“Lots of controversy on this one, eh?
The problem most people seem to be having is that Harris takes what are certainly some liberties with the story, at least with the scenery and exact dialog.
Think of it like this. It’s the story of Sega, but the dramatized version. Not necessarily with made up, added-in stuff. But with elements that, though they might be difficult to remember, clear up the story or make it into less a catalog of events, more a coherent narrative. Maybe Kalinsky didn’t look out the window when he thought about leaving Sega. Maybe someone from Nintendo wasn’t wearing that exact shirt as described in the book.
Frankly, I appreciate it. So many non-fiction books, especially ones like this that cover a long-ish period in history with a lot of people and moving parts, engage in the mortaring of narrative bricks without being forthcoming about it. They cobble together lots of interviews and data, but then they are certainly filling in a lot of other stuff, or at best, filling it in with what the people profiled remember of everything.
I didn’t feel like it was a device used to heighten the drama or manipulate the reader. I felt like it was a new way to tell this kind of story, and I’m cool with the acknowledgement that history will only ever be as good as a collection of human memories, which is a pretty sorry machine when you get down to it. This will change in the future, I’m sure. I can look back at email, Twitter, Goodreads, all kinds of shit, and backfill my diary if I want to with exact words and dates and even times and locations. But the time period of this book just doesn’t allow for that.
The rating I gave this book is because it seems like I can’t get a book about video games without hearing the same handful of stories about Nintendo’s origins. They’re great stories. But I got it.
I just wish that every book about this stuff had a little footnote that said “the following is the story about Donkey Kong/Radar Scope. If you know what that means, skip to the asterisk on page X”
That said, lots of Sega history. Lots of it is focused on the marketing, and I would say that’s because Sega rose to power because of its great marketing and business strategy, and it fell when all of that fell apart. Fun fact, if it weren’t for the inability of the companies, and some individuals at the companies, to get along, Sony would have made a new console in conjunction with Sega instead of making the Playstation. Which ended up being one of Sega’s downfalls.
A cool book that explores a different niche of video game history.
And now I’m going to engage in something I abhor, complaining about the product of this book as opposed to the narrative.
I paid for the audiobook. Motherfucker is $40. Digital, no physical media $40. On Audible it’s motherfucking $46.95! Is it just me, or is that kind of an outrageous price for an audiobook? Tom Bissel’s Extra Lives is $20. It’s shorter, but c’mon. Console Wars is $8.99 on Kindle and $20 in hardcover. What’s going on with this goddamn thing?
I really wouldn’t complain, that averages out to like $2 an hour or even less, but it just seems out of line with what other audios cost.
But. Fred Berman fucking kills it. That guy was great. Big load to handle in this book, and I thought his voices were really good, differentiated enough, and he really knocked it out of the park.”