Totally Awesome

Years ago I had a Nintendo.  I played it so much eventually I gave it away.  It was taking up too much time and, besides, I'd already saved the Princess.  Those sort of memories came back as I read Harold Goldberg's All Your Base Are Belong To Us.  If you know what that phrase means, you'd probably like the book. It's a history, from the prehistoric 1950s to the present, of video games.

Most people don't think that much about how these games came about.  They just seem to appear.  But it's a big business--bigger than the movie business, even if it doesn't get the same attention.  And, as the book shows, to create a game, you've got to be a bit eccentric.  So each chapter has the weird route someone with vision and hope and a willingness to work hours on end with no guarantees was able to get his (and it's usually a man) game to market.

Over 300 pages, the book hits most of the big names: Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, Madden NFL, Super Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, Pong, Tetris, The Sims, World Of Warcraft and many more.  If I have any complaint, it's that the book gives fairly short shrift to the classic arcade games in favor of home video, but, after all, that's where the market is today and has been for a while.