Netflix's High Score

[Nz17]

I've been watching High Score on Netflix and it's fairly good! This documentary film series about the history of video games reminds me a lot of the old Icons TV series from G4 back when it actually made good shows about video games. So far I've watched three episodes. I like that the series spends not merely just a part of a sentence mentioning Jerry Lawson and his accomplishments but a considerable amount of time talking about them when most books and documentaries totally skip the Fairchild Channel F and its creator. Hopefully we'll get more seasons soon!

From IMDB:

"A Japanese playing card company called Nintendo enters gaming and hits it big with Donkey Kong, then later takes over home gaming with the NES."

Debuted 19th of August, 2020

Epiosde 1
"Boom & Bust"
Space Invaders and Pac-Man lead an arcade craze, while Atari's cartridge system dominates home gaming until high-profile failure sparks a downfall.

Epiosde 2
"Comeback Kid"
A Japanese playing card company called Nintendo enters gaming and hits it big with Donkey Kong, then later takes over home gaming with the NES.

Epiosde 3
"Role Players"
Inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, adventure and role-playing computer games introduce unprecedented levels of choice and complexity to players.

Epiosde 4
"This is War"
Sega's Genesis console and its speedy character, Sonic, hit the market. Electronic Arts kicks off a partnership with football legend John Madden.

Epiosde 5
"Fight!"
Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat give rise to head-to-head fighting genre, but the increasing graphic violence in games brings controversy.

Epiosde 6
"Level Up"
Nintendo goes 3D with Star Fox. Wolfenstein 3D popularizes the first-person shooter format, while Doom ups the ante with networked gaming.

Source:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12759400/

[Greg2600]

It was a bit "thin" but given it's short nature I was pleasantly surprised. You NEVER hear/see the Japanese icons yet there they were. They also stuck to the players of that era to speak, unlike so many lazy docs who just hire actors or YouTubers to read a script. Lastly, it was great to see Jerry Lawson spotlighted. I felt like way too much time was given to the game champions, mainly because that stuff was barely a blip on the radar back in the day, and beyond the NES championship seen in The Wizard, nobody cared.

[Tron 2.0]

What i got out of it was more a short summery for history on video games.It covers a bit but not enough this documentary really jumps around too much.

[Ryudo]

Didn't like it at all. The most interesting episode to me was bad. Genesis vs Nintendo. They glossed over so much and dedicated half the episode to some dude winning a contest. Felt pretty directionless. Try again.

[FoxNtd]

What drives me crazy is there is footage of Sonic on the Mega Drive... but it's a level not in any of the 5 games on the platform. No explanation or story attributed to this footage. Sonic 2 prototype level perhaps?

[gbpxl]

I might get around to watching it eventually.

The more Ive thought about it, the whole Sega VS Nintendo thing is such an overblown part of history in my opinion. Every console besides the Genesis was blown away by Nintendo's, and I feel like the main thing driving Genesis's success were sports titles.

Maybe that is a controversial opinion and I was only 3 or 4 when the main "Sega VS Nintendo" stuff was happening but the Master System barely made a dent in sales, same with Game Gear, Saturn... Dreamcast did alright at first but 1 year and some change on the market before Sega calling it quits is not a console success

It makes for a good narrative "oohh the console wars" but I think Nintendo had much deeper pockets and larger fanbase than Sega. There mayve been a blip in time where Sega outsold Nintendo but the latter had a major headstart with the NES and I think when the PlayStation entered the scene, it took all the wind from Sega's sails. Sega was done at that point

[Greg2600]

Historic wrestling feuds rarely last more than a couple years also. Back in 91, 92, 93, 94, the competition was real. If you were really into video games, you had strong opinions. If you were casual, you didn't care. There was no internet back then either to amplify things the way it did during the 360/PS3/Wii timeframe when this forum in particular was like ground zero for a lot of arguments. That said, I can also recall arguing with people about the N64 vs PS1 on really old forums and IRC chats and such. Sadly by the time we got to the PS4/ONE/Wii U era all anyone could do was laugh at each other's hardware defects because the games were basically the same on each console. The blandness these days is unfortunate.

That said, High Score really doesn't get into the "battle" the way that Console Wars (new doc and old book) does, and the full series is about far more than just that. I would agree with Ryudo that the focus on the gaming competitions made no sense but that was the producers' decision to I guess inject some type of contemporary linkage to it, gamer to gamer. The missed opportunity there was not to work in the gaming press, particularly the magazines, from back then, but instead they opted for the gamers themselves which I can understand since there's all that archival footage.

[Tupin]

Even in Europe I don't think there really was a console war, Nintendo was never really popular there and people jumped from Sega to Sony pretty quickly. Pretty much the only areas that ever had a lot of Sega sales were Japan and South America.