If I have one complaint about Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More, it’s to do with the page and section design, not the content. As the title suggests this book is a history of video games and game systems beginning with the arcade type things like Pong on the big Atari machine, all the way to Overwatch on many device types. The overall thesis of the book is pretty straightforward, that most hit games stand on the shoulders of those which came before it. The book is definitely set up to emphasize this idea in that often times the next chapter, for the next game, makes clear references to the previous, but also in the occasional list of “things this game likely learned or got from its predecessors”. Some of the lists are also more focused and often entertaining personal “Top 10” types of things, like the top video game villains.
There’s a lot of discussion of the creative work and processes that go both into the game creation and the gaming system technology. The balance between the two works well since as the information suggests, the two are pretty directly related. You need the right kind of hardware to run the specifics of the new or more advanced video or sound or whatever software after all. The system part starts with the arcade machines and then goes on the cover mostly Nintendo but also Sega, as well as PCs and app or subscription based games, all the way up to e-sport.
There is a lot of information here, including people, technology, and companies being build, competing, winning and sometimes losing. The techno- and gamer-babble is kept to a minimum, although some terminology is introduced (it is explained when this happens), which makes the book pretty readable. The problem for me is in the page design. On the average page, there’s the main text, but also side notes and images, and it can get too busy and hard to follow the narrative or information track. There’s also the back and forth between the white on black and black on white. The switches are done with purpose for the most part, like to have a side-bar discussion that takes a page or two, but that still doesn’t make them predictable, and it’s visually jarring sometimes. Granted the book presents its information is relatively short chapters, so it’s easy enough to stop and start as much as you want, but if I have the time and focus, I don’t necessarily want the interruption.
