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Pong et la mondialisation - L'histoire économique des consoles de 1976 à 1980 (Book reference)
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 [...]Keywords : pong, globalization, economic history, home console, 70's, japan, france, usa
L'incroyable histoire de la saga Mario Kart (Book reference)
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 [...]Keywords : mario kart, history
L'Histoire des jeux vidéo polémiques - Volume 2: Jeux de torture et jeux d'horreur (Book reference)
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 [...]Keywords : violence, torture, horror, controversy, addiction, media
Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation (Book reference)
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 [...]Keywords : sega, nintendo, 16 bits, usa, marketing, sony , tom kalinske, genesis
Les Oubliés de la Playhistoire - Intégrale de la saison 1 (Book reference)
"Les Oubliés de la Playhistoire" is French TV show broadcasted over the Nolife network, that highlights many unknown and intriguing video games. This companion book is packed with two DVDs gathering the 41 episodes of its first season. The books first details the birth of the TV show, thanks to the interview of the various people involved in the project. Each game featured in the first season of the show is then presented over two pages with a short text and several images. The [...]Keywords : oublies de la playhistoire, nolife, underdogs
The history of Microsoft BOA (Blog post)
Almost unknown, BOA is a nice little game for MS-DOS created in 1989 by Dean Ballard for Microsoft. It's an arcade game similar to Snake, besides the fact that you are playing a rat trying to avoid being eaten by the snake! The oddest thing about this game lies in its distribution model: it was solely available through the driver disk of a mouse created by Microsoft, the "Contour Mouse", also known as "Dove Bar." Due to the technological limitations of the era, [...]Keywords : microsoft boa, history, mouse, pix'n love
Retro Playing Book #1 : La Mega Drive, 25ème anniversaire (Book reference)
A 260 pages book dedicated to the history of the Genesis / Megadrive, the famous 16 bits Sega home console. The book is divided in 4 sections. The first one details the birth of the machine, while the second one is focused on the ads used by Sega to promote it ("Genesis Does!"). The third section presents a selection of emblematic Genesis titles. Each game is described over a single page with a short text and several screenshots. As this section is organized chronologically, it's a gre [...]Keywords : history, genesis, megadrive, sega, sonic, streets of rage, advertising
Video Game Music - Histoire de la musique de jeu vidéo (Book reference)
Over 300 full-color pages, this book focuses on one particular aspect of video games: music. Seven thematic chapters details the impact of the technological evolution on video game music, the similarities and differences between game music and movie music, the various ways music is actually used in video games, the wave of rhythm games, and the rise of rearranged OST and concerts. Each chapter is concluded with a short biography of the main compositors cited as examples, and the last book chapte [...]Keywords : music, j-rpg, concert, rearranged album, compositor, video game, history, analysis
Bibliographie jeux vidéos : déjà plus de 80 ouvrages sur Ludoscience (Broacasting our studies)
Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA (Enhanced Edition) (Book reference)
A book on the history of SEGA as a console manufacturer. After a brief introduction telling the birth of the company, this thick 480 pages book details the story of all its home consoles: SG-1000, Master System, Mega Drive / Genesis with its Sega CD and Sega 32X addons, Saturn and the Dreamcast. While the beginnings of SEGA and its first two consoles are explained rather quickly over 30 pages, the main part of the book details with high precision the story of its most famous consoles. About 150 [...]Keywords : history, sega, master system, genesis, sega cd, sega 32x, saturn, dreamcast