Techtite's Hardcopy: Book Reviews

"Of course, a book with this many pictures is often called uninformative. Surprisingly, the prose contained among the pix is not only thorough, though enhanced via the photographs surrounding it. "

---from the review

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Also available: The Ultimate History of Video Games. Click picture to order, or click here for full review.

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The cool salute to The Horde... I loved The Horde. It was one of those games ported to just about every system under the sun, though its video cutscenes were within a game released ahead of its time. If released now, people would marvel over how cool its Age of Kings type of strategy was, with creations of villages and the attempt of a farm boy to save each village he was sent to protect, season by season. The farm boy was played by Kirk Cameron, in a role offered to then-unknowns like Michael "Seinfeld" Richards and Jim Carrey, just before his big break in the movie The Mask. This is some of many amusing anecdotes on pages like #255, where The Horde is given the honorarium it always deserved. Cool.

I love this book; that's putting it mildly. Not unlike a cybernetic high school yearbook for the electronic gaming industry, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Video Games is a real thrill. Every one of its coffee-table sized pages (roughly 10" by 8", as opposed to the other way around) is filled with full color photos, some of which are hard to find anywhere! While not as literary as last year's The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven Kent, this book by Rusel Demaria & Johnny L. Wilson is a visual frenzy; in other words, it's strengths are exactly what has made the electronic gaming world so much fun.

Of course, not enough can be said of the informative perspectives within Kent's Ultimate History book last year. However, when it comes to video games, the fun was in the visuals. This book's authors obviously knew this, and proceeded to add nearly half a dozen full-color photos on every page. From those cool Activision high score patches, to the original Vectrex console; it's all here, in prose, as well as many perfectly preserved photographs. Equally intriguing is how sections are devoted to every major game maufacturer, from the video game underdogs that made The Vectrex, to computer game companies like Epyx, Electronic Arts, Broderbund, and so on. You'll be surprised how much ground is covered, even when so much of the book is devoted to photographic memorabilia.

Both modern and old game fans will love this chronicling of every major and minor facet of electronic gaming. Just look at how far the genre has come, when comparing the screens of classic Intellivision games (page 72) to Super NES (252-253), right up to the X-Boxes and Playstation-2 consoles of today. Along the way, arcade games are covered, as are computer games, handhelds, and even pinball machines. Of course, text adventure fans will love the salute to Infocom, which even at only four pages (consisting mostly, of course, of text), is a perfect preservation of that adventure game giant at their best.

It's the little people which made the genre, however, and I love the way this 328 page book covers them all. Imagic, the often-overlooked cult favorite of many old Intellivision gamers, is offered both its amusing back story (page 74) as well as great photos of their most favorite products (pages 73-75). Similar salutes are made to big names in te gaming industry, even when they weren't big names at all: Ultima game designer Richard Garriott is shown in a photo promoting his first attempt at computer RPGs, Akalabeth. Salutes to other major staples of the gaming world --even when you might not have heard of them-- are similar, and just as intriguing.

Of course, a book with this many pictures is often called uninformative. Surprisingly, this is not the case here, with prose that is enhanced by the carefully chosen photographs offered on each page. This is particularly evident in the retelling of Sierra On-Line's rise and fall, with pictures illustrating the vast advancements in adventure gaming the company helped inspire, while the prose tells the tale of how the company was founded. I was particularly impressed with the reprints of the company's original box art for even their first-ever games; a rare acquisition, even for the most avid surfer of eBay. Even the rare box photo for their long-forgotten R-rated text adventure is offered, where Roberta Williams herself --the maker of such family-oriented fare as King's Quest-- was shown in a hot tub "in the buff" (or so we're told)! Sadly, no chronicling of Sierra is complete without the telling of Ken & Roberta Williams final years of the company, as well as the 4-million-dollar money pit called Phantasmagoria. Well, the point is to be thorough, right? The point is, good and bad, this book covers it all, and the nostalgic feeling when seeing it all again is quite effective.

What's to become of gaming? Nobody can say with absolute certainty, though this book's final pages are hardly pessimistic. Via sneak peeks of eventual games like Parable (from the makers of Myst) and Star Wars Galaxies (whose ships look right out of the original trilogy), gaming looks good. Of course, it always did. Finally, a book illustrates this.