Comic Book Story of Video Games

A charming history of Video Games.

The Comic Book Story of Video Games is a graphic novel depicting their entire history from Alan Turing’s WWII mainframe Chess game to Pokemon Go. Turing’s logic in the Chess game was used to break the German’s supposedly enigma code.

There are many fascinating facts here. Here are only a few examples. Sega is an acronym for Service Games. The company was started to repurpose slot machines, made illegal in the United States in 1951, for our armed forces overseas. Sony, the maker of PlayStation, was started in a WWII bombed out Tokyo department store making rice cookers! Steve Jobs was hired by Atari in 1974 even though he was

a shiftless, unscrubbed teenager.

An overnight shift was invented for Jobs because few could tolerate his body odor or his judgmental attitude.

The Comic Book Story of Video Games bogged down slightly in the beginning. There seemed to be excessive detail about the evolution of the underlying mechanics of video games. However, once the first computer game was created, the path to cell phone games was engrossing. The text made you root for some of the innovators even though those with the best ideas didn’t always win fame or fortune. The illustrations are full of clever references to video game characters both old and new. I especially enjoyed the depictions of many of the video game pioneers that are included with a full page biography.

If you have any interest in the mechanics or history of video games, the Comic Book Story of Video Games will be a joy.

Thanks to the publisher, Ten Speed Press,  and netgalley for an advanced review copy of the Comic Book Story of Video Games in exchange for an honest review. The book will be published on October 3, 2017.

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