Interview with Console Wars Author Blake J. Harris - Nintendo vs. Sega in the 90's
2,047 views · Published 6 July 2014 · 30:57 · Indexed 20 September 2026
Channel: Lon.TV · 2014 · Science & Technology
Buy it on Amazon - http://lon.tv/n52gn (affiliate link) Blake J. Harris, author of the new book Console Wars, joined me for a 30 minute interview about the book and the battle between Nintendo and Sega in the early to mid 90's. Harris is currently working on a documentary based on the book which will be followed by a feature film from Seth Rogan! Very exciting stuff. As a kid during the events in the book, I was one of the people that were marketed to by these companies. And Console Wars offered some great insights as to how these brilliant marketers worked to influence my purchasing decisions and take so much of my money in that period of time :). There are some great stories here: success and failures, underdogs vs. the goliaths, shifting allegiances, you name it. This book covers the end of the 8 bit era and the entire 16 bit era leading up to the time that the Playstation, Saturn, and N64 hit the market. Clearly there is room for a sequel and I certainly hope more of this story can be told - especially how Sega released the wonderful failure that was the Dreamcast and eventually started making games for its competitor's systems. What was most fun was looking up the many references to trade show speeches, commercials, and other video artifacts that are on YouTube. So much of the source material is out there and easily searchable, it made for a fun companion to the book. It's a shame that Amazon didn't embed links to this content in the Kindle edition. Any gamer of the 90's will most definitely enjoy this great read. I liked it both as a business book and as a piece of nostalgia. I am very much looking forward to the documentary and feature film. Thank you to Blake for joining me for the interview!
