Papa Vinyard here, now here's a little somethin' for ya...
After the video game industry imploded in the early-to-mid-'80s, Atari was all but out of the console game, and Nintendo swooped in and cornered the market by pumping up their brand with things like tightly-wrapped exclusivity rights and the iconography of entities like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Zelda (remember hearing people referring to all video games as "Nintendo"?). By the end of the decade, there were two bad boys duking it out for the console throne, the 8-bit NES and the 16-Bit Sega Genesis (of course, by '91, Nintendo would have their own 16-bit badass, the Super NES). I remember the argument of which was the better overall system well (an argument reflected to this day by the new console kings, Sony and Microsoft), so I'm hooked by the idea of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg tackling the Sega vs. Nintendo melee in an adaptation of Blake Harris' Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that Defined a Generation.
Collider (via Booktrade.info) landed the story that Rogen and Goldberg have been tapped by Scott Rudin and Sony to write and direct a movie based on THE CONSOLE WARS. The book won't be released until August, but it'll be a nonfiction account of the competition between Sega and Nintendo at the time their 16-bit consoles were at the top. Rogen and Goldberg's first job is to create a fictional (or maybe non-fictional?) central narrative to hang the corporate shenanigans on. Hopefully, they don't get too sidelined from the main story, which is the behavior of these two companies, and not fratboy squabbling or a tacked-on love story (although I'm sure there could be room for both).
When I picture THIS IS THE END levels of banter about the 16-bit console wars, I start to get very optimistic of what this project could ultimately become. No word on whether Rogen is eyeing a role for himself, or even what kind of cast they, Rudin, and Sony are looking to put together. But if Nintendo and/or Sega gives them full access to their library, their copyrighted imagery, and maybe even some refurbished arcade cabinets, Rogen and Goldberg may be able to create the most potent homage to old-school gaming since KING OF KONG (or, at least, WRECK-IT RALPH).
Anybody who remembers the various console editions of ALADDIN, ANIMANIACS, MIGHTY MORPHIN' POWER RANGERS, or MORTAL KOMBAT excited by this development, or should that era of sprites and digitized soundtracks be lost in the annals of time?
-Vincent Zahedi
”Papa Vinyard”
vincentzahedi@gmail.com
Follow Me On Twitter
