An Illustrated History of 151 Video Games

Wonderful book on the evolution of video games
This is a wonderful book that looks at the evolution of video games over the last few decades.I can sense the nostalgia when reading about the games that I used to play, and the consoles that I owned. This book covers in chronological order, selected video games and the consoles that were released since the early 1970s. The first game in the book is Computer Space, something I’ve never heard of, and there are many other games I don’t know of that are also in the book, and I think it’s great.As with books that talk about video games, and list them, the criteria for inclusion is not going to please everyone. I feel that the 151 video games included are quite well chosen. There are a few games which I thought should be in but are not, but it’s not a big deal. Overall, there’s a huge variety of games included which makes for an interesting read.The text about the history of each game and console is informative. It’s obvious they are properly researched and hence quite insightful. Author Simon Parkin has done a great job with the book.The last game featured is from April 2012 so this book doesn’t have anything on the PlayStation 4 and XBox One. Again, not a big deal, but it would be great if this book could be updated in the future.Another thing I like about the book is, they included information on where you can play all the games, even the very old ones. They could be on the web, PSN, emulators or somewhere else, and all that is included in the book.Highly recommended to all who are interested in video games.(See more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

An enjoyable and interesting primer on video game history
An Illustrated History of 151 Video Games is a history book about landmark games in gaming history. Most of the images are screenshots. The final entry in the book is about a game released in 2012, so there isn’t anything more modern than that. Overall, it’s a very good video game history book, but it would likely be of limited interest if you’re expecting development artwork like in traditional video game art books.Quality of Physical Book – Average-It’s 8.5×11 inches.-It has about 250 pages of content.-It comes with a dust jacket with the same image as the cover, and the cover and pages are of average quality.-There don’t appear to be any blurry images or similar issues, even with the old images.Content/Innards – ExceptionalQuality of writing.-I think the writing is very good. It’s clearly a book for adults who are interested in video game history. I’ve read other books that are sort of defensive or apologists for the video game industry and they come off as a bit immature and insecure. The tone of this book is one that assumes you are already on board with video games and are non-judgemental of them.-I liked that the writing doesn’t feel forced. What I mean is, the author doesn’t spent two pages on a game if it’s only worth talking about for one page or less. Just because a game is worthy to be in this book doesn’t mean we need to wax philosophical or pretend that the games are more important that they are. There are a few exceptions to this, but overall I found the book engaging due to the pace.-I haven’t played all of the games in this book, but the author does such a good job describing the ones I have played that I have confidence that he’s also accurate about the ones I haven’t.Is there writing or insight from the artists and developers themselves?-Yes, pretty much every game has some sort of remark from the lead developer. It seems like the author really tried to include something from them on each game he covered.Organization, does it make sense-All of the games are presented in chronological order of their release date. Interspersed between the games are summaries of major console releases, and there’s also a few pages that summarize gaming history for the decade. So even though the book mentions 151 games, there are actually closer to 180 entries.-On each entry there’s a large number showing which of the 151 games is being discussed, the date it was released, and an image of the start screen.-It also includes where you can play the game today, which by now is often out of date or incomplete. For example, many games listed as being on the Xbox store are also on the PlayStation store. I also think it’s funny that a lot of them just say MAME, which is an emulator; so it’s basically saying “well, if you want to play this you’ll have to pirate it.”-There are some errors, but not many. For example, on the Sonic the Hedgehog page there’s a cool illustration of the entire first level; however, it’s actually the first level from Sonic 2.-Overall I think the book is well organized.Variety of images and image types-With regard to the images, they’re almost entirely screenshots of the finished product, but there is some promotional art for older games and some occasional development art. There are also some other images that have been put together, like all of the Pokemon, the Marble Madness levels, and some levels from Mario.Does it have what you want it to have?-That depends on whether or not you agree with the games that were selected for this book. The main idea is that each game is exceptional or influential in some way or another. This criteria does lead to the exclusion of certain well-loved games. For example, though Halo 2 was very popular and is fondly remembered by millions of people, it was really the first Halo that had a huge impact on the industry. There are certain series that rightly deserve multiple spots, like Metal Gear and Resident Evil. Resident Evil 1 essentially started the modern survival horror genre, and Resident Evil 4, among other things, pretty much popularized the over-the-shoulder shooting perspective.-I’m more likely to disagree with the inclusion of the more recent games. For example, I don’t think Red Dead Redemption or Super Mario Galaxy really did anything that hadn’t been done before and just as good. However, I think it would have been hard for Simon Parkin to know which games released in the past year would be considered influential down the line. I mean, if you had to pick two games that were released this year that would be considered as influential as Pac-Man, I doubt you could do it. Though I didn’t personally agree with the inclusion of every entry, I thought the content was very well selected and appropriately placed in its historical context.Aesthetics – Below averageArtistic/pleasant layout-As I read through the book I found it easy to see what was going on with each page. The pages look pretty crowded but I think everything flows pretty well.-I liked the little design touches, like how there‘s a symbol for each game and system, and the front and back covers have all of them.-Throughout the book the title pages have these image conglomerations that I didn’t find aesthetically pleasing at all. In fact I find many of them quite unpleasant to look at.Full pages of art?-Other than the conglomeration monstrosities, not really. Images of the systems usually take up a whole page, and there are some images that are pretty big like a map from the original Zelda.Anything else about the book like the cover, binding, feel, etc.-The cover of the book is, in my opinion, not very good. It feels more appropriate for a poster than for this very well written and considered history book. I honestly almost didn’t buy it because it looked like it would be a “simple” book rather than a thorough and interesting read.Any weird issues like tiny print or annoying layout, like having descriptions in weird places-Most of the “captions” under the images don’t necessarily have much to do with the images themselves. I think what happened is that they didn’t want the pages to be too busy, but they also wanted to have some screenshots and interesting extra information about each game. What they did was essentially combine the screenshots and blurbs even if they had nothing to do with each other. Perhaps they could have just had isolated floating words, or found some other way to incorporate the information. Though this was weird and makes no sense if you are casually browsing the book, I actually didn’t find it problematic at all as I read through it.Nostalgia/Affinity Evoked For The Game – Average-Several times while reading the book I was transported back to when the games were actually released. The book is a time machine of sorts. I think Parkin does a good job of describing the historical context of the games and why they were a big deal at the time, which is a part of video game culture. When Mortal Kombat was the latest craze, kids really did talk on playgrounds about how to unlock the secret character, Reptile.-I suspect the average reader will feel a lot of nostalgia for the games they have a connection with, but for many of the entries the experience will be mostly academic.Backstage-I think the premise of the whole book is to help people appreciate the strides that the industry has made, and the contributions of various creators. Here are a couple of examples:-It mentions how the original Street Fighter arcade cabinets had buttons that would do light, medium, and hard attacks based on how hard you hit the button; this led to a massive problem where the arcade cabinets broke constantly.-There’s a story about how Steve Jobs screwed over Steve Wozniak. Basically, Jobs took a $750 contract to create Breakout and would be paid a bonus if he could program the game more efficiently so it would cost less to produce the arcade cabinets – the more efficiently it was programmed the bigger the bonus. He got Wozniak to develop the game for him and since the Woz is a genius he was able to program the game in an extremely efficient way. Jobs ended up getting paid $750 for developing the game and got about a $10,000 bonus because of how efficiently it was programmed. He lied and told Wozniak he got just $700 and payed him $350.-There are some interesting insights into game design. For example, it mentions that Eugene Jarvis thought defending things would be more emotionally engaging that attacking them. Investors also thought the simple mechanic of rescuing humans in Defender was too complex for people, but the game made like 35 million dollars per week (apparently not much has changed – investors still have no idea about game design).-I really liked other little tidbits of information, like how Black Onyx in 1983 was the first game to represent health points in a horizontal bar. It’s funny the things we take for granted that someone, at some time, needed to invent and design.Closing remarks-I really like this book. Simon Parkin has an enjoyable writing style and has created something special.-Different people want different things in video game art books, but I hope this review has been helpful in showing you what you can expect from THIS book. For more video game art book reviews, click on my profile picture.

