controversial about Japanese superiority -- it's simply an established fact, unnecessary to state.

By: nightchrome

nightchrome — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 17:17:47 -0800

I too desperately wanted it to be true. It's just so...perfect.