A fun and light read covering the Sonic Vs Mario (Sega vs Nintendo) battle in the late 80s and early 90s.

As opposed to just being a historical recap of the events that took place during Sega’s rise and fall, the story was told in a very captivating manner. The author definitely intended, or had hoped, that it would be converted into a movie. Surprisingly, the news that a limited series is going to be developed was announced on August 1st 2019, only a couple weeks after I finished reading it! I personally think that this book is better consumed through audio rather than text because the different voices and accents in the audible make a big difference.

The topics covered in this book are very complimentary to the rise and fall of Atari covered in Adam Fisher’s valley of genius. After Atari’s immense success in the early 80s, followed by a huge failure where they burried 3 million copies of the ET video game in a landfill, the seeds for the gaming industry were planted. However, several years of “gaming winter” took place where everyone had thought that the gaming industry was dead. Out of those ashes, Nintendo flourished and became the dominant player. Nintendo made the industry a multibillion dollar company, and Sega ended up being a powerful but short “blimp” the shadowed in Nintendo’s longterm success.

It was both sad and exciting to see how much Sega was able to achieve and lose in a very short period of time. The biggest lesson for me is how important quality and a longterm vision is. Sega’s quality and standards were lower, and they were trying to beat their competitor through strategic advertising. While this could work in the short-term, it is not a sunstaibale longterm model, and I believe this applies to any product or business. In fact, in 1993, Sega had 50% of the American video game industry and 15% of the Japanese video game industry. With numbers like these, it’s hard to believe that they essentially evaporated…

One of the most fascinating things about the book is how important distribution and relationship with retailers were back then. Before direct to consumer sales, the internet, or online purchases, major retailers such as Target or Walmart could make or break a company.

After finishing the book, I found an online emulator for the Sega genesis and tried playing a couple of the old games. All I can say is that I’m really glad how far games have come. In particular, the video game music in the early 90s was simply horrific…

Favorite quote from the book: “The name of the game is the game.”

===== Interesting Facts from the book =====

Tom Kolinsky

- Tom oversaw A LOT of things prior to his gig at Sega:

  • Marketing and growth of the infamous Baby doll

  • Handheld devices at Mattel

  • Flintstone vitamins, etc…

  • The whole “scene” where Tom gets offered to be president of Sega USA by Nakayama while vacationing on the beach in Hawaii with his family is very movie-esque. Whether or not it was true, I loved it!

  • On several occasions, it was repeated that Kolinsky always hid the bad news from his team and tried to put a positive spin when delivering bad news or changes to his direct reports. There were a lot of useful management lessons interspersed throughout the book and I really learned to respect and admire Tom.

Nintendo:

  • Nintendo stands for “leave luck to heaven”

  • The company started out by selling playing cards in Japan when they were illegal in the 1800s

  • Nintendo’s first successor after it’s original founder had passed away was his 21 year old son in law who fired all of the old management and made the company what it is today

  • For a long time, Nintendo was just a small company making arcade games

  • In the post modem of Atari’s “death”, there was a huge boom in whereby Nintendo started makings 10s of millions in software and birthed a multibillion dollar industry

  • For some reason, Nintendo always understocked it’s hardware and games

  • Nintendo’s Donkey Kong country was the first game to have an online launch and chat. It had 2.3M live simultaneous users online and done via compuserve

  • Nintendo had the balls to stop selling to target to stand firm on their return policy

Sonic

  • Sonic’s original name was Mr. Needlemouse

  • The creator of Sonic came up with the concept by overlaying Mickey Mouse with Garfield the cat

  • The primary reason Sega created Sonic was to compete with Nintendo’s Mario

  • The original version of Sonic presented by Nakimaya was a goth, with sharp teeth, an electric guitar, and a lady friend named Madonna. Tom Kolinsky persuaded Sega Japan to make him more PG13 for the USA launch.

  • Sonic Tuesday!

Sega

  • Sega originally started out as a coin operated photo booth machine to create IDs in Japan. They slowly shifted to video games when Atari started building arcade games. Ben Rosen acquired Nakiyama’s company when it started posing a threat.

  • In its early days, Sega invested heavily in VR, but it didn’t go anywhere…

- In 1992, Sega partnered with Disney to make the Aladdin video game. I remember this game :)

  • SOJ rejected a parternship with both Sony and SGI, which may have been a reason for its death. Simultaneously, Nintendo agreed to partner with SGI - an American company.

Retailers

  • Initially, Walmart was too afraid to sell sega console in its stored because Nintendo accounted for 10% of their profits

  • Due to the difficulty of logistics in the early 90s, there was never a specific date for game release. Inventory simply started showing within some time range.

  • Nintendo owners would buy a console, use it for several years and then try to return it when a new version came out. This led to a long battle between retailers such as Target, who have liberal return policies.

  • Nintendo never allowed its retailers to markdown their products unless they did it at their own cost

Politics

There was so much politics and bureaucracy throughout the book that it almost made me want to gag…

  • The creator of sonic quit SOJ because he had no recognition, no compensation, and a very small team… He ultimately joined SOA to build the sequel on much better terms.

  • Sega was sponsoring an event on aids prevention just to raise the profile for the company

  • Sega hosted an event for all retailers at Boca Raton to get on everyone’s “good side”

  • The whole Japanese board often disagreed with Tom’s ideas (lose money on hardware, give away sonic for free, target everyone other than kids, etc…) but Nakiyama had his back