( 18 reviews )
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Posted: Jun 29 2009
This is an accurate, in-depth, and complete review of the great history of video games. Being a 80's video game junkie, it was wonderful to hear the details Mr. Kent reveals. Also, it is an easy read as the style is pleasing and clear.
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( 0 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: May 27 2009
The actual title of the book would have been "The Ultimate History of U.S. Videogames Industry". The whole text is very U.S. and Japan centered, while Europe is almost absent: Acorn, Rainbow Arts and Infogrames, just to name few, are not even cited, while Sinclair and ZX Spectrum deserve three lines of text on the overall 500 pages. The point of view is extremely focused on Atari, Nintendo and Sega: Mattel Intellivision is dismissed in less than three pages, Philips VideoPac is completely non-existent. Many ground-breaking all-time classics are not present at all: Galaga, Moon Patrol, Dig Dug, Tomb Raider, Sid Meier's Civilization, Elite, SimCity, Command & Conquer, Quake... Interactive Fiction is ignored altogether: even Infocom's "Zork" is nonchalantly bypassed despite its million copies sold. The book is very well documented on various trials between industry firms, which may or may not interest the reader: but again, this is the history of the industry, not of videogames themselves: for this, you have to definitely look elsewhere.
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Posted: Mar 4 2009
While I was never an arcade rat (born in 1981), I can remember playing on an Atari 2800, and the love for console gaming has never ceased. It had been a goal of mine to finally pick up video games history book, and this is the one I chose. Before writing this review, I read through a few others to see if anyone shared my views, and they have. Like other readers suggested, the majority of this book is fantastic and detailed. It's all you want to know about the rise and fall of Atari, and their interwoven relationships with other gaming companies (i.e. Namco, etc) and prominent figures of today (i.e. Steve Jobs, etc). Also detailed is Japan's introduction into the American arcade market, most specifically Nintendo. No detail is left out. I loved reading about the work atmosphere of early Atari, how they made more money than they knew what to do with in such a short amount of time, and the crucial decisions they made early on to advance the arcade and home video game market. It's really hard to get a feel on whether Nolan Bushnell was a genius or simply lucky. Also great were the risks that Nintendo made to break into the American market, along with their determined positioning behind the team of Arakawa and Lincoln. However, when you get up to around the mid-1990's, the book falters tremendously based on what came before it. The last decade of video game history up to this book's publishing isn't well represented with the behind-the-scenes info that you've become used to from early in the book. Like someone else said in their review, it felt rushed, but it also felt as if the author wasn't anywhere near as well versed about recent happenings in the industry. You'll realize quickly that when you get to the launch of the original Playstation and Saturn, you've only got 2 or 3 chapters to go. While I wouldn't call this the "ultimate" history because of the lack of detail in more recent times, it definitely is the ultimate history of video games from their inception up to the 16-bit era. That's why I still give it 4 stars, because it's really good reading for those interested.
