High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games

by Rusel DeMaria

Book Overview

This is a photo-filled look back at our favourite electronic games, the personal histories of the people who made them and the history of an industry that rose from obscurity to mass-market popularity... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0072224282
• ISBN13: 9780072224283
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 9.9" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Very comprehensive

I've been designing games for a while now and started programming them. This book was a good book to reference games to see what I could and couldn't program. As for the actual content of the book... the author makes the material interesting. His organization of the book could have been better. It goes in chronological order (most of the time). The visual design of the book is outstanding. The appendix in the back is good. Its a great book for the most part.

Outstanding Trip Through Video Game History

Perhaps there are only a few changes since the first edition, but if you've never read the first edition, this is a must-get for video game fans. Full-color photos of hardware, screenshots, and gaming popular culture (e.g. Atari high score patches) take you through video game history. Not only are systems like Atari, Coleco, Intellevision, Nintendo, Sony, and Sega looked at, the authors also look at specific games and milestones for each hardware platform. A lot of obscure systems are covered and even computers from Commodore, Coleco, Atari, Apple, etc. The authors have done a great job. From the Nintendo Game and Watch series to Sid Meier's Pirates, a great deal of video game history (past to present) and even memories (for some) are contained within the book. Highly recommended.

The most comprehensive book on the history of games so far.

Searching for books on this topic is infuriating considering since electronic games is a broad subject and reaches various elements. (But hey, so is film and music.) Usually you'll find books that only cover the old arcade games, or some which only cover games of today on the PS2 and X-BOX while barely mentioning anything about the past games we grew up with, and this is twice a hassle if you're a PC gamer. But this book has the lot and it covers it brilliantly. It mentions the well known titles we see everywhere else like Mario and Sonic and all the familiar faces but delves deeps into eras that the average game would have no idea about or have forgotten such as the contributions by Trilobyte or Dragon's Lair.Personally it would have been great if they had included some of the PC favorites like Sam & Max, Jazz Jackrabbit, One Must Fall and Little Big Adventure but for what it's worth the quantity of games the book discusses is remarkable. I'm glad that a publication like this can get out there to new gamers out there who have perhaps forgotten or have never seen games in 2-D or in less than 256 colors and they can see for themselves the culture in which a lot of us grew up in and how it has changed over the years. (For better or for worse.)

High Score = 1,000,000,000 Points!

High Score is a very interesting and comprehensive game history with illustration and photography from behind the scenes in one of the world's largest industries. You will find never before seen photos of Shigeru Miyamato (Super Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong) and many others from different companies and times. The book includes some very interesting facts and an in depth scope which proves too entertaining to put down. I sat down to read this book every time I walked into my local book store until finally I decided that I simply must have it for my guests and friends. Take a trip down memory lane to when games were 8-bit and walk back to current events. This 2nd edition contains new games from Playstation 2, Gamecube, and XBox and the PC. You will simply love this book if you enjoy nostalgia and retrospectives.

What I was looking for.....a sum of my youth.....

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 :-)