Hacker Cinema
Console Wars
2020 · Film · documentary · 93 min
Directed by Blake J. Harris, Jonah Tulis
In 1990, SEGA, a fledgling arcade company assembled a team of misfits to take on the greatest video game company in the world, Nintendo. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pit brother against brother, kids against grownups, Sonic against Mario, and uniquely American capitalism against centuries-old Japanese tradition. For the first time ever, the men and women who fought on the front lines for Sega and Nintendo discuss this battle that defined a generation.
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5 comments on Hacker News
The article touches a bit on how Sega basically lost. There is literally a whole documentary about this: Console Wars, where they go deep into how Sega lost the battle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_Wars_(film)
I highly recommend the movie/documentary “Console Wars” as it touches on this subject.
The success of the Genesis especially in the United States, at least according to this movie, came from a “dream team” when it came to marketing and promotion. This team included Tom Kalinske, former CEO of Mattel.
For a time, this team at Sega of America held the parent company’s ear, and it led to the Genesis breaking Nintendo’s monopolistic stranglehold on the game industry. The Genesis succeeded because of some pretty amazing marketing and the success of Sonic the Hedgehog.
By the time the Sega Saturn came along, this team was gone, and I think it shows.
I just finished watching Console Wars[0] which goes into this in some depth. The takeaway is that the entire "legal/social welfare" aspect was nothing more than collusion between Nintendo and some cronies of the senator's. Lieberman even said in the testimony that he thought Nintendo was doing a better job than its competitors. Since when is that a congressional matter?
In the end, it turned out to all be BS. There was no relationship between violence in video games and social outcomes that could be demonstrated by anyone. To take the issue to the present day, I bought a Nintendo Switch yesterday and browsed the online game store to load it up. I assure you that the same, violent games (even titles rated Mature by the ratings board Joe created), are prominently featured -- and "on sale" for only $49.99. Was Nintendo really a morally superior company to Sega and was it all "for the children?" I don't think so. It's just a marketing angle that worked in that era.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_Wars_(film)
Blake Harris's "Console Wars" documentary...
I was hyped going into it and it opened strong, but then it devolves into being a bunch of clips of Tom Kalinske & friends talking smack about a dead Japanese guy (head of Sega Japan) with no one to speak on the dead guy's behalf.
It felt super dishonest and one-sided, less a documentary than a PR piece to rehabilitate Kalinske's reputation, to the detriment of everyone at Sega Japan.
It only covers the good things SOA did and only the bad things SOJ supposedly did, and none of the opposite.
That was a good watch, the recent documentary Console Wars is worth seeing as well.