[man in Japanese] Nintendo was our rival at the time,
and they had a powerhouse in Mario.
Honestly, Sega didn't have any characters on that level.
We were told to create a character that could compete with Mario.
Nintendo was like an impossibly huge wall.
You would think that they were invincible.
We were too outmatched to even feel pressure.
With nothing to lose, we might as well go down swinging.
[narrator in English] In the late '80s, all kids wanted for Christmas was…
Nintendo!
[narrator] ...a Nintendo Entertainment System.
Thank you! [crying]
And parents--
uh, Santa,
made it one of the best-selling holiday toys of 1988.
Nintendo!
But if Mario was the undisputed king,
an underdog was about to declare war.
For Japanese game maker Sega, mainly known for its arcade cabinets,
the battle was about winning the home console market.
[reporter] This year, kids and their parents
will spend more than three billion dollars
on video games and game cartridges.
[narrator] Sega had released its new Genesis console in Japan...
[speaking Japanese]
...where its 16-bit technology
was a giant leap from the existing eight-bit consoles.
[announcer] A scientist creates the ultimate machine.
At last!
[announcer] A machine that will give him the power.
Yes!
[narrator] With 16 bits,
Sega's Genesis had the power to defeat the Nintendo Entertainment System.
The only thing missing were hit games.
For that, they turned to this man.
I was very aware that we were starting a war with Nintendo.
And I knew that if we did it correctly, we could win the battle.
This is Tom Kalinske,
the general in Sega's war against Nintendo.
Before joining Sega,
Kalinske had already made a name for himself at Mattel toys.
But a few years after leaving Mattel,
Tom got a surprise visitor.
[Tom] I was actually on vacation
in Hawaii with my wife and my kids.
And Hayao Nakayama, the chairman and CEO of Sega Japan,
tracked me down in Maui, and he just appeared.
He came and he said,
"I want you to run Sega of America,
and I'm going to show you 16-bit technology,
I'm also going to show you a color handheld game unit,
and the reason why it's better than what Nintendo has."
And I ended up going from Hawaii to Japan with him,
and I was knocked out by 16-bit technology.
It was so much better than eight-bit technology
that I believed that, yes, we could take on Nintendo,
who had a 98% share of the video game market in those days.
[narrator] Tom accepted the offer to become CEO of Sega of America.
But there was a catch.
The directive from Japan was hyaku man tan'i
which meant sell a million units.
They had only sold maybe 70,000 units of Genesis up to that point,
so there was a long way to go to get to a million units!
[narrator] So Kalinske had to come up with a battle plan
to sell one million of Sega's newest console, the Genesis.
[Tom] So I developed a plan and went back to Japan.
We went into what's called the decision room.
And, of course, most of the people that I'm talking to did not speak English.
And I had to sell the battle plan to the board of directors of Sega.
[narrator] Kalinske's five-point battle plan would prove pretty unfamiliar
to the Japanese business mindset.
So I present my strategy to the board of directors,
but it wasn't going well.
And Nakayama gets up, and he kicks over a chair.
"They don't agree with anything you said." And he starts to leave the room.
I thought, "Well, this is the shortest career anybody ever had.
I'm done for. He's leaving the room,
leaving me with all these people who don’t agree with me."
And he turned at the door, and he said,
"When I hired you, I said you were going to be able to make all the decisions
for the American market,
and so go ahead and do your things that you've planned."
Now, it had to work, obviously, or I was finished.
[narrator] The first part...
was relatively easy.
But the next step of his war plan would rely on Sega's secret weapon.
[man in Japanese] I think speed was probably crucial to Sega because...
the Sega Genesis
was being marketed as a 16-bit machine.
It had much faster processing than a conventional system.
We could make the game faster than ever before.
[narrator in English] Having a fast console wasn't enough for Sega.
They needed a new hit game.
So game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara looked for a little...
[screaming]
...inspiration.
[Yasuhara in Japanese] We targeted an American audience.
