Customer Reviews

High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I agree with those who love this book to pieces and also those who find serious fault with it. The fact is, it's really really nice in a lot of ways. I love the layout, the lavish color photography, etc. And it does TRY to cover everything. Unfortunately, there are just a few too many holes for my liking, and a few too many things that were just glossed over. First of all, it's really annoying to me how they insert this 120 page section on the history of individual computer game companies, one after another, into the middle of an otherwise mixed, chronological history. While computer game history suffers from such less-than-optimal organization, console game history suffers from a lack of sufficiently extensive coverage to begin with. Certain MAJOR consoles don't even get a passing reference; for example, the Magnavox Odyssey 2. It was the sole major competitor for the Atari VCS for two or three years, but according to this book it might as well have never existed. Various other consoles, also, are completely absent or get barely any coverage, particularly those of the 90s. You like arcade game history? Great, you'll be totally satisfied as long as you think arcade games disappeared from the face of the earth after 1985.

Anyway, I have my problems with the book, but I don't regret buying it, not for a second. It's still really really nice to have and page through, and covers a lot of good stuff impeccably.

I received this book from a dear friend and was absolutely overwhelmed by how beautifully well laid out it was. The history of electronic games is well documented and shows how far we have come from the days of "Pong!". For those of you into computer games or arcade games, this is a definite "history" book about our hobby. My personal odyssey began with the Atari 2600 game system, followed by the Atari PC, Apple Macintosh and finally the IBM PC. As I read through the book I was taken back to how fun the games were back then. Memories of playing games from new game companies back then such as Broderbund, Lucasarts and now defunct Origin came rushing back. The endless hours that I spent playing "M.U.L.E." and "Rescue on Fractalus" brought a smile to my face as I saw each game talked about in the book. Reading about the pioneers such as Lord British and his star rising in the gaming scene was quite informative and entertaining. If you grew up playing games on an Amiga or Commodore 64 or an Atari 2600 you will want to get this book to show your kids what it was like before 3D graphics and virtual reality! I will treasure this book for as long as I live!

Well...that's what I was looking for...a complete sum of history of videogames in a cool book..without the need to buy a 3000 pages encyclopedia.
I'm a 36 year old guy..I had a VCS 2600 , Intellivision and other consoles..and was a teenage arcades fan, and I found in this book all the glittering past that I still recall. Many photos, many particulars, stories, adds and much more materials than I could believe. The book is the right size, it's HEAVY and it has a great "touch" feeling..
You cannot miss this book if you were mad for arcades and consoles. And if you still recall it...you still are mad for that ! :-)
Recommended for nostalgics like me...and keep it aside your pac man original arcade in the living room..to astonish better your friends :-)

....
This book may seem a little pricey, but it's worth it. It covers an incredible amount of information (albeit not in the depth some might want)-But the thing that allows it to rise above in my opinion is the high quality, HUGE range of photographs, some very rare. As games are a visual medium, this is important to me. Home games or arcade games, both are covered well, and the beautiful layout will have you returning to this book again and again.
The 'Ultimate Guide to video games' (Also available) goes into greater details, but has very few photos-I prefer this, but I would recommend both to any game fan, as both are excellent, and together they make a fantastic companion set.

Hi all,

This book is a terrific look at the games past and present that have shaped the video game industry as it is today! As the title suggests, much of the book is in picture form with many shots of games (video, arcare, computer) and other material of years past.

As much as I love the book, the reason I give it 4 stars is the written descriptions that accompany the book. I personally love history and wish that more written material could have been included. What is presented is adequate but I was left wanting for MORE background info!

As it is, the book is still a must buy for any video game fan or history buff. One also might want to check out "The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World" as well.

I had seen this book while browsing around on Amazon but based on the description, it did not interest me. However, after stumbling upon the book in a bookstore and having a chance to browse through it, it became almost a MUST BUY.

