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| Image from Amazon. dot com. |
All Your Base Are
Belong To Us is a pretty spiffy overview of the video game industry from a
somewhat unique perspective – The 300ish pages of Harold Goldberg’s book
instead focus mostly on the development of the games themselves, as opposed to
the rise and falls of the companies involved.
Yes, it’s kind of weird that that’s a “unique” perspective
for a video game book, but most of the previous ones I’ve read only mention the
games themselves in passing, as opposed to charting the rise and fall (and
sometimes rise again) of companies like Atari, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. It
also helps that Goldberg has a bit more of a journalism background than some
other writers who have tackled the games’ industry; the book is well-researched
and doesn’t make leaps when it comes to its subjects.
However, while Goldberg does cover some unique ground – AYBABTU came out in 2011, so there is
plenty about BioShock’s development
and the Wii – he doesn’t really go broad enough for my taste. For example, the
first 50 pages are still devoted to the rise of Nolan Bushnell and the video
game crash of the early 1980s, both of which are covered more in-depth and
better in at least three other books. The same thing goes with the courting
ritual of Tetris, which has a
footnote acknowledging that Game Over
by David Sheff is a better book on the subject, but then goes on for a dozen
pages anyway about Tetris.
I’d rather these first chapters have been swapped out for
something in the 2000s, which are still somewhat unexamined when it comes to
gaming books. The book picks up speed once it gets past the Super Nintendo and
Genesis era stuff, and focuses on the rise of online multiplayer and casual
gaming. The chapters on Blizzard’s development of World of Warcraft, Sony and EverQuest,
and Bejeweled were all much more
compelling than yet another ode to Atari and Nintendo.
One last note – There is an odd thing going on with the book’s
title, in that the meme is not discussed at all. For the uninitiated, it comes
from some Engrish in the otherwise forgotten game Zero Wing. For more info, Wikipedia
has got you covered. However, neither the meme nor the game are ever
mentioned by Goldberg, which seems odd.
So, to steal Roger Ebert’s act, I’d give AYBABTU a mild thumbs up. There is
enough interesting stuff, especially in the book’s later half, to make it worth
a read, but some other tomes are better from an overall video game history
perspective. In a future post, I might even do a ranking, since at this point I’ve
probably read through a dozen different ones.
… I should find different hobbies.
