Console Wars

Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation

By: Blake J. Harris

Narrated by: Fred Berman

Length: 20 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

A mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video-game industry.

In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video-game industry. Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But all that would change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a former Mattel executive who knew nothing about video games and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat, and bold ideas of his renegade employees, completely transformed Sega and led to a ruthless, David-and-Goliath showdown with Nintendo. Little did he realize that Sega's success would create many new enemies and, most important, make Nintendo stronger than ever.

The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts: from living rooms and school yards to boardrooms and Congress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the United States against Japan.

Based on more than 200 interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the tale of how Tom Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punch line into a market leader. Blake J. Harris brings into focus the warriors, the strategies, and the battles and explores how they transformed popular culture forever. Ultimately, Console Wars is the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, give birth to a $60 billion industry.

©2014 Blake J. Harris (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers

Was hoping for so much more...

The rise and fall of Sega of America during the 16 bit era under the leadership of Tom Kalinske, is a fascinating underdog story. Granted, it probably helps if you are a gamer, even more so if you had been one during that time period, but who doesn't love the story of a scrappy group of ragtags who take a nothing and make it something? Unfortunately, as anyone who knows the gaming business knows, this story doesn't have a happy ending, which I won't spoil, even though it's pretty much common knowledge how the whole thing went down by now.

I hate to repeat what so many other reviewers have written, but I can't get around it. This book reads like a cheesy novelization of a movie, which is no surprise considering it's author, Blake J. Harris is a screenwriter who is co-directing the movie of this book which, if I'm not mistaken, was already in planning before this book was even published. Harris admits in the introduction he may have take some poetic license here and there and it shows. Everything that happens in this book is so dramatic!

It doesn't help that Fred Berman is performing the heck out of the text. I'm not sure how else one could do it, but he matches groan worthy dialogue with clipped, Comic Book Guy cadences and almost gets to Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany's level when reading Asian characters. The audiobook performance really emphasizes how annoyingly this thing was written.

So why didn't I just stop and hit the "return" button? Because the story is that fascinating to me. While I knew some of the details from years of reading retrogaming magazines and the book about Nintendo, Game Over, this was still very informative. I learned a lot of things, especially when it came to the origins of Sega's entry into the 32 bit era, and that was what kept me coming back.

The problem is, I have to wonder how much really happened and how much was that aforementioned poetic license. Certainly some things are a matter of record, but so many events happened behind closed doors and out of the public eye. Though I know Harris is said to have interviewed 200 people, the heavily dramatized style of writing causes me to instinctively question what I am hearing.

It would also have been really great to have seen more involvement from Sega of Japan. I haven't any idea how much Harris reached out to them and, if he did, it wouldn't be a shock to learn he was rebuffed. Still, without getting into too many spoilers, there are a lot of unanswered questions that only the people at Sega of Japan could answer, although it sounds like Tom Kalinske and all his team are probably still looking for those answers too.

The bottom line is, there's a great story here, it's just unfortunate the wrong person chose to write it. If you can stomach the unnecessary cinematic tone, and the audiobook performance to match, there's some good stuff here. It's just a shame that Harris couldn't have just written a book rather than trying to simultaneously make it into a movie.

Extremely disappointing

The early days of game consoles could be such an interesting subject. The pre-publication excerpt from this book I'd read (about the creation of Donkey Kong) was a great example of that. Unfortunately that excerpt was not representative at all, and mostly the book doesn't do justice to the subject. There are a number of minor problems, but two main ones.

First, the book is largely written in the form of cheesy reconstructed scenes with overly dramatized dialogue that just feels incredibly fake. Even the more factual parts are written with absurdly purple prose. It's just embarrassing to read.

Second, the book is bloated. This is only partly due to the dialogue-based storytelling method. The other issue is that the author hasn't been anywhere near sufficiently selective with what events to include. It feels like 50% of the book is detailed descriptions of the preparation of chickenshit marketing stunts with little apparent impact (as an example there was probably 20 minutes of detailed description of some kind of a Sega advertising event in 20 malls). Another 25% is human interest fluff with no relevance at all to the main story (often of bit players who really did not need to be fleshed out, so no reason at all for their inclusion).

Fred Berman does a good job as a narrator, but the original text is not salvageable.

My Childhood: Explained

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this audiobook to anyone who grew up playing video games in the 80s and 90s. I used to own a NES and an SNES and my cousin owned a Genesis (I later moved on to the PlayStation). This book does an excellent job answering all the questions I ever had about this awesome time in the Home Video Console eras.

What did you like best about this story?

I loved how the story played out like a drama and not like a history.

Which character – as performed by Fred Berman – was your favorite?

Fred Berman did an excellent job on all the characters. No one stood out as being exceptionally better (which I think is a good thing)... but I really liked the way he personified the geeky nature of Howard Phillips.

Just a bit too much Hero-worship

Any additional comments?

Ok, so normally I'm they type of person not to even bother with a review, but I feel this one needs a bit of a warning.

Let me preface with, I liked this book, and would read it again.The preformance is excelent, and even the over-the-top dialog is fun.

That said, This is one exceedingly biast book. The author seems to have a love affair with Tom Kalinske, and the hero worship can get a little grating.

"Hey guys, remember when Tom Kalinske predicted the coming of violent video games years before they happened? Remember how cool he was when he helped create the Nintendo 64 to spite SoJ? He helped cure AIDS y'know!"