We wondered what was popular in America.
And we thought roller coasters might be a very viable attraction.
Our program could already render loops and turns.
We decided to leverage the program
and make a game with a lot of acrobatic loops.
We made like a big roller coaster...
and then snipped it.
And then we added little surprises along the way.
[narrator in English] And with thrilling gameplay sketches in hand,
the final element Sega required was a mascot to outrun Mario.
[man in Japanese] The game was developed before the character,
then we created
the character designs that best fit the game.
[narrator in English] Mario was a cute little plumber in overalls.
So Naoto Ohshima wanted to design something different,
something edgy,
sleek, aerodynamic.
[Ohshima in Japanese] We finally settled on a character
that could run faster than anyone and could curl up and attack.
I think the first one was a rabbit.
Then we said something like a panda would be good.
But we thought it might be too cute and confusing
for a panda to roll and attack.
So we decided a hedgehog.
[narrator in English] This tiny, spiny furball was a rather obscure choice,
so Oshima conducted an informal field test,
which took him to New York City.
[Ohshima in Japanese] The goal was for him to become popular in the US.
Coincidentally, I had a personal trip to New York coming up.
I brought a board.
I drew out a hedgehog,
a human character, and another animal.
And I took a survey in Central Park of the characters that people liked.
Then Sonic came out as number one.
That's how I became confident that the hedgehog was the best.
[narrator in English] Meet Sonic, the speedy hedgehog
who would become Sega's new mascot.
And he wasn't just all smiles.
He was fierce and ready to attack.
[Ohshima in Japanese] Once it curls up into a ball, it looks unbeatable.
The needles made him look like he can cause pain.
To express some form of speed,
it was useful to have spikes on the back.
At the time, Sega's color was blue,
so we made him Sega blue.
I think a good character is
something with a trait that can be described in a single phrase.
If I were to describe Sonic in one word, it would be "speed of light."
[narrator in English] On paper, Sonic was fully crafted,
from his sneaky eyes to his fancy sneaks.
All that was left
was to see if he would fit Yasuhara's roller coaster design
like a glove.
[Yasuhara in Japanese] People tend to think games are a solitary activity.
But the game designer is always there behind the screen.
Whenever the game player makes an action...
the designer leads them on to the next thing,
encourages them with a reward, and leads them onward.
When he rolls,
he doesn't simply bounce back,
he bounces really fast on the spring,
and suddenly gets transported to a new place.
Also, we supply ups and downs in the game experience.
Once you overcome the challenge, you get a slight breather.
By adding these waves...
you heighten the feeling of accomplishment.
That's how we build games.
[narrator in English] And all of that work paid off big-time
when Sonic launched in 1991.
The game was jam-packed with springs,
loops,
and a nearly endless supply of gold rings.
It's quite possibly the most iconic game Sega ever made,
and gave rise to a new legion of competitive players.
[man] My life is like a video game in so many ways.
If you're competing in video game competitions,
in order to succeed...
your life must be a video game.
You make decisions like a video game.
You must play precisely and perfectly...
Do not make any mistakes
and be focused.
So... I got one shot.
And I have to make the most of it.
[narrator] This is Chris Tang.
I've been in the industry for a while.
He knows a lot about video games because his resume is long.
I'm a game designer,
game tester,
the voice of the “Boom! Tetris for Jeff” meme.
Boom, Tetris for Jeff!
[narrator] He's even a Nintendo World Champion finalist!
I was meeting girls, and saying, "Hey, I'm a Nintendo Champion now. What's up?”
The Nintendo championships was the start of my competitive gaming career.
But my favorite video game was actually a Sega game.
[narrator] So he's most known for playing in the 1994 Sega World Championships.
-[cheering] -Yes!
And it all started with an ad campaign.
[Chris] Sega had its own magazine called Sega Visions,
and they had this article that said,
"We're going to reveal the next Sonic game and there's going to be this competition
and 100,000 people are going to compete against each other
for $25,000 and find out who the best video game player in the world is."
