Release Date: September 23rd, 2020
Directed by: Jonah Tulis, Blake J. Harris
Based on: Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation by Blake J. Harris
Music by: Jeff Beal
Cast: various
Circle of Confusion, CBS Television Studios, Legendary Television, Paramount+, 92 Minutes
Review:
“Whenever you’re at war, you always hit the guy in the mouth as hard as you can. If you can’t hit him hard, you might as well not even fight. That’s the attitude in real war and it’s the attitude in business. You’ve gotta be prepared to take on the competition and win.” – Paul Rioux
When I was a kid in the early ’90s, I was all about Sega Genesis. Sure, I liked some of the games on Super Nintendo when it came out but Genesis was just my cup of tea from the speed, the graphics, the sound and the game selection.
However, I was also growing up and by middle school age, I wasn’t into the kiddie games.
This documentary tells the story of how Sega emerged as a video game powerhouse in the United States in a time when Nintendo owned the vast majority of the market share. Sega didn’t care, though, and they went all in, creating a system that was much more impressive than the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and honestly, better than Nintendo’s rebuttal, which was the Super Nintendo.
There’s no hate here, though. I truly loved both systems but Genesis had the edge for me.
Anyway, this was well put together, well researched and it features interviews with the majority of the key players in this story.
Rivalries in business are great and for preteen me, this was the greatest business rivalry I could ever care about. Video games were a huge part of my life.
So seeing all these key people talk about this rivalry now is pretty f’n cool. There’s so much I didn’t know about the behind the scenes stuff because I was a kid and all I cared about was being entertained by the games I loved.
Well, I was also pretty thoroughly entertained by this documentary.
Rating: 7/10
As I kid, I seemed to like Golden Axe II slightly better than the Sega Genesis port of the original game. However, as an adult, I see this as just more of the same with the only difference being a few new sprites for new enemies and new levels. Other than that, the graphics and the gameplay didn’t improve and this was very obviously just made using the original games assets with some tweaks.
Since I played some of the Golden Axe arcade games, I wanted to also go back and revisit the versions that were released on the Sega Genesis.
I dug the hell out of the Splatterhouse games way back in the day. However, other than recently playing and reviewing the first one, I hadn’t played them since the early ’90s.
Who doesn’t love Castlevania games?
Racing games have been around since almost the beginning. They have come in several forms over every generation of gaming. Here I am ranking the best ever. In some cases, I am just listing a series as a whole, as some of these have spanned generations and been consistently good over that time.
*Written in 2011.
Talking Pulp 
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