The pictures in the book are outstanding and are pretty much worth the price of the book. Classic game screenshots, boxes, and other historial items from the late 70's until the dawn of the current era of videogames (PS2, etc) are displayed.

The book only gets 4 stars from me because while the book title does say "The Illustrated History of Video Games", the brief written descriptions accompanying the pictures left me wanting for more (I am a slight history buff)

However, the book is still a great gift for anyone who perhaps played the games or is a interested in the history of video games.

This book has become the all-time favourite around the office, despite almost none of us being anything like hard core gamers. Just take a quick flick through High Score's pages and you will immediately see why.

I haven't played games for years. I've got Riven, two editions of Myst, once owned SimCity 2000 and kept copies of a 3D version of Breakout and a Centipede clone on the Mac for my wife to bang away at after a hard day at work. And a form of Dungeons and Dragons was popular on the mainframe computer stashed away in the Physics department when I was at art school. I rarely played, but I was impressed by the invention, the creativity so evident in games and gaming, although I do have my reservations about shoot'em ups.

Flicking through High Score brought all those memories to vivid life, and reminded me of the good times I had around computer games in the past. The book is an amazing repository of electronic games history, lavishly illustrated with full colour screenshots, storyboards and sketches, packshots, PR photos and developer group portraits, and all those games consoles, cabinets and computers that are now long gone but not forgotten.

There is a legion of fascinating stories, too, about companies once at the top of the field but now vanished, high hopes and dashed dreams, amazing inventiveness, and truly remarkable individuals. I have read and reread High Score many times now, and each read is as rewarding as all the others. This is a classic.

Having been a fan of video/electronic games since my parents bought me my first computer (Radio Shack trs-80); and having owned subsequent "entertainment platforms" ranging from the Atari 2600 to the colecovision to the Atari 800XL to the Commodore Amiga to today's powerhouse PCs and consoles... this was a book made in heaven. The book covers pretty much every significant game from the 1970s to today that i can remember and some that i had forgotten. A must buy if you've ever been held in awe by a video game in the last 30 years.

... Now that it's out and I've had a chance to see it, I'm disappointed, big time. It's not a huge book (300pages) and a lot of what's inside is either fluff (photos of game covers... yawn) or very derivative of other books that came out years ago and did the same stuff better. Maybe I'm just not a big fan of "illustrated history" books because I expect more from a book than a bunch of pictures that I can find online, and brain-dead thoughts on how nonviolent Pac Man supposedly paved the way for characters ranging from Mario to Sonic to... Lara Croft. Some of this stuff is just insultingly bad. And useless as a history of games.

What little there is on consoles is hugely inaccurate and probably tossed-in as an afterthought to make this book appealing. A few huge inaccuracies in stuff about the Saturn ("built-in modem?" "flagship title at launch: NiGHTS?" "Virtua Fighter 3 for Saturn," "Yuki Naka?" Huh?) and other systems make for unintentionally humorous reading. One page a piece on game consoles like the PlayStation? N64? But 2/3 of a page for a picture of the cover of Duke Nukem? And how ridiculous is it that these guys keep quoting themselves and patting themselves on the back over and over again.

I wanted to give this book one star because it is so sloppy, but it has decent work on computer game companies, if that's what you want, and a few decent pictures, but I want an accurate book about games. This is not it. Not by a longshot.

A beautiful, magnificent book chock full of sumptious photographs, not just of the games, but of the surrounding artifacts, too: advertisements, sell sheets, internal documents, Atari's trademark registration certificate, Ed Logg's design sketches for Asteroids, bits of design documents of unreleased games, Al Alcorn's hand-wired home Pong protoype...

There are also plenty of behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

Of course, text-wise, there's not as much detail here as you would find in books like Game Over or The Last Quarter, but it's a terrific (essential, even) visual companion to those two excellent books. Plus, it covers more of the *computer* gaming side of the industry than the other videogame history books I've read.

The authors' love of the subject material shines brightly on every page. Highly recommended.