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Vintage Games
Aeonite writes "Featuring a subtitle that is almost longer than the preface, Vintage Games: An Inside Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time offers a retrospective look at those games which authors Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton feel were, in their words, 'paradigm shifters; the games that made a difference.' As the preface points out, these are not necessarily best-selling games, innovative games, or novel games, but rather titles that, 'in their own special way changed videogames forever.'" Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.
Vintage Games
author
Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton
pages
408
publisher
Focal Press
rating
8
reviewer
Michael Fiegel
ISBN
978-0-240-81146-8
summary
A look at the most influential games of the past four decades
The book itself features 25 chapters, each devoted to the study of a particular title that best stands out as "vintage" in its particular genre. Those games chosen as particularly "vintage" are (in order): Alone in the Dark, Castle Wolfenstein, Dance Dance Revolution, Diablo, Doom, Dune II, Final Fantasy VII, Flight Simulator, Grand Theft Auto III, John Madden Football, King's Quest, Myst, Pac-Man, Pole Position, SimCity, Space Invaders, Street Fighter II, Super Mario 64 (covered in tandem with Tomb Raider), Super Mario Bros.,Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, The Sims, Ultima, Ultima Online, and Zork. In addition, nine additional "Bonus Chapters" are available online at the book's website, covering Defender, Elite, Pinball Construction Set, Pong, Robotron: 2084, Rogue, Spacewar!, Star Raiders, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.
Though listing the titles here seems a bit tedious, it does serve two purposes. First, it demonstrates the broad range of game genres and titles covered in the book, with selections made from across four decades of gaming history. Worth noting in this regard is that each chapter is not solely dedicated only to the titular game; related games that both preceded and followed the selected title are also discussed, and although I didn't keep count many hundreds of titles are at least mentioned, if not covered in some depth. Indeed, this broad range leads to one of the minor issues I have with the book, which is a slight feeling of imbalance and inconsistency between chapters.
By way of example, the first chapter on 1992's Alone in the Dark begins with a two page look at the title itself, followed by a brief peek back at other "horror" games such as 1981's Haunted House, 1982's Dracula and 1988's Splatterhouse. The chapter then dives back into a detailed overview of the introductory scene of Alone in the Dark (along with illustrative screenshots), followed by four pages covering the game's sequels and some brief mentions of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Chapter 2, covering Castle Wolfenstein, follows more or less the same formula of focusing on the titular game, as do Chapter 7, covering Final Fantasy VII, Chapter 9, covering GTA III, and Chapter 15, on SimCity.
However, this "formula" is not followed in many of the other chapters, which makes reading the book from cover-to-cover a somewhat uneven experience. Chapter 3, covering Dance Dance Revolution only really devotes about four of the chapter's 11 pages to DDR itself, instead choosing to spend more collective time (and screenshots) on related subjects like Dragon's Lair, Video Jogger, the Nintendo Power Pad, Sega's Activator, and Karaoke Revolution (among others). Chapter 10, covering John Madden Football goes for over a dozen pages before it truly covers the title in question on five entertaining and screenshot-packed pages. Chapter 14, covering Pole Position and Chapter 17, on Street Fighter II are other notable examples where the focus is not as tightly aimed at the vintage title in question.
This is not to say that the writing is flawed; on the contrary, it is always entertaining and interesting, and frequently illuminating. Loguidice and Barton cover a lot of terrain, and they are not afraid to point out the warts as well as the beauty marks in their selections. For those who grew up with video games in their house starting with the Atari 2600 (or before), the book is like a trip through time, giving the reader a chance to reminisce about days gone by while also learning about the many titles he or she didn't even known existed. All of this material is written in an informative yet casual style that never feels stilted or pretentious, nor too fanboyish. Indeed, the only awkwardness is the inconsistency in coverage from chapter to chapter, which sort of feels like the authors — rather than co-write each chapter — sort of divided the book in half. I have no idea if this is the case, and there are certainly no glaring stylistic differences from chapter to chapter; all are equally entertaining.
The above chapter list also demonstrates that the titles are arranged in alphabetical order, as opposed to release date or genre. While this certainly makes a sort of structural sense, it does feel a bit awkward while reading the book cover-to-cover, as the reader is constantly dancing back and forth through time, from 1992 to 1981, followed by five titles released in the '90s, a title from 1980, and then 2001's GTA III. In addition, the decision to alphabetize The Legend of Zelda and The Sims in the T's, rather than the L's and S's respectively, does feel a bit odd (especially since the titles are listed under L and S in the index). Whereas Ultima and Ultima Online, and Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Bros. are in adjacent chapters, The Sims and SimCity are separated by six chapters. This is an admittedly minor quibble, however.
