That’s not a snappy title, but it’s pretty much what you get in this book. It is a “history” only in the sense that it concerns a roughly chronologic list of events impinging on companies involved in one consumer-goods section of the U.S. commercial economy. Relevance to any larger insights about the game-machine industry seems to have been a minor consideration; “juiciness” seems to have been the principal criterion for this book. A case in point is a drawn out tale of S. Jobs misleading his Apple partner about payment received for video-game related work: however, this incident seems to have impacted the history of Apple, not any company (or person) primarily involved in the video game industry. Indeed, it is not clear at all why Jobs is mentioned so often in this book, save that he later became famous for other reasons.

What you get here is much less than it seems: as mentioned in other reviews here, the scores upon scores of extended quotations serve to make the book much longer (not to mention heavier) than it need be without illuminating any of the points made in the main text.

What you don’t get here is what would make a history of video games per se interesting. Among the missing:

1. The question of why people play video games

2. Why people choose one game over another

3. The history of video game play (as opposed to marketing)

4. Information on fan groups or other actual players of games

5. Any research beyond interviews and promotional literature reviews

On a positive note, as a 47-year-old, I did enjoy being reminded of games I saw 25 years ago while strolling through arcades. Not recommended, even if you receive the book as a gift.

Rating: 2 / 5

I expected:

1. An accurate account on how the first supercomputer users were able to make the leap from research implementations to entertaining implementations.

2. An accurate account of the facts which lead to the origin of the first video game ever.

3. An account of how were made the most important video games: Pong, Space Invaders, Pac Man, Final Fantasy, Super Mario, Sonic The Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Doom, Virtua Fighter, and some other which were not just important in terms of public momentary success but as well for helping define the way video games would be made in the future.

4. A brief introduction on game design to basically understand the way the mentioned games were created.

5. A truly book on history, and this goes a lot far from financial history. An account on how the major games were received by gamers and the impact they could have had in mass media.

6. Full cover of both the Japanese and North American game companies, designers, markets, etc.

And, sadly, this is what I got:

1. Over 200 pages on the first 5 years of gaming. You can read a lot of information on obscure games developed by the friends of the author.

2. A special chapter on… Pinball games (?)

3. A weird obsession on Atari and unrrelevant gossip about Atari employees. In fact you have to go through 299 pages of information on the other businesses of former Atari executives and extra gossip and reviews of obscure games until you read the words “Super” and “Mario” in the same sentence

4. Self promotion of the magazine the author works in.

5. Adulation of the author’s friends in the gaming business. For example, some derivative games are given superior status, while more original games are hardly mentioned. For example, the conception of the seminal “Street Fighter II” is described in a hurry through two pages, while a whole chapter of the book is called “Mortal Kombat…

6. Almost no mention about the japanese videogame industry, which is unacceptable to say the least. The only japanese mentions that made it to the book were related with the SEGA, Sony and Nintendo executives along with tids and bits of even more unrrelevant gossip.

I never read accurate accounts on anything, just information thrown away, unexplicably transcribed court decissions an *lots* of interviews excerpts (which, for the most part, make more than the half of the book. I have to say that the interviews saved the book from total disaster: while reading them, you don’t have to deal with the author’s nonsense) and finally a lot of uninterpretated history dates and financial information absolutely prescindible because they normally lack of further explanations.

It’s clear that videogames are an underestimated field of popular culture, but history is history. It doesn’t matter if you write about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or the history of videogames, it takes a historian to perform such task, not a mere videogame journalist wich became obsessed with the Atari 2600 console (by the way, the author refusses to call it that way, he properly calls it Atari VCS, which is confusing, since three Atari consoles beared that same technic name).

This book is lacking, dissapointing and empty. It certainly is long, but it lacks of true contents and is merely stuffed with uninteresting information on videogame industry CEOs, chairmen, presidents and what their respective wives and/or lovers liked to have in restaurants and which clothes they used to wear.

This book seems to have been written by E! Entertainment Television. The author has no sense on what history is: he thinks that history of games is chronological review of games and consoles…

Just what happens when a journalist attempts to be a historian…
Rating: 1 / 5

It is not history, since the author makes no attempt to distinguish text obtained from interviewees from other source detail of events. In fact, there is no historical method at all.

There are very few numbers in the book: which is an horrific failing. The author has ignored all published information in the filings of quoted US companies. He has ignored all published detail in old US quoted companies.

Most seriously, he has ignored the data for all industry companies outside of the US. He knows nothing of the balance sheets of Nintendo, nor Sega, nor Sony. He knows nothing of Europe or Japan.

There is interesting detail on what is easy: legal spats between participants in the US.

These are serious failings because, as the author fails to analyse the profit impulse, his narrative fails to understand cause and effect. Does he think these companies are in this for fun?

Anything on the second hand market? No.

Ultimate? No. History? No. This book is a jolly story, no more.
Rating: 1 / 5