Replay: The History of Video Games ? a quick book review

A rather over-due glance at an excellent new history of gaming...The video game industry has really only existed for 40 years, yet attempting to catalogue the entire chronology into one book seems like the stuff of madness. The hundreds of gaming platforms; the complex, interconnected histories of the major developers and publishers; the esoteric minutiae of technological evolution ? it's a Herculean task just to hint at the scope and size of this billion dollar behemoth. Yet authors have tried. Steven L. Kent's mammoth Ultimate History of Video Games is perhaps the standard bearer, a dogged, US-centric traipse through gaming lore. Leonard Herman's Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Videogames is another classic, extremely dry, but filled with accurate detail on the early days of the console wars. Replay: The History of Video Games by games journalist Tristan Donovan is a much more up-to-date and thoughtfully written opus. Beginning with the switching on of the first programmable computer in 1946 and closing with the rise of downloadable indie games, this engrossing work manages to touch on every vital facet of the industry, from the formative battles between Atari and Mattel, through the rise of the home computer to the emergence of the Japanese home console empire. But what Donovan is great at is catching the quiet little moments of videogame history, hidden beneath the broad sweep of technological change. He has great anecdotes about the first time Will Wright showed off his plans for The Sims (called Dollhouse at the time) to a bunch of disbelieving execs; and about the lawlessness of Ultima Online, where the early online RPG's creator Richard Garriott found himself intervening in virtual muggings. There's a wide range of quotes and personal stories, too, from veteran Atari employees to cult stars of the French gaming market to the people behind modern edifices like Fallout 3 and Bioshock. The book is also wider in its remit than most others. Donovan has space for the rise of the British computing scene, with Clive Sinclair given the space he deserves. It also looks at the South Korean online gaming phenonemon, and the birth of the MUD, an element criminally overlooked in many other general game histories. If there are any faults, it's that Donovan doesn't adequately address the emerging genres ? mobile, casual and social gaming. There's also little on gaming's dead-ends; virtual reality, Sega's many aborted consoles, the disappearance of the Matsushita M2 platform. But of course, in less than 400 pages, you need to concentrate on what went right rather than what went horribly wrong. So yes, Replay is a wonderfully thorough and entertaining history, casting its net wide, but rarely failing to capture the essence of a particular era. A rather impressive achievement.Replay: The History of Video Games is published by Yellow Ant and is priced �12.99GamesGame cultureKeith Stuartguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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