If there is a more-than-minor flaw with the book, it is the same flaw that seems to beset all books covering the video game industry: the screenshots, and their inconsistent placement throughout the text. Occasionally, a screenshot will actually fall on the same page where the game it depicts is being mentioned, but in many cases screenshots appear a page or two away (a mention of Second Life comes to mind in this regard. In several cases, screenshots actually overwhelm the text (most notably on pages 312-313), and fewer would have served better. There are also a number of "back of box" shots, which hardly seem as interesting to the reader as an in-game screenshot would be; in one case, almost an entire page is given over to a blown-up back-of-box shot of Maxwell Manor, which otherwise barely gets a mention in the main text.
Also worth mentioning is that screenshots do not always guarantee title mentions, and vice versa. In some cases, the vintage title being covered in a chapter is given many screenshots, whereas in other cases there are only one or two devoted to that game title. Some other mentioned titles are given a lot of text but no screenshot, such as Resident Evil, Metal Gear, and Half-Life. Other screenshots depict titles that are not even mentioned in the text (though they are still relevant to the subject at hand, as the captions generally make clear); examples include Silent Service, Blades of Steel and Mario Kart: Super Circuit. In places it often feels as if the authors are "making do" with the art resources available to them, rather than placing the images that would best suit the topic.
Whatever the reason for these sorts of issues, they present only the occasional bump in what is otherwise a very smooth and entertaining ride. The somewhat inconsistent coverage of titles means that readers looking to read about their particular favorite game may be in for a treat, or may be disappointed, depending on which particular game they're looking to read about. However, this is not that book. What Vintage Games is, is a four-decade retrospective on 25 games that have truly made a difference, and readers who expect just that (as you now do) will come away wholly entertained.
You can purchase Vintage Games from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Though listing the titles here seems a bit tedious, it does serve two purposes. First, it demonstrates the broad range of game genres and titles covered in the book, with selections made from across four decades of gaming history. Worth noting in this regard is that each chapter is not solely dedicated only to the titular game; related games that both preceded and followed the selected title are also discussed, and although I didn't keep count many hundreds of titles are at least mentioned, if not covered in some depth. Indeed, this broad range leads to one of the minor issues I have with the book, which is a slight feeling of imbalance and inconsistency between chapters.
By way of example, the first chapter on 1992's Alone in the Dark begins with a two page look at the title itself, followed by a brief peek back at other "horror" games such as 1981's Haunted House, 1982's Dracula and 1988's Splatterhouse. The chapter then dives back into a detailed overview of the introductory scene of Alone in the Dark (along with illustrative screenshots), followed by four pages covering the game's sequels and some brief mentions of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Chapter 2, covering Castle Wolfenstein, follows more or less the same formula of focusing on the titular game, as do Chapter 7, covering Final Fantasy VII, Chapter 9, covering GTA III, and Chapter 15, on SimCity.
However, this "formula" is not followed in many of the other chapters, which makes reading the book from cover-to-cover a somewhat uneven experience. Chapter 3, covering Dance Dance Revolution only really devotes about four of the chapter's 11 pages to DDR itself, instead choosing to spend more collective time (and screenshots) on related subjects like Dragon's Lair, Video Jogger, the Nintendo Power Pad, Sega's Activator, and Karaoke Revolution (among others). Chapter 10, covering John Madden Football goes for over a dozen pages before it truly covers the title in question on five entertaining and screenshot-packed pages. Chapter 14, covering Pole Position and Chapter 17, on Street Fighter II are other notable examples where the focus is not as tightly aimed at the vintage title in question.
This is not to say that the writing is flawed; on the contrary, it is always entertaining and interesting, and frequently illuminating. Loguidice and Barton cover a lot of terrain, and they are not afraid to point out the warts as well as the beauty marks in their selections. For those who grew up with video games in their house starting with the Atari 2600 (or before), the book is like a trip through time, giving the reader a chance to reminisce about days gone by while also learning about the many titles he or she didn't even known existed. All of this material is written in an informative yet casual style that never feels stilted or pretentious, nor too fanboyish. Indeed, the only awkwardness is the inconsistency in coverage from chapter to chapter, which sort of feels like the authors — rather than co-write each chapter — sort of divided the book in half. I have no idea if this is the case, and there are certainly no glaring stylistic differences from chapter to chapter; all are equally entertaining.
