USA [2020] - 92m
Directed by
Blake J. Harris, Jonah Tulis
More info on
Console Wars poster


September 26, 2020


A terrible documentary. I'm old enough to have lived through the old "console wars", so I know a thing or two about the subject. Just leave it up to the Americans to make a documentary on three Japanese companies with an almost exclusively US-centric point of view. This doc basically describes what happened between these companies on US soil, nothing more.

The interviewees are terrible people (every single one of them), the focus lies on marketing strategies and petty rivalries instead of actual competition and the documentary seems more interested in juicy narratives and bold claims rather than facts and reality. The result isn't pretty.

At least you get some fun footage of classic games, a couple of gaudy commercials and a few hilarious takes on "the gaming industry ruining our children". The problem is that all this footage has little to do with the subject of the documentary. Just skip this one, I'm sure there are better sources on this topic.