An Illustrated History of 151 Video Games Book Review
19An Illustrated History of 151 Video Games is 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. 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.
0:00 - Introduction
0:41 - Quality of the Physical Book
1:00 - Content
6:25 - Aesthetics
8:44 - Nostalgia
9:30 - Backstage
12:54 - Closing Remarks
QUALITY OF PHYSICAL BOOK
-It’s 8.5x11 inches.
-It has about 250 pages of content.
-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
Quality of writing.
-I think the writing is very good. I liked that it 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. 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
-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.
-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.
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.
-I’m more likely to disagree with the inclusion of the more recent games. 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
-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.
-The cover of the book is not very good. It feels more appropriate for a poster than for this very well written and considered history book.
-Most of the “captions” under the images don’t necessarily have much to do with the images themselves. 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
-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.
-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.
-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.
-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.
There are 17 book reviews in Season 1 of my series “Mike’s Video Game Art Book Reviews.” I hope you enjoy them!
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