LudoScience

History of videogames (focused book)

Author(s) : David Sheff
Editor : Coronet Books
Publication date : 01-01-1999
Language : french

This book tells us the history of Nintendo, and more specifically how it conquered the US video game market in the 80's. This book details the first steps of Nintendo in the field of video games, both in Japan and in the US. It explores arcade hits like Donkey Kong, alongside with the NES and its most popular games series such as Mario and Zelda. The form of the book is brilliant: it's written like a captivating novel. But the main point is the substance: this book is literally filled with a lot of details and little-known trivia about the history of Nintendo, and its key people: Hiroshi Yamauchi, Minoru Arakawa, Howard Lincoln, Shigeru Miyamoto, etc. The author interviewed them all directly, and thus obtained very detailed and accurate information. The book also tells us about the relations between Nintendo and its competitors, such as Sega or Atari, with information coming from both sides of the stories told. Published in 1993, this book is one of the first serious works on the history of video games. It was later used as a source or inspiration by many other historical researches. All in all, this book is clearly a real masterpiece. And time makes it shine even more: nowadays, no PR would allow the publication of a book filled with so many personal details about a leader of the video games industry.
This book was first published in 1993. This summary is about an abridged version of the original text, offered as a gift to the readers of the Arcade magazine in may 1999. This "Arcade Edition" keeps about 2/3 of the original text: four chapters are missing, and the others were reduced. But it remains a captivating read anyway.