-[narrator] And they called it... -[announcer] Rock the Rock.
[Chris] For the Sega Rock the Rock competition,
there were three elements that had rock in it.
It was going to be televised on MTV, which, you know, rock music.
They had their preliminaries at Hard Rock Cafes across the world,
and they're going to have the grand final at Alcatraz...
which is also known as the Rock.
So, they should've called it Rock the Rock the Rock, but...
I think two rocks was probably enough.
It totally rocked!
But I knew that competitions like this were rare,
and I was feeling really good about playing Sonic the Hedgehog.
So I'm like, "I'm going to go for this thing."
Turns out that, you know,
this Rock the Rock Sega world championships
was a real world championship.
So they had preliminaries in Japan and France and Brazil.
[narrator] And Chris entered the preliminaries in San Francisco,
his and the Rock's hometown.
[Chris] It was very busy. It was very crowded.
They had everything roped off, and they had this line of stations
that people would play on.
The day progressed and they'd have these elimination rounds
and you can't make any mistakes.
I was kind of laid back,
on the outside. On the inside I really wanted to win this thing.
Keep your cool and keep moving.
Make sure nothing hits you. And just be careful.
So, it went from everybody in the whole building
to down to two and I did end up making it into the top two...
where I made a perfect run and won for San Francisco.
Yeah!
They handcuffed me to this briefcase
and they hauled me off to a limousine and drove me to the finals.
[narrator] Chris Tang was advancing to the finals,
and Sonic was threatening his rival, Mario.
But for Kalinske, this wasn't enough.
Sports games, to me, were a very important part of our strategy
because I knew that the teenage player was really into sports.
So we needed a sports game.
And one visionary entrepreneur had already started tackling the challenge
of taking sports from the stadium onto the screen.
[man] I played football, I read a lot of books about football.
I even had fantasies about being a football coach.
I really felt like I understood enough about...
the mechanics of the real sport
and the probabilities of things
and I loved using statistics and leveraging them.
But, anything that was calling itself a sports game
was really just a kid's toy.
[narrator] In the early '80s, sports video games existed,
but they didn't really look real.
It was basically saying Pong was like tennis.
There are tennis-like elements to it,
but it doesn't have any of the actual physical properties
or strategies of tennis.
And I felt like, "I think I can make a better game.
Something more real."
And then I thought, "Oh, if you think you can do a better game, then...
go do that."
So in 1982, Trip Hawkins created his own video game company
and called it Electronic Arts.
[Trip] When I started Electronic Arts, I couldn't wait to do a football game.
I was really itching to do it.
I was just going to do it anyway,
no matter what investors thought about it, or anybody else.
And everybody just knew it was Trip's thing.
[narrator] Trip's thing was football.
But no, not that one.
[announcer] Here's the play. Quarterback has the ball.
And there's the throw.
[narrator] The one and only American football.
The most popular sport...
in the United States.
But football's really complicated.
[narrator] Which is an understatement for a sport where one single play
can unfold in countless different ways.
So, if I had something really tricky and challenging to do,
maybe I could work with a coach
that could provide additional knowledge and insight.
[narrator] Trip needed an endorsement from a pro,
someone with experience
and enthusiasm.
The left goes to the right, right goes to the left,
this guy crosses here, he crosses here,
they have no idea where we are, who we are,
where we're coming from, who we're throwing to.
Very interesting.
[narrator] John Madden.
-Can you hear me? -[narrator] You may have heard of him.
With me, of course, is coach John Madden, our CBS football analyst superb.
[narrator] Or you may have just heard him.
He makes a little basketball twist there and pivot and boom! The ball's there.
[narrator] But Madden wasn't just an iconic sportscaster.
[Madden] Unbelievable!
[narrator] He won the Super Bowl coaching the Oakland Raiders...
[announcer] John Madden goes on the shoulders of his players.
