High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, Second Edition

An amazing and comprehensive picturebook of all electronic games through history (not just "video" games). This book has some great photos of consoles and game prototypes you may have never heard about -- like the Atari Game Brain and Cosmos. It's just packed with images on thick glossy paper. My only complaints is there were no images of the very first videogame, "Tennis for Two". The book is also so thick and heavy, I don't know how long the binding will last under multiple readings. But these are minor gripes. A must have if you are interested in the beginnings of electronic entertainment.

Searching for books on this topic is infuriating considering since electronic games is a broad subject and reaches various elements. (But hey, so is film and music.) Usually you'll find books that only cover the old arcade games, or some which only cover games of today on the PS2 and X-BOX while barely mentioning anything about the past games we grew up with, and this is twice a hassle if you're a PC gamer. But this book has the lot and it covers it brilliantly. It mentions the well known titles we see everywhere else like Mario and Sonic and all the familiar faces but delves deeps into eras that the average game would have no idea about or have forgotten such as the contributions by Trilobyte or Dragon's Lair.
Personally it would have been great if they had included some of the PC favorites like Sam & Max, Jazz Jackrabbit, One Must Fall and Little Big Adventure but for what it's worth the quantity of games the book discusses is remarkable. I'm glad that a publication like...Read more

This book is filled with inaccuracies. I know that it can be difficult to seperate myth and legend from historical fact when it comes to the history of electronic gaming. For example, look at the variations of the story of Pong in Andy Capp's bar. Unfortunately, even some of the captions next to pictures are wrong.

If you're looking for a book about the history of electronic gaming, I recommend The Ultimate History of Video Games (ISBN 0-7615-3643-4) by Steven L. Kent. However, inaccuracies aside, this book is good as a visual aid to supplement Kent's book. This book is filled with pictures, while Kent's book is filled with text.

Also, do not expect this book to have a very long lifespan. It is glue bound and the pages will start to fall out after repeated use.