A look at Blake J. Harris' Console Wars - Rambling About Games #3

Neoplasmic here, with some thoughts on Blake J. Harris’ excellent non-fiction novel, Console Wars! Nostalgic, informative, and fast-paced to the point that I could barely put it down, Console Wars recounts the years-long battle for video game industry dominance between Nintendo (the big N, perennially in control of the market) and Sega (the scrappy, edgy underdog). Whichever one you owned or rooted for back then, the competition between both entities certainly resulted in an exciting time for those of us who remember the first Console War. Suit up, click the link, and be ready to enter the front lines!

The war has begun.

The Hearing

Back in the ‘90s, a Democratic Senator from Connecticut named Joe Lieberman called for hearings on the so-called effects of video game violence on children, inspired by such titles as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, both of which were high-profile releases of their day. Well, maybe not Night Trap, which always had a cult status among players, but MK definitely was a big seller. So. the president of Sega of America at the time, Tom Kalinske, sent Nintendo of America’s president, Minoru Arakawa, a letter asking if they could work together and form a ratings board to protect the industry from these senators, who appeared to be on a witch hunt.

Apparently that also meant they had blood ‘n’ guts in their games.

Arakawa and his top lieutenant, Howard Lincoln, scoffed at this letter from their rival, and basically tore it up. Rather than answer Kalinske, they sent tapes of the most violent acts in both Night Trap and Mortal Kombat to over 100 senators, in the hopes of incriminating Sega, who had matched, if not overtaken, them in market share. Nintendo had restricted and even censored content on their consoles, including the NES, SNES, and the Game Boy. They also required developers to sign licensing agreements, and had control over cartridge manufacturing rights and even distribution in most cases. In other words, Nintendo was very controlling and conservative in their business practices.

Tom Kalinske and his favorite hedgehog.

Sega was the opposite; they were the risk taker and the tech-focused trendsetter. Their games skewed older, their marketing was louder, more in your face, and far more aggressive, and they used this image to gain market share on Nintendo, who had become known as the kid-friendly, squeaky clean alternative.

Sega was, in point of fact, cool. Nintendo was not.

Howard Lincoln goes to bat for Nintendo in front of those walking suits of human vapor that we call politicians, and puts forth the notion that Nintendo has always been about quality, and that they find the violence depicted in games like Night Trap and Mortal Kombat so offensive that they’d NEVER release such content on their consoles. In fact, they even CENSORED the blood in their version of MK, because WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??? The man sitting next to him, a bespectacled guy named Bill White, who had in fact been employed by Nintendo for five years and even became the face of the company for a time, until they forced him out because he leaked pics of an upcoming title to Gamepro. Rather than keeping them exclusive to Nintendo’s own publication, Nintendo Power, White did so because he prioritized accumulating press attention over maintaining control of art assets.

Howard Lincoln testifies.

White attempted to sway the politicians with actual facts. 80% of Sega’s consumer base was actually more than 12 years old, which meant that their titles naturally skewed older. In fact, the average Sega user was closer to 19 years of age. White was a father of two sons, himself. He attempted to use facts to sway them.

But facts, as we well know, do not do so well in the corridors of power, nor do they seem to edify the masses in the court of public opinion. Much like today’s world of “alternative facts,” baseless conspiracy theories, and Orwellian double-speak, in the hallowed halls of the United States Senate, White’s words failed to convince the suits that he was anything but a villain. Meanwhile, Lincoln disputed the demographic information that White cited, and Lieberman already called Nintendo “a damn sight better than the competition.” It seemed like the end, but White had an ace up his sleeve…

He pulled out a large, gray, bazooka-shaped peripheral known as the Super Scope 6, which had been created by… Nintendo. However, instead of telling the roomful of senators that, White slipped up in agonizing fashion: “I may also point out that Sega produces this product,” said the former “face” of Nintendo. And thus, the senators proceeded, unmoved by White’s remarks. Nevertheless, and somewhat miraculously given the circumstances, the senate committee gave Sega and the video game industry a chance to regulate themselves, which led to a universal ratings system, and Tom Kalinske gave Bill White a Christmas bonus for dealing with it all. “Combat pay,” he called it, echoing the sentiments of one Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

The History

Sonic helped propel Sega into the Next Level.

Remember the old tale of the Tortoise and the Hare? “Slow and steady wins the race,” goes the saying, and if there was ever a better example of that adage than the battle between Nintendo and Sega, I honestly cannot think of it. Nintendo was the tortoise in this scenario, naturally. The company was run by a wise and steadfast businessman in Japan named Hiroshi Yamauchi, who built up the business through the sale of Hanafuda playing cards and a strict distribution and production method. His son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa, was sent to America to manage the US branch of the company, and after the video game industry saw a horrendous market crash in 1983 (which also resulted in the burial of thousands of Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges in a landfill), Yamauchi and Arakawa launched a new, more sophisticated video game console in both territories. The Nintendo Entertainment System, or Famicom (as it was known in Japan), was born, and nothing would ever be the same.