I don't know how historically accurate any of the book is, but if you were to tell me that the author was Tom Kalinske himself using a pen name, I would not be surprised.

I do recommend this book, especially in the audio version.The performance is quite enjoyable. However, expect to be hit over the head every few chapters with how amazing Kalinske is and how SEGA's downfall was Japan's fault entirely.

If you love video games...

If you could sum up Console Wars in three words, what would they be?

Classic underdog story

What was one of the most memorable moments of Console Wars?

The ongoing battle between Sega of Japan and Sega of the US

Have you listened to any of Fred Berman’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Moments of laughter

Mostly Dramatized

What disappointed you about Console Wars?

It's told from an obviously biased (for the sake of story) point of view. Sega good. Nintendo bad. America good. Japan bad. Not only that, but this book is 20 hours long because of all the tiny dramatized, obviously fictional details. Which makes for good fiction, but bad history. This book describes the looks on people's faces and passing thoughts that supposedly happened over 20 years ago.

Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?

Nothing technical here.

Which scene was your favorite?

The fact that this is asking about scenes says a lot.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Console Wars?

I would cut the fluff and fictional drama. The actual story without the fluff is good enough on it's own.

Any additional comments?

I wouldn't necessarily not recommend it… It just annoyed me that this book is a hybrid. Part fiction, part non fiction. It made it hard to know what was accurate and what wasn't.

Racist voices, unbelievable dialogue

had to give this one up half way through. did not enjoy the attempt at Japanese-influenced English (actually heard the performer substitute an R for an L), and stilted, fake dialogue between people had me asking myself, "is this how you think people talk to each other?" before finally turning it off.

skip this for the Wikipedia articles.

Hampered by hamfisted writing and fictionalization

For the most part, console wars a top-down board-room look at the console war, following former Sega CEO Tom Kalinske's short run, where the scrappy upstart challenges the behemoth of Nintendo. It chronicles how Sega of America actually for a short period, bested Nintendo in its largest market despite being a failure in Japan. The book posits, if the console was the same in both countries, the deciding factor is/was marketing and thus gives a blow by blow plays of Sega's ad-campaigns. Along the way, we're treated to asides at Nintendo, Sony, Silicon Graphics, the controversy over video game violence, and so on. Often these are paired down, focusing on detail over dialogue and serve the book well. The tension or antagonism revolves around Nintendo vs Sega, and more so, East vs. West, with the predictable clichés that one would expect around it.

It's easy to criticize boardroom drama as it downplays the importance of proper titles, without Sonic being a good game (delivering unique and well-crafted gameplay) or EA, the Sega Genesis probably would have sunk. Instead, We're mostly treated to market survey data about Sega's perception by young gamers

Sadly the Blake J. Harris has taken the opportunity to create fictionalized conversations around events that happened, and often with stilted dialogue, especially revolving around Japanese businessmen. This might have worked to novelize the events with fabricated conversations if it wasn't jilted by amateurish writing. There's a painful contrivance around it, take for instance:

“Look, I know that I’ve already thanked you a million times,” Kalinske said, speaking more like a friend than a boss, “but you deserve every one.”
“Thank you, Tom,” Toyoda said, sounding more like a friend than an employee.”

The worst are offenses are corny and often cringe-worthy metaphors that plague the book, here's a small selection of some of the many (and I repeat many) recounts.

"Like an actor onstage who remembers his line just in time.”
“like a proud papa bear whose cub has just swiped his first fish out of the water.”
“like a band-aid that’s lost it’s sticking power”.
"like a bar mitzvah, graduation party, and wedding all rolled into one."
“like a child’s artwork on the refrigerator of life: kind of pretty, but also kind of pitiful."
“like a toy poodle barking in the face of a Great Dane.”


It adds an air of unbelievability to the whole affair which serves to discredit some of the more fantastical reveals. Was Sonic indeed a cross-culture creation? Did Kalinske truly entertain Silicon Graphics for Sega only to be squashed by Sega of Japan? Did Sega really blow a partnership with Sony? Was Kalinske responsible for sending Silicon Graphics to Nintendo? These reveals are fascinating but also marred by Blake's desire to create drama.

Lastly, the narration is mostly good although Fred Berman's Howard Phillips is god awful, sounding like a reject impersonation of 30 Rock's Kenneth Parcell character. It'd been intolerable but fortunately Howard "gee golly awshucks" Phillips is a bit player in the larger fray.

Perhaps in defter hands by treatment in movie format, the board-room drama might be hammered into something more palatable.

Great performance of a great book

I'm a huge fan of video game history and I've read a few books on the subject. This is easily one of the best. A must-read for those interested in the subject, especially those with a soft spot for Sega. Bergman does a great job narrating the book and actually manages to deliver a pretty decent Japanese accent, even if the few other accents he occasionally brings out aren't great. I enjoyed it from start to finish. I would recommend this to anyone interested in the subject matter.

90% Fiction

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

This book is for someone looking for a great story, not a factual recounting of events.

What was most disappointing about Blake J. Harris’s story?

The author was constantly trying to sensationalize every interaction. Sega Employees = Top Gun Characters; Nintendo Employees = Blind Japanese Corporate Loving Caricatures

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Yes... the story.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment. So much dramatization of obviously mundane events.

Any additional comments?

The author very loosely bases this book on facts. The story was painful to listen to. It is kind of like how Fox News treats political debates.