A few months ago, we told you about the history of Carmageddon, a famous racing game praised for its gameplay and violence. After the first title released in 1997, two sequels were made: Carmageddon II in 1998, and Carmageddon TDR in 2000. A screenshot of Carmageddon TV before its cancellation In 2003, SCi, publisher of the game series, started the development of a fourth episode. Titled Carmageddon TV, this new episode tries to explore a new direction. The universe is "rebooted"
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Keywords : history, video games, carmageddon tv, cancelled project, gameplay
If you like books and are into video games, then this resource may interest you. Ludoscience is building a big list of books about video games. It currently features more than 150 books dealing with various topics: history of video games, game creators biographies, Game Design, Serious Games, video games studies & analysis... Each book is presented through a personal abstract, as we have read each book before adding it to the list :). It gathers books in English or French
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Keywords : bibliography, videogame, books
This book is based on a unique idea: reviewing the history of video games in France between 1974 and 2013 through the "news" briefs published in video games magazines. This first volume is solely focused to news related to video games consoles. The author has selected many news related to the most interesting or odd stories from the last 40 years: release of a console, an accessory, a special issue of magazine, a tv show, public drama, games collector editions, etc. Each chapter of the
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Keywords : history, video game, france, console, news
Carmageddon. A video game known by people even if they never played it, thanks to its scandalous reputation. However, this game is far from solely being the "nasty racing game where you have to crush pedestrians" that many media and politicians wanted to ban. Carmageddon is first and foremost an excellent game, featuring many technological and gameplay innovations that deeply influenced the racing game genre. We interviewed Neil Barnden, co-founder of Stainless Software gam
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Keywords : history, carmageddon, stainless software, violence, scandal, censorship, fun
This book focuses on a little known and hardly discussed period from the history of video games: the ends of the 70's, and more specifically the 1976-1980 years of the home consoles. The books explains how, after Ralph Baer's pioneer invention of the Magnavox Odyssey, and the success of Pong in arcades, home video games takes over TV sets around the world thanks to... General Instrument. Indeed, the introduction of a new integrated chip, copying Pong and sold for a few dollars only, allowed many
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Keywords : pong, globalization, economic history, home console, 70's, japan, france, usa
As the title implies, The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers is a documentary about Japanese game developers. Originally, John Szczepaniak, a video game journalist, went to Japan in order to write a book about this topic (still in the works). During this trip he also filmed his interviews and encounters, which gave birth to a 4 hours long video documentary now available on DVD: This documentary follows John Szczepaniak's journey, with video segments featuring different materi
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Keywords : japan, history, documentary
This tiny 80 pages books tells the history of the Mario Kart series of games, from Super Mario Kart (Nintendo, 1992) to Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo, 2014), also including spin-offs like Mario Kart Arcade GP (Namco, 2005). This book features a lot of images and is very pleasant to read. It also offers many trivia related to the various series episodes, obtained through a direct interview with the main designers. As it can go into details due to lack of pages, this book is recommended to anyone who hav
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Keywords : mario kart, history
Following the first book in the series, this book continues to explore the history of controversial video games. This second volume focuses on games about "torture" (Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, Chiller, Manhunt, Mad World...) and horror-themed games (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, The House of the Dead, Sanitarium, Rule of Rose...). Each game and the media controversy that accompanied it are presented using a variable number of pages. Here, this book tends to suffer from the same flaw as t
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Keywords : violence, torture, horror, controversy, addiction, media
This book deals with the war opposing Sega to Nintendo during the 90's, in the USA, for the control of the home console market. Over 550 pages, it follows the story of Tom Kalinske, who ran Sega US branch from 1990 to 1996. The book tells the many efforts the man and his team made to push the Genesis / Megadrive onto the US market, to try to make a dent in Nintendo's near monopoly over this market. This war is made of many battles, such as an offensive marketing campaign around the game Sonic (1
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Keywords : sega, nintendo, 16 bits, usa, marketing, sony , tom kalinske, genesis