After Nintendo’s success rescued and reinvigorated the entire video game industry in America, there rose a scrappy underdog to answer their dominance. This was a small offshoot of another Japanese firm, founded by an American ex-pat named David Rosen and a Japanese businessman named Hayao Nakayama. Service Games, as it was originally known, dealt in the distribution of penny arcade machines until it transformed into Sega, the company behind the closest technological competitor to the NES/Famicom, the Master System. Both the NES and Master System were 8-bit consoles, but one was the clear market leader, while the other was largely considered a failure. Nintendo had climbed atop the heap, and would stay there for some time…

Until, that is, a man named Tom Kalinske was tapped by Nakayama himself to lead Sega of America. Kalinske had come off a stint as president of Mattel, the famous toymaker, where he’d turned around their Barbie line of dolls by diversifying Barbie’s career choices and adding more of a “supporting cast” around her. With his experience in the toy sector, as well as his ability to take a flagging property and turn it into a top seller and prestige item, Kalinske was a good choice to head up Sega’s American office. Over time, he put together an excellent team of marketing gurus and knowledgeable sales managers, and soon enough, Sega found itself growing as a company, eventually becoming a thorn in Nintendo’s side through the first half of the 1990s.

The Play It Loud ad campaign.

In 1995, the pendulum began to swing in the opposite direction. Although Sega had seen remarkable growth under Kalinske’s leadership, a number of factors had begun to chip away at the company’s newfound superiority. One was the after-effects of the senate hearing, which had damaged Sega’s reputation despite the fact that they had spearheaded the establishment of an industry-wide rating system, brought about by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, or ESRB, which still operates today. In fact, Nintendo and Sega, among other entities, had joined forces and defined the ratings system together, for the good of the industry. It was one of the few areas where both companies had worked together on something, at the time.

Another factor was the fact that Nintendo had finally caught on to Sega’s gameplan, and began to reinvigorate itself as a fun company, as well as a family-oriented one. Arakawa, Lincoln, and their team started up a new “Play It Loud” advertising campaign, which combined Nintendo’s kid-friendly image with the in-your-face attitude of Sega’s effective “Welcome to the Next Level” marketing strategy. But while Sega pushed the envelope in terms of tasteful rhetoric (replete with loud music, the iconic “SEGA!!!” scream, and some edgy humor thrown in for good measure), Nintendo kept their eyes on the prize: the games themselves, and the fun of playing them. And in this case, they had the perfect game on hand, powered by the perfect technology, to hit Sega with a knockout punch. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

Finally, the biggest reason why Sega faltered: the constant in-fighting between Sega of America (SOA) and their counterparts in Sega of Japan (SOJ). While SOA had been as forward-thinking, cutting edge, tech-focused, and image-oriented as could be in an industry where all of that mattered, SOJ was far more conservative in their way of thinking. Although Hayao Nakayama had trusted Tom Kalinske to turn Sega around in the US, he hadn’t counted on the American branch of the company gaining all of the praise and accolades, and neither did the salarymen and employees at SOJ appreciate the Americans’ way of doing business. SOA was scrappy and punk; the underdog who fought tooth-and-nail against the big N. SOJ wanted to do things their way, and ultimately, after SOA had gained the upper hand in America, they tightened the metaphorical noose around Kalinske’s neck and neutered their operations. 

The Sega Saturn in all its glory.

Furthermore, SOJ kept shooting down Kalinske’s ideas and never took his concerns into consideration in the latter part of his career with Sega. When Kalinske had tried to push SOJ into partnering with Sony to create a next generation console that would crush Nintendo, Nakayama and his fellow executives refused. When he tried to convince them to work with Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) to develop a more powerful graphics chip for Sega’s 32-bit console, the Saturn, SOJ refused again, and went ahead with their agreement with Hitachi to develop a weaker chipset for the console, which came out underpowered at launch. For their part, Sony eventually became a competitor in the 32-bit console wars, as they launched their own console, the PlayStation, for $100 less than the Sega Saturn. As Kalinske had warned SOJ, the Saturn flopped at retail, and Sega had fallen from their pedestal just as quickly as they had climbed atop the video game charts.

Donkey Kong Country in action!

