![]() These include old Atari, the great 80s crash, Mario, Tetris, EA, Adventure Games, Sierra Online, EverQuest, WOW, Bioshock, Rockstar, Bejeweled, and more. It's even 98% accurate! :-) If you enjoyed our Crash posts, I highly recommend you check out this book, as it includes not only some extra insights there, but 18 other chapters about other vitally important games or moments in gaming history. This chapter covers loosely the same subject matter that Jason and I detail in our lengthy series of Crash blogs (found here). My personal favorite is Chapter 8, "The Playstation's Crash" featuring none other than that lovable Bandicoot, myself, Jason, Mark Cerny and various other friends. He seizes on some of the most important games, and even more importantly, the zany cast of creatives who made them. Given the herculean task of covering 45+ years of gaming history in a completely serial fashion would probably result in about 4,000 pages, Goldberg has wisely chosen to snapshot pivotal stories. This new addition to the field of video game histories is a whirlwind tour of the medium from the 70s blips and blobs to the Facebook games of today, with everything in the middle included. Overall, this is a fairly poorly-written volume but it's worth digging through for the odd new tale that you may have been unfamiliar with, such as why Kings Quest 8 was so different (in ways that many viewed as bad) from previous iterations in the series. There are other problems: the writing is punctuated with peculiar references to elements of the central nervous system and other anatomical features for no really good reason some obvious errors are present (Infocom's A Mind Forever Voyaging is referred to as A Mind Forever Wandering) while I've never played a Ratchet and Clank game and likely never will, I found the description of the games featuring the pair as blatantly "homoerotic" to be a bit odd and some of the chapters (like the ones on Will Wright and BioShock) are excessively obsequious. ![]() ![]() Instead what we get is a series of vignettes about the first videogames (that ran on supercomputers), the genesis of the Magnavox Odyssey system, the rise of Atari and Electronic Arts, the origin of the PlayStation, the creation of games like BioShock and Grand Theft Auto, and more. ![]() It's a pity because a book that really examines the topic noted in his subtitle would undoubtedly be fascinating. Instead the book reads like a series of magazine articles which make only tangential and passing references to one another. Goldberg apparently is not used to operating within the longform story format as he is not really able to construct a cogent overall narrative. It's not great, but you're bound to run across at least a few anecdotes of which you were previously unaware. If you have any interest in videogames at all, this book is worth a read. Grand Theft Auto * World of Warcraft * Bioshock * Kings Quest * Bejeweled * Madden Football * Super Mario Brothers * Myst * Pong * Donkey Kong * Crash Bandicoot * The 7th Guest * Tetris * Shadow Complex * Everquest * The Sims * And many more! Through extensive interviews with gaming's greatest innovators, both its icons and those unfairly forgotten by history, All Your Base Are Belong To Us sets out to answer these questions, exposing the creativity, odd theories-and passion-behind the twenty-first century's fastest-growing medium. How did we get from Space Invaders to Grand Theft Auto? How exactly did gaming become a $50 billion industry and a dominant pop culture form? What are the stories, the people, the innovations, and the fascinations behind this incredible growth? But as the gaming industry grows in numerous directions and everyone talks about the advance of the moment, few explore and seek to understand the forces behind this profound evolution. Over the last fifty years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entertainment. Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy-and passion-behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon.
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