Book review: ‘Console Wars’ more about personalities - and that’s not a good thing
Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that Defined a Generation
Author: Blake J. Harris
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release: May 13, 2014
List Price: $28.99 (buy it on Amazon)
Like the marketing push for overpriced, overcomplicated consoles in the mid-1990s, Blake Harris' “Console Wars” touts itself as something every video game fan needs. To be sure, there are glimpses of deep insight into the reasons Sega rose from obscurity to superstardom, then back to obscurity once more.
But Harris' book, at its core, is a tale about corporate executives, many of whom lack the love of the medium that will attract readers, and its New Journalism style falls flat. A book that could be the definitive essay on the rise of the video game industry from the ashes of the 1980s bust is instead a bloated exposé about one affluent man's many gambles.
with Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
Anyone who picked up a controller during the 16-bit era will immediately gravitate towards Harris' prose. It's clear the author truly cares about his subject and wants to write a great story that details gaming's heyday. To achieve this, Harris adopts a hypersensitive narrative with Tom Kalinske, Sega of America president during the heady days of the Genesis and Sonic the Hedgehog, to humanize the colossal face-off in gaming that defined the early 1990s.
The need for story, however, leads to long passages of dialogue that couldn't have possibly have happened the way Harris writes them. The words are too kitschy and formulaic, the swearing too obviously shoehorned in. The framing devices – having Kalinske sit at a table during a party and reminisce – get in the way of the truly gripping story that lies underneath.
from 'Console Wars.'
In short, Harris is chasing a narrative advice to tell us a story his audience has already bought into. We pick up a book called “Console Wars” because we want the inside track on how Sega made the decisions it did running up against goliath Nintendo, not the minutiae of management that led to those decisions being carried out.
In the latter half of the book, Harris intimates that Kalinske is realizing Sega is becoming a company that celebrates style over substance. This is the theme of Sega of America – and Kalinske's – downfall. It is the most interesting undercurrent of a book that concerns itself too much in establishing narrative and not enough in exploring the ideas, values and cultures (America vs. Japan) that make the book an ultimately compelling read.
In short, Harris buries the lede in a story that doesn't need to exist. He could have achieved the same result, with greater context, had he left the biographic trappings behind. The same attribute that leads to Sega's downfall – telling a great story at the expense of concerning themselves with the details that make a piece of entertainment compelling – keeps Harris' book from reaching its potential.
Verdict: 3/5 stars