[narrator] ...and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
[Madden] Today feels like the second time in my life
that I'm being carried off the shoulders of others.
He had really kind of done it all in football, and I thought,
"This guy would be really great to work with."
As I was saying, I don't care what anybody else...
Hey, wait a minute!
[narrator] While his top pick was busy breaking through paper walls...
Like I was saying, light beer tastes great.
...Trip was going through paper reams
to draft a plan in hopes of sealing the deal with Madden.
[Trip] I had spent a lot of time preparing a 60-page design document
and a dossier of several pages of questions I wanted to ask him
including the question about seven-on-seven football,
because the machines of that time were eight-bit
and the memory was limited to have a real 11-on-11 football game.
So I know John knows about seven-on-seven,
where its really more about executing the plays.
And I just thought I'd run it by him to get his detailed input.
So I flew to Denver and boarded the Amtrak train with John.
[narrator] A train from Denver to Oakland...
[man] Have your tickets ready, please.
...a ride of more than 1200 miles, crossing four states…
Get one by the window!
...all because the tough guy is afraid to fly.
It's the only way. The wheels never leave the ground.
[Trip] And we just basically spent the next two and a half days
all day and night talking about football.
[narrator] They talked about pigskin.
[pig oinks]
They talked about kicks.
And Trip asked about his stripped-down version of the game.
[Trip] What do you think about doing seven-on-seven football?
And he said, "That's not real football."
[train wheels screech]
He needed it to be real 11-on-11 football. Not some imitation.
And then we all go, "Yeah, that's not-- Yeah, of course,
that's not real football. We're going to do the real thing
even though it's going to be really painful, technically, to get it to work.
[narrator] Now that Madden was on board...
See you later.
...Trip had to get it right.
This is it.
[Trip] That desire for authenticity
took what could have been a one-year project
and turned it into a four-year project.
It became known to the company as Trip's folly,
because we really bit off more than we could chew.
[narartor] And now, entering the field of play is star producer Joe Ybarra.
[Joe] I've always liked technology, and I like to solve problems.
I'm very passionate about building immersive worlds.
The big idea was to bring professional football
onto the personal computer.
But we weren't sure if this could be done in the first place.
So, as a producer,
I had the determination and passion to make this game work.
[narrator] And to figure out
-this complicated process... -[whistle blows]
...Ybarra took it layer by layer.
Or rather, sticky note by sticky note.
The layers of a football game are complex and robust,
so developing the technology to reflect an entire 60-minute,
twenty-two man football game with player statistics
and add infinite amounts of plays was really difficult to do.
You have to think about the players on the screen.
How fast is this guy?
How agile is he? How smart is he?
Now we have 22 of them, so there's 22 different roles.
So now you have them all working in concert together,
that's another layer, which is how do we do the team editing?
How are the plays executed?
What kind of cues do the user have?
What is the user interface gonna be?
So Madden is built upon the idea that we embrace these layers
and make sure that each one of them did the job that it needed to do
to make football seem real.
[narrator] And finally, in 1988...
the project made it into the end zone
when John Madden Football was released on the Apple II computer.
[Trip] Finally after a few years,
it started to really feel like a football game.
And I thought for an Apple II, this is amazing.
And so it got good reviews.
But the eight-bit machines are very limited.
When is there going to be a 16-bit one?
[narrator] And, as fate would have it...
while Trip was looking for the perfect console
for his next Madden game to shine,
Kalinske was looking to bring sports to the 16-bit Sega Genesis.
[Trip] The Madden game for the Genesis was fabulous.
Finally after six years, it looked like real football.
It was a really, really great game.
[grunting]
[narrator] And luckily...
[Madden] Look at this defense. The guys aren't there.
Get in there. Get my guys in there.
...John Madden felt the same way.
I can't stop them. I can't stop this team!
[Joe] The personality of John Madden
reinforced the professionalism of the product.
[announcer] Touchdown!
It immediately gave us credibility.
