The Ultimate History of Video Games

I've always been fascinated with video gaming history. Although I was born in the mid 80's, consoles such as the Atari 2600 have always captured my interest even though they were “outdated” by the time I got into video games. The neat thing about gaming history is that you can tell the story from so many different angles - different companies, different time periods, etc. Although I've read many books (and articles) on video games prior to this one, there is still plenty to learn - and there was certainly information in here new to me.

There were many things to enjoy in this book, but there were a few shortcomings. I loved how the book went in-depth on the history of the classic gaming era, but it seemed to go a bit soft when it came to the 8-bit and 16-bit systems. Arcade games are discussed thoroughly in the beginning of the book, but are ignored near the end. Nintendo and Atari have chapters upon chapters of history, but lesser selling systems (such as the Neo*Geo) are restricted to the footnotes. The book also tended to waste too much time discussing court cases. Now, although many of those cases were turning-points for the gaming industry, a few seemed irrelevant (e.g., Donkey Kong vs. King Kong) and were confusing and hard to follow for someone like me without a background in law.

Make no mistake, the first half of this book is excellent. And in the closing paragraph the author says he intended to publish this book in 1995 or 1996. I think, given the little coverage he makes of anything past the mid-90's, his book would have fared better if released earlier. A few chapters (mainly the ones concerning the legal disputes) I could do without. The book also had a bad habit of jumping around in time. It documents the rise and fall of Atari's coin-op division, but then starts over to talk about the rise and fall of the Atari VCS.

Bottom Line: If classic gaming history is your thing, there are better books to be read than this one. But if you want a broader look on video games that encompasses all generations - you may just enjoy this!

Executive Summary: Ultimate history this is not. It left me rather disappointed in some regards. That said, there is a lot of great stuff here, and I enjoyed it overall. 3.5 Stars.

Audiobook: Dan Woren does a good job narrating. Nothing spectacular, but then this is non-fiction so I don't really want spectacular. He speaks clearly and with good pacing making audio a good option in my opinion.

Full Review
I've been a gamer for almost as long as I can remember. My first gaming platform was an Apple IIgs in the late 80s. That was replaced by a Nintendo in the early 90's and that was my platform of choice until I got my first PC in the mid 90s. I'd visit an arcade on occasion, but I never really had the money to play a lot of video games, so home gaming has made up most of my experience.

I never played Atari. All of the early days of Atari was brand new and pretty interesting to me. I really liked the stuff about arcade games as well. That said, I felt like the early part of the book focused entirely too much on Atari. This book as a whole is told from an American perspective, so any involvement of Japan mostly is covering the impact of Japanese companies on the US gaming market. I'd have liked more history of Japanese companies than we got. I'd also have liked more detail on the other companies involved in the early days of video games.

My biggest complaint was how little Computer Gaming was covered. Sure the Apple II and Commodore 64 were mention. So was Doom. He made brief mention of how some third party publishers were focusing on Computer Games, but mostly as part of the story of how they were lured to make console games. Blizzard wasn't mentioned at all. Apart from the mention of Doom, id was ignored. Sierra Online, who was a huge part of my childhood barely got mentioned.

My final complaint is this book relied too heavily on quotes. It's hard to say for sure since I did audio, but it felt like half of each chapter was simply quotes of people in the industry. I don't really need quotes. I need the author to interview and research and present a narrative to me. The occasional quote to drive a point is fine.

All that said, I enjoyed this book. I've read a lot of books on early computers and a few things on video games in particular and this book covers a good range of detail from the 1970s until the late 90s.

If you're particularly interested in American Console game video game history, this is a good choice. However it's far from the Ultimate history simply because too many things I feel were important to the rise of video games in not only the United States, but the entire world were badly neglected.