Five Things I Learned By Reading Console Wars

Photo courtesy Arcade Sushi

I was always a Nintendo kid growing up. That’s how it was in the early nineties – you were either a Nintendo kid or a Sega kid. The Nintendo kids were smarter, better looking and more cultured, while the Sega kids were bottom-feeding airheads. Obviously.

Despite my distaste for all things Sega, I was able to put aside my prejudices to read through the riveting Console Wars by Blake J. Harris. Somehow, it gave me an appreciation for the scrappy attitude that propelled Sega from a distant second into the video game industry lead – for at least a short time. Maybe the mouth-breathing Sega dudes knew most of these things already – but as a well-read Nintendo fanboy, I was unaware of the following five things before I read Console Wars. The book was full of interesting facts like this, and told in a humorous, entertaining fashion. I highly recommend reading it.

Nintendo was as ruthless as it was successful

When Sega entered the gaming scene, Nintendo had a stranglehold on the industry. In fact, the house Mario built owned 90% of the industry. They held onto their spot at the top by utilizing a number of hard ball tactics and bullying retailers. In several instances, Tom Kalinske and his crew at Sega were turned away by retailers from K-mart to Target because Nintendo had threatened to pull their product from any store that did business with Sega or other competitors.  Kalinske knew that if he could get into the biggest retailer around, then he would force all other retailers to call Nintendo’s bluff. So…

Sega rebranded Wal-Mart’s hometown as Segaville

Kalinske was leaving Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters after one of several frustrating and unproductive meetings with the store’s buyers, when he saw a vacant storefront across the street. There in downtown Bentonville, Arkansas, was his chance to prove a point to the retail giant. He immediately bought up the retail space and branded it with Sega’s logo. The pop-up store sold only Sega products and games and, combined with an onslaught of marketing on billboards and in local newspapers, the Sega Genesis quickly became the talk of the town. If he could convince Bentonville that Sega was going to be a success, then he could convince Wal-Mart as well. The plan worked. Soon enough, Wal-Mart caved and began carrying Genesis systems in its stores across the country. The other big retailers would quickly follow suit, and Nintendo had no choice but to back down.

Photo courtesy IGN

Sonic was designed as an amalgam of Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat

Sonic went through several iterations during his inception before becoming the blue blur. After scrapping a design that would turn into the series’ main antagonist, Dr. Robotnik, Sega artist Naoto Ohshima settled on a final design inspired by a couple classic cartoon characters. He combined the lower half of Felix the Cat with the smile and eyes of Mickey Mouse, added spiky hair and used the Sega logo blue to create the classic character. Though Kalinske and his team were immediately convinced this was the perfect design for their company mascot, it took several tries to convince Sega of Japan.

Sonic 2’sday is the reason games are released on Tuesdays

Nowadays it’s commonplace for retail games to release on Tuesdays. But in the early days, games were released whenever they arrived at the store. Oftentimes, a game would sit on shelves for days before fans even knew it was available. Sega’s marketing guru, Al Nilsen, wanted the release of Sonic 2 to be an event that people would look forward to and something of a holiday for fans of the series. So Sega’s head of PR, Ellen Beth Van Buskirk devised Sonic 2’sday to be the first worldwide simultaneous video game launch. It was a rousing success, and set the standard for hype-building and blockbuster game releases from that point on – a standard that’s still followed to this day. By everyone but Nintendo anyway.

Sony was close to partnering with Sega on the Saturn

Everyone knows that Sony had been burned by Nintendo after the big N chose to partner with Philips –instead of Sony – for the sound chip on their next-gen system. That system would turn out to be the Nintendo 64, which was notorious for its limited audio capabilities. What most people don’t know is that Kalinske had been in negotiations with Sony’s head of Electronic Publishing, Olaf Olafsson to partner with the electronics company to make games for the Sega Saturn. That deal fell through because of Sega of Japan’s reluctance to partner with a competing Japanese company. Ken Kutaragi was then able to convince the executives in Sony to green-light the Playstation. The irony of the entire story is that after all the fighting between Sega and Nintendo, Sony would soon win the “Console Wars” with their revolutionary platform, leaving Sega in a distant third place and Nintendo in a distant second.

And the rest was history.

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