Super book for any video game enthusiast
Most of the negative reviews I’ve seen talk about the use of space on the pages and a few factual errors. I haven’t found any of this so far. It could be because I’m about 1/5 through. Or it could be that I’m not a hardcore enough gamer and wouldn’t know these few and far between minor errors are even wrong.This book is well organized sequentially. Unlike other game history books I’ve written, the author seems more like a writer who loves video games than a gamer who tries his/her hand at writing. The content is a good mix of background behind the game/system development and what justified its conclusion in the book (e.g. first time a certain feature was found in a game).My only wish is that there were more screenshots of the earlier games. But whatever, I can also find those online. Great book!

Read no further and buy!!!
Very neat book. It’s durable, very informative, and full of color. This book was a perfect gift for my 9 year old Gamer son!

It’s really interesting to read this book. It goes practically year by year and it really lays out the most groundbreaking games of that time.I would recommend this to every gamer (young and especially the old :))

Llega sin mayor complicación; embalaje perfecto. Es un libro no muy pesado pero si de dimensiones medias. Consta del análisis por cada hoja de diversos videojuegos que definieron el desarrollo histórico de los mismos (cuenta historia, características, particularidades, etc.) Juegos fundamentales (Según ellos…imagino) llegan a ocupar dos hojas (es decir la izquiera y la derecha al abrir el libro)Cabe mencionar que este libro contiene el análisis de ciertos videojuegos realizados desde 1971 (Computer Space) hasta 2012 (FEZ) por lo que se mencionan juegos de PS3, XBOX360 y WII, no incluyendo ya el análisis de juegos perteneciente específicamente a consolas de octava generación.

Very difficult to comprehend the content. Probably due to the writer’s writing style. I am avid reader including encyclopaedia, novels etc, but i found the writing style incoherent.