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All Your Base Are Belong To Us: How Fifty Years Of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture (2011)

by Harold Goldberg(Favorite Author)

3.47 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0307463559 (ISBN13: 9780307463555)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Three Rivers Press

review 1: All Your Base Are Belong To Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture by Harold Goldberg is a very interesting look on videogames over the last half-century. It goes from Tennis for Two, all the way to Bioshock to give it's own unique look over this period. However, it's wording leaves much to be desired. For anyone with adept gaming knowledge this book won't bring anything knew to the table and if you are new to the gaming scene it makes a lot jokes and references that will easily go over ones head. Personally I liked the book, but the book didn't seem to like me, as I thought his use of metaphors and similes got progressively worse as I went along. And it seemed as though the editor forgot some sentences and added some where they just didn't fit. This book ... morewould only be really interesting to people who only know a little bit about gaming, just enough to get the jokes with out knowing the history behind them, which in itself is a weird area. This is a good book just not a great one. I would recommend this to people looking for a quick history of gaming and not those who either, don't know about gaming or want to learn a deep history.
review 2: I have book hoarding issues. I bought this book over a year ago, and it's been languishing on my shelf for over a year.* I picked it up to take a break between epic George R. R. Martin tomes, and I'm glad I did! I love games and I'd say I consider myself a gamer, but I'm not as hardcore as a lot of dyed in the wool gamers. I've loved playing video games since my parents bought me a copy of Jumpman back in the day; I still spend an ungodly amount of time in front of a glowing screen.Even so, I learned a lot about the history of video games reading this book. It's by no means encyclopaedic, but there were games I hadn't even heard of before described in the pages; I learned new things about the games I already knew and loved, too. Harold Goldberg has a lot of personal, hands-on experience in the gaming world, and his personal anecdotes make the text even more engaging. The only complaint that I have is that his writing style can be a bit jarring at times. His prose is engagingly conversational, then abruptly shifts to a formal tone peppered with obscure words in a heartbeat. The flow would have been improved immensely with a little consistency.Overall, this was a quick, fun read. It rekindled my interest in creating video games, and I think I might take a few courses (or just read a few books!) on game writing and programming, as a result!*That's not true. It was on the floor under my computer desk; I tried to class it up with a little white lie. less

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