This week’s set of books is dedicated to the history of video games and game consoles.
This week’s set of books is dedicated to the history of video games and game consoles. These illustrated reads can be a great addition to your collection.
A History of Video Games in 64 Objects
This book draws on the collections of The Strong museum in Rochester, New York, to chronicle the evolution of video games, from Pong to first-person shooters, told through the stories of dozens of objects essential to the field’s creation and development.
The book covers a wide range of intriguing topics:
- The first edition of Dungeons & Dragons — the ancestor of computer role-playing games
- The Oregon Trail and the development of educational gaming
- The Atari 2600 and the beginning of the console revolution
- A World of Warcraft server blade and massively multiplayer online games
- Minecraft — the backlash against the studio system
- The rise of women in gaming represented by pioneering American video game designers Carol Shaw and Roberta Williams’ game development materials
- The prototype Skylanders Portal of Power that spawned the Toys-to-Life video game phenomenon and shook up the marketplace
- And more.
The Game Console: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox
The Game Console discusses the evolution of video game hardware, featuring gorgeous full-color photos of 86 consoles. The story begins with consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey, Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Commodore 64. Then it continues with systems from the 1990s and 2000s, and ends on modern consoles like the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U.
The next book features an illustrated take on the history of video games. It highlights the machines, games, and people who have made gaming a worldwide, billion-dollar industry/artform, and the thing is that the whole story is told in a graphic novel format.
The fourth book is dedicated to the most exciting period in the history of technology — the arrival of the home computer and home gaming console. “For a time, an exciting and ever-changing array of different companies fought for supremacy, leaving a lasting legacy of great gameplay and surreal design we’ll never experience again.”
The GameCube Anthology is another great book that tells the story of the beloved console. “The year was 1999. As the new century and millennium dawned, so did a new era of gaming. The graphics quality of console productions was nearing that of the pre-rendered 3D that had astonished us a few years earlier on the PlayStation especially. In the space of a few years, our hopes became reality.”