[man] We'll take the flip, the kick, the headbutt and the taunt. Brr!
Throw in that and that. Looks good, give me the feel too.
[narrator] EA would go on to become a powerhouse in sports games,
continuing to attract athletes as partners.
And expanding their titles to include basketball
and what the rest of the world calls football.
[man] EA Sports. It's in the game.
[narrator] But for some players,
these games meant more.
[man] I was never the best athlete.
But I had the passion for the narrative journey of sports,
and I feel you go on a narrative journey with any game that you play.
Video games afford you the opportunity just to start over.
You can be tall or short, or fast or slow.
In games, we all start at the exact same place
and have the opportunity to begin to play together.
I'm black and I'm gay,
and when you grow up African American and gay,
you're taught there's a different set of rules
that you're going to always have to play by.
For me, games were a place where the rules were the same.
You know? Where I could be my best me
because we're all playing by the same rules.
[whistle blows]
Madden was the first game to achieve the feeling that you were a part of it,
that you were one of the 22 players in the game.
There's an art and there's a science to making that feel right.
And it was magical.
For the first time, you could enjoy football the way you loved it on Sundays,
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
I was hooked.
There are lots of games I had a great experience with.
Madden was the one I identified with, that actually changed my life.
[narrator] Gordon Bellamy was so hooked on Madden Football
that it inspired him to chase after a career at Electronic Arts.
[Gordon] I had wanted, all my life, to design Madden Football,
to go out there and make the coolest games ever.
[narrator] And so Gordon threw a Hail Mary.
[Gordon] I sent my resume in and did not get the response I expected.
So I cold called every single person in the credits at their desk.
"Hello, I'm Gordon." Click. [laughing]
Dialed next name, "Hello, I'm an engineer from Harvard." Click.
-I called and called and called. -[phones ringing]
A guy named Jim Simmons picked up the phone
and gave me a shot at an entry level interview
to try to get in the games business. That's why I'm here.
[narrator] Gordon finally landed his dream job working on Madden.
And he immediately set out to make a major change
to EA's flagship game.
So, back then because of what the machines were capable of,
the players all had to be one race.
And back then, the majority of players in the NFL were African American.
[whistle blows]
I'd waited all my life to see players of color,
to see a reflection of myself in games.
So in '95,
we put African-Americans in the game.
And it was provocative...
because people had never seen
black people on the back of a major sports game.
They just hadn't. It was a new thing.
For marginalized people, a lot of energy is devoted
to justifying your existence in spaces.
So when you see yourself placed as default,
it has real meaning.
It matters.
[narrator] For Gordon Bellamy, Madden leveled the playing field.
Hut!
And the game also scored big for Sega.
[Tom] The Madden game helped bring lots of people into playing video games,
just because they wanted to play football on a Genesis machine.
[narrator] Next up, while Nintendo was fun for kids,
Sega wanted to prove that they were too cool for school.
[announcer] Suddenly, the sky is a little clearer.
The water is a little bluer.
The roads, a little bumpier.
[Tom] Nintendo was marketing to children nine to 13 years old.
-It's a dragon! -I know!
[announcer] Super Mario World,
it comes only as part of the system it was created for,
the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
So I was convinced we had to go after an older age group.
♪ Yo, he goes slow ♪
[narrator] So Sega advertised their mascot as the coolest kid on the block.
♪ Sonic the hedgehog ♪
♪ No fool ♪
[Ohshima in Japanese] Sonic didn't try hard to be liked...
[in English] Little brat!
[in Japanese] ...he didn't smile too much.
That was his personality.
[in English] Wrong answer, pal.
[in Japanese] He makes a lot of mistakes along the way.
He's slightly rebellious.
And of course he can run around super fast.
♪ Sonic ♪
♪ Sonic the hedgehog ♪
♪ No fool ♪
[Yasuhara in Japanese] He's not an all-mighty character.
He loses rings left and right.
He's just like all of us.
