Console Wars documentary gives Sega and Nintendo’s epic battle visual context

Console Wars was a hit book, and now it’s a documentary. It tells the story of Sega and Nintendo’s fight for gaming dominance in the ’90s, which is really more a tale of marketing than anything else. And it’s a fascinating one.

The Console Wars documentary is available through the CBS All Access subscription service, and I got an advance screening. At just over 90 minutes, this film doesn’t have the depth of the book. It’s more concerned with entertaining than educating, and it’s content to let the story unfold through the words of the people that were part of the saga (you won’t get any Ken Burns-style narration here). But the documentary does have a significant advantage over its source material — visual context.