Console Wars

Lots of pointless pixel-arty segues (bizarrely ALL with vertical scan lines) and some interesting interviews with key '80/'90s figures in the industry. Other than that this mainly plays out like an account of Tom Kalinske's Sega marketing career.

The interviews are probably the best thing about this, all the other information is scant (no verbal mention of the Master System, 32X, Sega CD or Dreamcast at all?!?!) and no details at all about the Saturn or even pictures, just a brief mention of it at the end.

Anyone who is interested in this subject already, will already know more than is revealed in this program. As stated previously the only interesting content is the interviews with people like Howard Lincoln from Nintendo and Tom Kalinske from Sega. Otherwise you could get all the info in this show (and a lot more) just by reading the Sega and Nintendo pages on Wikipedia. I get the feeling this was not made by people who have any genuine love for the subject.

The Console War refers to one period in history where two companies, Nintendo and Sega battled it out for market supremacy. Nintendo long held a stranglehold (ie monopoly) on the industry due to both innovation and monopolistic practices. Sega of America sought to open the market through... well, watch the documentary and find out how they did it!

I enjoyed how Console Wars built up Nintendo as a villain, then gave them credit for saving the fallen video game industry. But unlike other documentaries, this one doesn't pull punches and mentions some of "cute" Nintendo's cut-throat practices. War was declared and strategized by the upstart aggressor - Sega, which means the documentary focuses on Sega. There's not much nostalgia or other video game history here, just the story that the documentary seeks to tell - about THE Console War and the two companies that took part in it.

The Sega Mega Drive here in Europe, aka Genesis in the US, was a fantastic machine. We used to play it for hours every day. It had no memory, so I would put it on pause the night before I went to school, and then me and my friend would cycle as fast we could after school, back to my home. My mother would then often have cleaned up my clothes and turned off the machine. DUDE, we worked for days to get to the final boss... Sometimes I just hated my mom!!

I loved Nintendo too, but the Sega just kicked ass. I bought Sonic after being with my mom to the bingo, I won $250 that day, that is like $1500 today. I bought the game for around $65 that time. That was a lot of money for a kid. If you wonder, yes my mother took the rest of the money, her ticket. I didn't care, I was high on Sonic. Man, I had many great days, weeks, month and years with Sega. What a time to grow up. Magical!

This documentary gave me so many fun flashbacks. Me and my friend, who played at my house back in the day, sat here with me and we smiled, laughed and just loved this documentary. And we had some few beers too.

Really fun watching this. And to the guy who left a review, saying that Sega really wasn't that big of a deal... Dude, I'll challenge you any day LOL.

If you ever was a gamer or are a gamer, this is a must watch!! 10/10

A lot of people say that this documentary covers the story of SEGA, and while that's mostly true, it doesn't do a good job at it either.

Documentaries don't usually require linearity, but for something regarding the advancement a whole industry, they really missed out on it. Failing to cover the more important aspects from the Japanese perspective, and rather just villainizing them, and not to mention completely avoiding talk about the deal between Nintendo & Sony for the Nintendo PlayStation, and how they shot themselves in the foot.

The documentary also does not, even for once, acknowledge the contributions of Yu Suzuki of Sega into helping make leap into 3D gaming consoles, but has the audacity to showcase his creations such as Outrun and other scaler-sprite based games.

This documentary does not do the homework for you, YouTube videos does it better.

This should have been titled The Story of Sega. Its basically the history of Sega from its beginning going up against Nintendo and its ending with Sony.