But he overcomes all perils.
-[announcer] Sonic the Hedgehog! -No fool.
[narrator in English] Sonic was definitely no fool,
and neither was Kalinske.
I knew fully well, though, if we got older brother
to play with Sega Genesis,
younger brother was going to want to do it too.
So that by going after the older audience,
we were going to automatically steal some of that younger audience
that Nintendo had.
[narrator] So Kalinske made some out-of-the-box guerilla marketing moves...
It's up to you to decide...
...taking Sega to malls...
All we're asking is for everybody to come down here,
look at both machines and decide for themselves.
...and college campuses.
[Tom] Most people aren't aware
that we had a student on almost every college campus
who was a Sega guy.
We gave him a Genesis.
We sent him free software.
And all he had to do...
was wander around the college campus and fraternity houses,
plug in the system and play,
and get other people interested in Sega.
It's not Nintendo, it's Sega.
That's cool.
And it worked.
[narrator] In 1994,
only one thing was cooler than Sega.
[voices] I want my MTV.
Too much is never enough.
[narrator] So when Chris advanced to the finals of Rock the Rock,
it was the epitome of cool.
And he wasn't alone.
I got $1000 on my boy Chris.
[man] Hear that Chris? Can't let this big man down.
[narrator] Chris had an entourage to cheer
and to train with.
[Chris] The night before the finals...
[man] This is our hotel room right here.
Mike's over there practicing right now.
[Chris] My brother and I were practicing my strategies
and what patterns would be effective.
[narrator] Strategic patterns, Chris' secret weapon,
which he has down to a science.
[Chris] When you break a game down to its basics,
it's a set of variables and decisions that you make in real time.
So in Sonic, the maps are very large, there are multiple ways that you can go.
You can take a loop to go to the right
or you might find a springboard that bounces you up
to a totally different area, and traversing these things takes time.
So you have to choose.
Do you spend your time going up?
Do you spend your time going right?
Do you backtrack and get the rings over there
or is it not worth it?
So plotting that out, having that all in my mind
and being able to figure out what I need to do in what situation
and risk manage all of that at the same time
is part of the complexities of the competition.
[man] This is Chris' day to dominate the world. How do you feel?
-Great, ready to kick some ass. -[man] All right.
[Chris] So we were up all night, and I knew the optimal pattern.
My friend asked me, "Hey, are you ready?"
I'm like, "Yeah, I'm ready. Let's do this."
[narrator] Let the games begin.
-[cheering and applause] -[Chris] They bused us over to the pier...
Here they come, Bill.
Twenty-five people compete for the title and contents of this Brinks truck.
[Chris] They introduced all the competitors.
[man] Right there!
And then they got us all onto a boat, and we're going to Alcatraz.
[narrator] Alcatraz: a great place to lock up thieves and murderers
like Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and Whitey Bulger.
But a place for kids to play in a video game competition?
Not so much.
Eventually, they put us all into a big room with all the stations,
and they went over just how the competition was gonna work.
[narrator] First, the 25 contestants play for three minutes.
Then the two players with the highest amount of rings
go on to the final face off.
[man] All the best players in the country are here.
Twenty-four global opponents. Giant TV crew. Mega-babe Daisy Fuentes.
-[man 1] All right. -[man 2] Zoom in!
[man 1] Don't worry. I got it.
[narrator] Must be hard to keep a clear head.
[man] Chris! Don't let nothing get to your head.
Just keep focused on your pattern.
But when it came time to play in my preliminaries, I was like...
[mimics explosion]
I had to be completely focused.
[announcer] The contestants are locked in position.
[man] Get ready, Chris.
[whistle blows]
[cheering]
[Chris] I was smart to play it safe enough so that I wouldn't get hit,
but not reveal my actual pattern
because people were watching me, and information is power.
Eventually they started eliminating people until it got down to two people.
This kid is insane. I'm telling you, this man built the machine.
