LudoScience

History of videogames (focused book)

Author(s) : Collectif
Editor : Third Editions
Publication date : 06-16-2016
Language : french

This tall book (larger than A4) is a collection of articles written by different authors who offer you a journey through the main video game-related events from the year 1992, in France. The book begins with a handful of papers dealing with year-long events, such as the home console competition between Nintendo and Sega, with a lot of figures. They are completed by a portrait of Masahiro Sakurai (Kirby, Smash Bros) and another one of the Lucasarts studio. Then, several articles are dealing with the main games released in 1992, such as: Streets of Rage II, Zelda III, Sonic 2, Super Probotector (a.k.a. Contra III), Super Mario World, Dune, Dune II, Alone in The Dark, Wolfenstein 3D, Flashback, Ultima Underworld, etc. The last part of the book is dedicated to analysis. The authors, using the knowledge from today, take a look back at the main evolution / direction of the 1992 year. For example, they analyze the competition between the two majors J-RPG series, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, the not-always-successful experiments by Nintendo, the difficult relationship between Mickey Mouse and video games, the huge impact of SEGA Model 1 Games (Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter), etc. All-in-all, this book is very pleasant to read. The article have an average length that allows the authors to give some relevant historical information without going too much into details. The book can then address a lot of topics, thus it offer us quite a good coverage of the 1992 year in video games.