2.5: "Console Wars" - I Want To Play a Game.

In this episode of Bri Books, co-producer Rush Perez and I talk video games, nostalgia, and Blake J. Harris’ 2014 book, “Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation.” The book remembers the rise and shifting significance of gaming consoles in the home in the 80s. Since then, the console has moved from a box connected to a TV screen, to the screen connected to our hands.

Over the course of our chat, Rush and I learn we both used video games as a bonding practice growing up. If only I could count the number of times 11-year-old Brionna tapped at a screen door to ask a family matriarch, “Hi, can I come over and play the game?”

Remember, we’ve changed the pod name but kept the delicious pod flavor. On Twitter we’re still @bribookspod, now on Instagram and Facebook as @bribookspod. Tweet me what you’re reading using #BriBooks on Instagram and Twitter!

Years of working at digital media companies have netted me one thing: FREE BOOKS. I talk about the books my job gave me, and what matters outside the pages.

Show Notes

• 0:30 - Brionna and Rush’s first consoles, and how we got into gaming as kids
• 1:30 - A brief history of Nintendo v. Sega
• 2:30 - How game consoles acted as an “excuse to go into other people’s houses.”
• 2:50 - All together, alone (gaming online)
• 3:15: Brionna’s top 5 video games of all time!
• 4:30 - How “Mortal Kombat” continues to age gracefully.
• 5:17 - Do we recommend this book?
• 6:15 - Rush’s  (#OtherPeoplesPodcasts) #OPP podcast recommendations for the week: “Keepin’ It 1600”, “Undone” (especially this episode called “The Deacons”)
• 7:20 - Brionna’s pod rec (#OtherPeoplesPodcasts) #OPP is the recent  “Freakonomics” series “Bad Medicine,” all about the hidden side of the medical industry, especially pharmaceuticals and research.