The arcade-quality visuals lessened the soul-sucking reality that people were dying and America was loving it from the living room. And the overhead video from actual B-52s (not the “Love Shack” kind) raining savage oblivion on bridges and convoys - dead-ringer Atari, with a touch of Frogger viewpoint. The Apache view screens with 8-bit graphic crosshairs pounding Lockheed Hellfire missiles into buildings and dots that scattered like ants were spot-on Nintendo. The night vision footage of green rockets and tracers racing back-and-forth across the black skies of Baghdad looked an awful lot like the last level of Asteroids. This was next-level nationalism, unprecedented patriotism, televised mass murder with the feel of a dark sporting event and the lo-fi broadcast resolution of a video game.

This was groundbreaking stuff, honest-to-goodness live war, featuring play-by-play from on-site reporters and color commentary from retired senior military in the studios. In the early evenings of late January 1991, a fter local news and Wheel of Fortune, the majority of American families tuned in to CNN’s coverage of Operation Desert Storm, the first ever real-time, front line broadcasts in the history of combat.

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