The Art of Video Games by Chris Melissinos and Patrick O'Rourke, my review

Like opening a scrap book and viewing my gaming life, I flipped through the digital pages of this forthcoming illustrated book from Welcome Books (who graciously provided me with a digital version to review), and I started to realize just how much a part of my life video games were--and are-- and as I grew, they grew along with me.

In conjunction with The Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibit, The Art of Video Games, a full color celebration of video games tie-in book will be released by Welcome Books. Check out the retro clip packed promotional video here.

The Art of Video Games transported me back to the very beginning of gaming, as I read about one of the first releases for the Atari, Combat, which I recall fondly playing on my cousin Jeffery’s Atari (which I did not own) in his parent’s house in Brooklyn. It was a gaming love at first sight, a love affair which continues  to this day. 

The impeccably researched discourse brought me through to my Intellivision days, my favorite console from my youth, where I frantically hunted in the basic and pixel-minimal Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The authors specifically commented about the excellent use of sound effects in this now unabashedly basic game, something I completely agreed with, recalling with fright the heavy breathing of what could only be a dragon in the next cave.

All the classics are covered such as Pac-Man, Space Invaders, as well as modern favorites like Fallout (and Fallout 3), and Mass Effect . This gamer learned lots of interesting things from the insightful text, such as, did you know that the “invaders” in Space Invaders were inspired by H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, hence the tentacled sea creature-inspired design looking like squid, crabs and octopi? Fascinating.

Early gaming legendary pioneers, such as Nolan Bushnell (the founder of Atari and arcade friendly Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza-Time Theaters), are interviewed, and these interview pieces break up the lavishly illustrated (in all their pixelated glory) screen shots and gaming design, with some great historic tidbits on early design and the free flowing creativity and hard work that went into early game design. Also many of today’s gaming pioneers are also interviewed.

The book covers all the stages of video game history, including what the authors call the “8-bit revolution” of 1985, when an obscure Japanese company released its new Nintendo Entertainment System to a U.S. audience, thrusting the lagging console market into future, and all of gaming along with it.

The only thing missing from this trip down gaming-memory lane were emulator codes so I could go back and re-play each game painful obsession, because at the time of their release, they were the coolest and most creative escapes and only added to my love of fantasy, adventure, comic books, novels, and even working with science fiction and fantasy, then working for a time at a gaming company myself.

Who would have thought it all those years ago, trying to angle my tank so that I can shoot and ricochet my shot off the wall from behind a barrier to take out cousin Jeffery’s tank, that gaming culture would have grown to be a vivid and enrapturing art form?

If Ready Player One was a fictional love song to video games, The Art of Video Games is the visual poem to gaming—simply a beautiful book filled with gaming nostalgia, inspired innovation and flat-out fun.

As much as I loved reviewing this in digital form, I can’t wait to pick up the printed book as well. I’m sure it’ll be beautiful. And I plan to try to see the exhibit when it comes to New York.

Game Over

Catching Up on the Classics: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

One great thing about having access to the various mobile reading devices these days, is it allows me to catch up on those classic books, now all easily accessible through various applications. And we all have them, we all have books that we've somehow missed over the years, for any number of reasons.

Using the Masterpieces app on the iPod Touch, whenever I am without a proper book (or new ebook), I scroll through their bookshelf collection and give something that I've missed a try.

This week, it was H. G. Wells and his classic, The Time Machine. This is one of the great ones that I've missed.

Oddly, I still had an odd affection for this story, as I was first introduced to the 1979 film, Time After Time, that was based on a novel of he same name that was published that very same year. This was something that I was not aware of until researching for this blog post. I thought that some Hollywood execs got together and just thought to combine H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper. I had no idea that film was based on a book of the same name. I will find a copy of that book for my collection. But I only remembered the film, which I watched over and over with my brother and sister. It was a favorite of ours.

The story of the film combined the literary character of  H.G. Wells, himself, played by Malcolm McDowall--my introduction to his work, his time machine, and Jack the Ripper, played by the fantastic, David Warner--who still creeps me out to this day due to this role in this film and his other evil roles in Time Bandits and Tron.  He really does play such a great bad guy.

He chases Jack the Ripper into the future to stop him and recover his time machine. I watched this film so many times when younger, that I believed it to be the actual story of the book--and somehow missed the reading assignment in high school or shrugged it off perhaps. (Many of my English teachers would be surprised to learn that I became an editor.)

I was so surprised when I finally started reading and the story was altogether different. I longed to know more about each character that the time traveler is speaking to at the table in his parlor. I was especially fond of The Editor. And his far future time travel was so different than the few decades of travel that occurs in the film. Fantastical creatures appear, a future evolution with little or no explanation. It was a thrilling read, and before I knew it the novella had ended. It should always be that way--enjoyment leading right up to the end.

I guess I can now watch the Guy Pierce film as well, which looks like it was a true adaptation of the novella. Well, I am glad to have checked that one off the list, and have already started reading Wells' The Invisible Man which I am also enjoying. Reading books in between reading other books. I've totally forgotten what it is like to read only one thing at a time. Occupational hazard I guess.

Catch up on a classic recently? Share your story in the comments.

this might be the my notebook/journal/notepad of the future.

The news of the upcoming Microsoft Courier digital journal, as reported by Engadget, looks to me to be the journal of my future. 

The compact clean display and fact that it is a text recognition, stylus-enabled device is right up the alley of this old school journal writer.

The ease of writing, looking things up on the web, and writing into web address bars -- with the stylus instead of a keyboard, is really, really neat.

The videos on the engadget site look amazing. The ability to use streamlined multi-tasking feeds which can coordinate with your personal or business contact list, it also allows you to share "virtual journals" online and coordinate both visual as well as text elements, integrated with ease. That looks perfect for this guy.


Check out the above link for amazing creative use videos and if you hear of this item's release sooner rather than later, please shoot me an email.


Did I mention it'll also act as a Microsoft e-reader? Sweet.