Nintendo Documentary Series Reportedly Set To Air March 1

If you were worried you'd have to go more than a few months without a new video game documentary, worry no longer. A new five-part Nintendo documentary is reportedly planned for a March 1 premiere date, and it will be free for everyone to watch.

According to Deadline, Playing with Power: The Nintendo Story will premiere on Crackle, the ad-supported streaming service previously owned by Sony. Written and directed by Jeremy Snead and narrated by Sean Astin, who previously worked together on Video Games: The Movie, the series will tackle over a century of Nintendo's history and it was developed over the course of four years. Nintendo founded in the 19th century and initially focused on cards before moving into a variety of other industries. Its shift to video games came after nearly 100 years in business.

The series includes interviews with a number of industry figures, including former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime and head of Xbox Phil Spencer, as well as celebrities like Wil Wheaton. One other interview subject who will appear is Tom Kalinske, the former CEO of Sega of America who is credited with the Genesis' success and actually standing a chance against Nintendo's SNES.

We've seen no shortage of video game documentaries recently, including the Netflix series High Score, which chronicles video games up through the mid-'90s. The film Console Wars, which is based on the book of the same name by Blake J. Harris (he co-directed the film) focuses on the rivalry between Nintendo and Sega during the 16-bit era. Kalinske is the central character followed in both the book and the film. He left Sega around the time the company transitioned to the Saturn console. It would later release the Dreamcast and exit the hardware business completely, continuing as a developer for its old rivals.

We'll have to wait and see if Playing with Power is a success, but Video Games: The Movie was pretty critically derided when it released in 2014. It was called "unfocused" and took a pretty surface-level look at the subject matter, but with the new project being a five-part series, instead, there's a chance it can go deeper into what made Nintendo what it is today.