Blast Processing - An Interview with Console Wars directors Blake J. Harris and Jonah Tulis!

Welcome to another special edition of the Renegade Arcade here on the RPC Podcast Network! This episode, Jacob and I had the chance to interview the awesome co-directors of the Console Wars documentary, currently available on CBS All Access! This was an incredible opportunity to speak with fellow gamers about a time which seems so long ago, and yet I still remember it like it was yesterday. Ah, the nostalgia. The documentary, like Harris’ book, is chock full of discussions with industry luminaries like Nintendo’s Howard Lincoln and Peter Main, along with Sega’s Tom Kalinske and Al Nilsen. It’s a veritable wealth of first-hand accounts and behind the scenes info, and it is just glorious for gaming history buffs like myself. Press that play button and let’s ride the time wave back to the early 1990s!

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I don’t want to give away too many of my impressions and takeaways from the Console Wars documentary just yet, since we’ll be discussing it on the next Streaming Wars podcast (and I wrote out my feelings on the book here). However, I do want you all to know that the film is a perfect hour and a half in length, and that it feels a lot shorter, especially if you’re invested in the source material like I am. It’s great to see members of that Sega of America team chat about their experiences with hindsight, just as it was neat to see Nintendo’s former executives wax nostalgic about their battles in the trenches with their upstart rival. While some animosity, or perhaps incredulity, may still remain, it seems that most of the heroic figures on both sides have at least a begrudging respect for each other, and in the end, their competition resulted in the evolution of the gaming industry, as well as exponential growth in the market as a whole.

In the end, Nintendo is still here, and Sega is, too, but in a different form. As Harris and Tulis note in their documentary, Sega would go on to create new hardware for a few years post-1996 (like the Dreamcast, my personal favorite gaming machine of all time), but it ended in disaster for the company as they eventually bowed out of the console game and became a third-party publisher and developer, even developing numerous Sonic games for Nintendo consoles in the years since. Nintendo itself has continued developing stellar games and producing new consoles, from the 3DS handheld system to the Wii and the current best-selling console of 2020, the Switch. Meanwhile, Sony and Microsoft are approaching the end of their current systems’ life cycles, and are knee-deep in preparing their next-gen console launch for early November, as we eagerly await the Xbox Series S/X and the PlayStation 5. The console wars, it seems, have never ended.

An extra special thank you once again to our guests, author and filmmaker Blake J. Harris and documentary co-director Jonah Tulis! It was a genuine pleasure to speak to them, and I hope that the planned TV series adaptation, produced by Legendary Entertainment and Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, goes forward smoothly! I cannot wait to see it! Much appreciation to my co-host Jacob, the Streamin’ Demon himself, for keeping us on track and adding in a unique perspective to the conversation! Also, I must extend a hand in gratitude to Kawaii Kyle for editing this podcast, and for screaming “SEGA!” non-stop into my ear as I write this. Truly, he is a man of many talents, and motivation is indeed one of them. Until next time, stay strong and be safe, Renegades!