‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega…’
In the absence of mods and rockers, the only argument that mattered on my primary school playground was Sega vs Nintendo. When I was a kid if you’d have cut me I’d have bled Sega blue whilst leaking hedgehog spines from my veins, but as I’ve got older, Nintendo has taken hold. Sure, that might be because Sega stopped making games consoles in 1999 but the point remains. Console Wars explores the battle between anarchic upstarts Sega and their more corporate cousins Nintendo to produce a documentary that serves up more than just comforting nostalgia…
Based on director Blake J. Harris’ book of the same name, Console Wars takes us back to that most wonderful of decades, the 90s, in order to revive a rivalry that was as embedded in popular culture as Blur vs Oasis. Harris never picks sides and instead allows all the main players to tell their own version of the not so friendly competition between the two companies that eventually saw Nintendo win out despite the initial success of the Sega Mega Drive.
Talking heads and retro game footage is always a winning combination, and it is exhilarating to be reminded of just how enormously exciting video games could be for a kid growing up before the age of the internet, and Harris captures this era perfectly through archive footage and a wide range of interviews with industry experts.
My one criticism of Console Wars is that a lot of this stuff is content that I have heard about many times before. There’s only so many times you can hear the story of the E.T. video game cartridges being buried in the desert before it becomes stale. But if you want a clear and concise explanation of everything that went down in the war between Sega and Nintendo then Console Wars should be your first and only stop.
Game over.