Video game documentaries seem to be all the rage lately, as the age of the industry itself has allowed for some introspection on how it became a billion-dollar business with gigantic influence over modern culture. The latest is a look at Nintendo’s rise to gaming dominance in the industry’s early days.
Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story, is a five-episode docuseries about the rise of Nintendo in Japan and its takeover of the gaming industry in America. Narrated by Sean Astin, the story is also told by a number of people from the gaming industry, such as head of Xbox Phil Spencer and former Nintendo CEO Reggie Fils-Aimé.
Nintendo’s rise from playing card maker to iconic video game maker was covered in series like High Score on Netflix, but the Crackle series promises a thorough exploration of the Nintendo story.
In this exclusive clip from the series, Playing With Power sets the scene for the start of the console wars which were sparked when Service Games, or Sega, decided to enter the gaming fray in a big way.
As laid out in the clip, Nintendo was a bit “drunk on their own success” and didn’t really anticipate the challenge that Sega and its Genesis console — not to mention a spunky blue hedgehog named Sonic — would offer in the years to come.
Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story premieres on Crackle on March 1.