Finally finished another book: Console Wars by Blake Harris.

This is a frustrating book. There's a really good history that could be written about this era of video games but despite some cool anecdotes and trivia, this book doesn't pull it off. It begins with Tom Kalinske's hiring as the new boss at Sega of America and primarily focuses on his efforts to drag Sega from single-digits market share to actually overtaking Nintendo, only to have all his hard work undone by his less successful, possibly jealous colleagues at Sega of Japan. On the other side, Nintendo is able to rally and eventually win the 16-bit war because its Japanese rulers were able to give some trust to its western employees, which paid off in the creation of Donkey Kong Country and Nintendo's partnership with Silicon Graphics. On the periphery, Sony is trying to get into the industry by exploring partnerships with both Sega and Nintendo only to be rejected by both and eventually enter on its own.

Most reviews have focused on the narrative style of the book and the quality of the prose. It's certainly true that I'd have to think hard about the last book I read that had such awkward dialogue and tangled metaphors, but that really wasn't the big issue I had. The problem is that I think Harris just flat out misses many of the really interesting parts of the story. After getting a quick start, I realized I was reading the book more and more slowly and it occurred to me that Harris is far more interested in recounting Sega's marketing campaigns more than anything else and while it's true that Sega did some memorable stuff, I'm more interested in the game and hardware side of things. Despite the subject, the book actually discusses software and hardware only in very broad, often downright vague terms, whereas the marketing campaigns are given detailed blow-by-blow summaries, one chapter after another.

The only games that get anything resembling real discussion are Sonic, Mortal Kombat, and Donkey Kong Country. All else seems to exist in a state of delirium, just sort of materializing from the Japanese parent companies and developers, at which point the American companies have to sell them with their incredible marketing powers. If you don't know anything about console video games, you won't really learn much about them from this book, which talks about how amazing DKC is, for instance, but never actually describes why. Same with the hardware - there's a lot that could be said about the pros and cons of each system but Harris doesn't seem comfortable discussing any of it. The SNES's Mode 7 capability is simply and only described as "a primitive 3D effect", and the book never bothers to delve into the sorts of debates fanboys used to have about the systems - better graphics vs. better speed, which system did which genres better, which system's sound was superior, etc.

TL;DR: book is kind of interesting but there's plenty of room left for a more definitive history to be written. Also, despite the hype about it being turned into a Seth Rogen movie, this isn't especially cinematic (and Rogen's forward is atrocious).