Years ago, and much closer to its 2014 publishing date, I told you about Console Wars and its masterful retelling of the marketing and gaming dominance match between Nintendo and Sega. The book is absolutely amazing, but the documentary also stands on its own. Since it clocks in at only 90 minutes, it’s best referred to as the abridged story of the Console Wars as they occurred.
This documentary is more than a talking heads piece. It stands uniquely apart because the war was very much staged on televisions. Watching the original ads, promo pieces, news stories, and home movies is priceless.
Reading the book, the ads are detailed but it is all translated from video into print. With the documentary you don’t need them described, you can just watch them. But it is the newscasters of yesteryear that tell a portion of this story and that makes this a whirlwind of authenticity and adds even more nostalgia to the whole piece.
The documentary also details the rise of the video game industry before Sega took on Nintendo. There’s basically a small excerpt of Atari, the video game bust, and then the rise of Nintendo as a behemoth worth taking on.
It may be hard to remember it all given the state of video games now, but without Nintendo’s meteoric rise to fame with the NES, the console wars wouldn’t exist and the video game industry as we know it would be vastly different.
This documentary covers it all: Nintendo’s origin, Sega’s origin, Nintendo’s almost-monopoly, Sega’s market disruption, Sonic’s origin, the Mortal Kombat head-to-head, and the Atari E.T. video game flop – and it’s all told of the time, in the time.
Sure, the talking heads add color and more behind the scenes context, but this documentary lets news segments from the time tell the main story. The commercials, print ads, and 16-bit re-enactments all add some wonderful additional color.
The documentary does not cover the story in a linear fashion, but it does tell the story in a way that makes sense. Plus, it touches on how the battle of Nintendo and Sega spawned Playstation. For the complete story, nothing beats the book, but if you aren’t a reader or don’t have that much time, you can’t go wrong with the documentary.