As for Silicon Graphics, well… Not only did they have clout in Hollywood since they built many of the workstations used to create the biggest computer-generated images that the movie industry had ever seen, they also reached an agreement with Nintendo, which catapulted the Big N over Sega in terms of cutting edge graphics and animation in video games. While Sega was having issues prepping new hardware and not listening to Kalinske’s sage advice, Nintendo published Donkey Kong Country, a game developed by Rare Ltd. and supported by SGI. Featuring awe-inspiring, nearly-3D visuals and the best animation yet seen in any game of its time, DKC tore up the sales charts. Much like Sonic had done to Mario in the early ‘90s, Donkey Kong dethroned the mighty hedgehog and Nintendo’s spirited Play It Loud ad campaign supplanted Sega’s scream as the rallying cry of a generation.

Slowly and steadily, the tortoise had won the race.

The Heritage

Having lived through the Console Wars at a young age, I had a familiarity with Harris’ subject, but none of the inside knowledge. I was barely nine years old at the start of the Nintendo/Sega battle, but I did know something was going down. The schoolyard arguments between kids who had an NES and a Genesis, and over which machine was better, were constantly being waged in my neighborhood. I remember when my parents bought me an NES, and I was over the moon. I must have been around eight years old or so. What a great Christmas that was!

Axel does his “Grand Upper!”

Still, it wasn’t Nintendo that made me a lifelong gamer, nor was it Mario who actually represented gaming to me. Instead, it was a Sega game, and a Sega console, that captured my imagination and made my head spin. Streets of Rage 2 for the Genesis was the game that stole my heart and soul, and though I loved Mario and Sonic and Pac-Man and many of the other stars of gaming’s yesteryear, I owe my game-fandom to Axel, Blaze, Skate, and Max, and that game’s groovy and amazing Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack. Sure, it was a simple beat-’em-up game--a Final Fight clone, if you want to be mean about it--but Streets of Rage 2 had that magical “something” that made it transcend its genre. Perhaps it was the aural nirvana of Koshiro’s jazz-infused techno-industrial beats, or the dark visual aesthetic, or the nearly-indistinct shout-outs that accompanied each character’s special moves. 

All I knew was that Sega had the attitude, the tech-savvy, and the fun gameplay that Nintendo had, but it also had that undeniable cool factor that just made you proud to be a Sega owner. Even now, 30 years later, I still remember the SEGA scream, the way that you had to work a bit to read the “Welcome to the Next Level” slogan on their ads because it was designed to make you do so. I remember “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t”! Sega looked into the eyes of a giant, and (much like Ric Flair did to Hulk Hogan) they stuck their thumb right into it. Then they pointed and laughed as they ran to safety.

Check out those Game Boy Color names!
Credit: Vintage Computing and Gaming.

All that said, I didn’t hate Nintendo. How could I? They single-handedly rescued the hobby I love from oblivion, and I appreciate that. So many of their games were safe for families to play and kids to enjoy, and so many of their characters are iconic and just as famous as most of the Disney stable of properties. Mario, Luigi, Link, Zelda, Peach, Bowser, Ganon, Samus Aran, Kirby, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, the Pikmin, Pokemon, Wario, Waluigi, Daisy, Toad, the F-Zero racers, the Goombas… the list goes on and on. Nintendo has provided me with millions of hours of entertainment and a sense of wonder that has lasted into adulthood, and I cherish that and adore those memories. 

Harris’ work on this book really affected me. It took me back to my childhood and my early video game fandom, and the sense of fun, discovery, and adventure that I feel has been largely absent from the current video game industry. Perhaps that’s just a function of growing up, and the way life eats away at that innocence through heartache, loss, and the sense of mortality that you feel as you age. I’m pushing 40 now, and the world in the early ‘90s seems like a lifetime ago, and feels like it was a very different place. Is it possible to miss a video game console, or the company that produced it? Is it logical to yearn for a hunk of plastic, or the corporate entity that manufactured it?

Or do I simply miss that time in my life, when life seemed full of possibility and I dreamed of who I could be? When there seemed to be all the time in the world to make the important decisions, but for that moment, all that mattered was to get to the Next Level? I don’t really know. 

Read this book NOW!

What I do know is that I’m grateful to Blake Harris for writing this book, and to all those who brought our dreams to life, particularly at that time. To Hiroshi Yamauchi, Hayao Nakayama, David Rosen, Tom Kalinske, Howard Lincoln, Michael Katz, Minoru Arakawa, Al Nilsen, Steve Race, Shigeru Miyamoto, Yuji Naka, Ed Anunziata, Ellen Beth Van Buskirk, Shinobu Toyoda, Howard Phillips, Peter Main, Olaf Olafsson, Bill White, and so many, many others who worked at Nintendo and Sega.

Maybe that’s what made me emotional, after all. Knowing that so many people made my childhood special, and I could never fully repay them for that.

See you soon, Renegades. Be safe.