[Chris] It was me...
and the guy from Boston. He got a higher score than me,
so I knew I was up against someone who was really good.
These are the two heading for the finals in the big house.
[man] This is it!
It's the playoffs now.
There are the two. Just the combat zone.
[Chris] So, eventually, we went out to the finals.
All right, this is the final stage of the greatest
international video game challenge of the 21st century.
[Chris] We got three minutes to get as many rings as we can.
I had to get more rings than the other guy.
[man] The other guy's nervous, uh-oh.
Let the games begin!
[airhorn sounds]
[man] All right, here's Chris, right here.
[Chris] Before, I didn't want to reveal the final form of my pattern.
But now, since there's just one run off,
I'll do my final pattern right out the gate.
[cheering]
[man] Go, Chris, go! Go all out.
[Daisy] Chris is still ahead by just a few-- Now they're tied!
Whoa!
[man] Damn!
[Chris] At one point, I was worried
that the other guy was scoring better than I was scoring.
[Daisy] Mark is on a roll.
[Chris] But at about seven seconds, I hit pause,
looked at his screen to confirm what his ring count was.
[crowd] Three, two, one!
[man] Yes! Yes!
Yes! He got him!
[cheering]
[Chris] I did this awesome, like, victory roar, "Yeah!"
and on MTV they put that into slow motion and it's like this iconic thing.
[man] The Sega World Champion!
Yeah!
[Daisy] $25,000! What are you gonna do now?
Buy games, play! Play! Play! Play!
It was a real emotional, really thrilling moment,
and Sega said they were going to find out
who the best video game player in the world was.
I guess I'm the best video game player in the world?
At least according to Sega, which is kind of cool.
[cheering]
[Chris] It's one of the greatest moments of my life,
and I'm glad I get to tell the story about it.
[narrator] Chris Tang's story is a testimony to Sega's cool victory.
But to really bring it home, Sega started a bold marketing campaign,
which wasn't without some sassiness.
We had great commercials.
But I had to be very certain that we could make fun of them
in a way that was enjoyable.
-♪ Genesis does ♪ -[announcer] Sixteen bits.
[Tom] We had a good line.
"Genesis does what Nintendon't."
-♪ Genesis ♪ -[announcer] Does.
-♪ Genesis does ♪ -[announcer] What Nintendon't.
Eventually I didn’t feel the advertising was aggressive enough
or clever enough,
and I wanted to take it further.
So one of the commercials that I loved was
we put Genesis on the back of a race car.
And we had Nintendo on the back of an old milk truck
that smoked and was very slow,
and off they went and, of course,
the Formula car left Nintendo in the dust.
[tires screech]
Sega!
And every commercial ended with "Sega!"
[man] Sega! Sega!
It was fun to say, it was fun to yell.
[man] Sega! Sega!
-People enjoyed it. -[man] Sega! Sega!
They got the humor of it.
[man] Sega! Sega!
-You'd see kids screaming, "Sega!" -[man] Sega! Sega!
-It woke up Nintendo. -Sega!
They realized that we were a real competitor, and it did explode. I mean,
every kid on the block became either "I'm a Nintendo kid,"
or "I'm a Sega kid."
I think I'd rather play Genesis.
Sega's got more better games.
I think it's pretty cool.
[narrator] Kalinske's battle plan worked.
And in the early '90s,
Sega was outselling the once-unbeatable Nintendo.
I heard Matt got a Sega Genesis.
[doorbell rings]
I heard Matt got a Sega Genesis.
[narrator] But beyond the commercial take-downs...
Well, I guess one more is okay.
...and all the corporate posturing...
[announcer] Now there's a wack!
...the console war expanded gaming into entirely new genres
and caught the eye of new audiences.
Video games weren't just for kids anymore.
I'm a video game addict.
I'm always playing it and sitting by the TV.
[narrator] But with anything that gains a more mature audience,
things inevitably get
violent, gory...
-[screaming] -...and outright disturbing.