The above chapter list also demonstrates that the titles are arranged in alphabetical order, as opposed to release date or genre. While this certainly makes a sort of structural sense, it does feel a bit awkward while reading the book cover-to-cover, as the reader is constantly dancing back and forth through time, from 1992 to 1981, followed by five titles released in the '90s, a title from 1980, and then 2001's GTA III. In addition, the decision to alphabetize The Legend of Zelda and The Sims in the T's, rather than the L's and S's respectively, does feel a bit odd (especially since the titles are listed under L and S in the index). Whereas Ultima and Ultima Online, and Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Bros. are in adjacent chapters, The Sims and SimCity are separated by six chapters. This is an admittedly minor quibble, however.
If there is a more-than-minor flaw with the book, it is the same flaw that seems to beset all books covering the video game industry: the screenshots, and their inconsistent placement throughout the text. Occasionally, a screenshot will actually fall on the same page where the game it depicts is being mentioned, but in many cases screenshots appear a page or two away (a mention of Second Life comes to mind in this regard. In several cases, screenshots actually overwhelm the text (most notably on pages 312-313), and fewer would have served better. There are also a number of "back of box" shots, which hardly seem as interesting to the reader as an in-game screenshot would be; in one case, almost an entire page is given over to a blown-up back-of-box shot of Maxwell Manor, which otherwise barely gets a mention in the main text.
Also worth mentioning is that screenshots do not always guarantee title mentions, and vice versa. In some cases, the vintage title being covered in a chapter is given many screenshots, whereas in other cases there are only one or two devoted to that game title. Some other mentioned titles are given a lot of text but no screenshot, such as Resident Evil, Metal Gear, and Half-Life. Other screenshots depict titles that are not even mentioned in the text (though they are still relevant to the subject at hand, as the captions generally make clear); examples include Silent Service, Blades of Steel and Mario Kart: Super Circuit. In places it often feels as if the authors are "making do" with the art resources available to them, rather than placing the images that would best suit the topic.
Whatever the reason for these sorts of issues, they present only the occasional bump in what is otherwise a very smooth and entertaining ride. The somewhat inconsistent coverage of titles means that readers looking to read about their particular favorite game may be in for a treat, or may be disappointed, depending on which particular game they're looking to read about. However, this is not that book. What Vintage Games is, is a four-decade retrospective on 25 games that have truly made a difference, and readers who expect just that (as you now do) will come away wholly entertained.
You can purchase Vintage Games from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
That game revolutionized insult sword fighting!
It and Maniac Mansion are listed on page 160 of the book in the chapter on King's Quest. The author regards Monkey Island as one of the "greatest adventure games." I guess there's a difference between 'great' and 'vintage' although vintage usually means "having an enduring appeal; high-quality, classic."
I have a minor qualm with the title, I think it should be "Vintage Digital Games" as when I saw the title I thought "well, this should be difficult." But the cover sure illustrates they mean video games.
My work here is dung.
This is basically a list of my favorite games of all time, with the notable exception of John Madden Football. Seriously, what the heck? How is it they make 1 every year, and its a top seller? I've never understood this phenomenon, especially because they only record him saying about 5 things.
Now to be completely fair, in real life he only uses about 5 phrases, but they could have mixed it up a little.
But overall, it looks like a good read. I think I'll try to hunt down a copy.
Dammit - READ!
Pinball Construction Set is there. M.U.L.E. is not.
Come on: those two games *defined* an entire culture of horizontal scrolling shoot-em-ups and God's-eye view dungeon rapid-fire raiding. For *fuck's sake* how many quarters did I blow on those two games in teh 80's? Prolly close to eight-thousand dollars worth....and the friggin' Baiters won every time.... '-(
And my green elf; he needs food...badly.
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
I still play Sword of Fargoal today. http://www.fargoal.com/
Need more useless stuff to read on teh internetz?
Well the computer games I played at the beginning were: .. unique, odd and incentiveless to start something.
Empire, which started the Civilization path
Sentinel, which started nothing I know of
Populous, which started the concept of "god perspective games" for me
There were other games but these were too
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
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Need more useless stuff to read on teh internetz?
Grand Theft Auto III is only six years old. How's that Vintage? Especially with the rest of the list hovering around 15-20 years old, and each of them being more fun than GTA3 to boot?
...I'm listening to the music of Warcraft II, just for the awesome! The Fury of the Furries Amiga Forest theme, another such classic. The only games I play are games of yore!
Why did it post that anon? Sorry, maybe I am getting a bit long in the tooth. I can still dust off the intellivision console and really enjoy a game of sea battle or utopia and walk away feeling like I really enjoyed it.
No Need to save, or worry about if I am playing enough for to keep my stats fresh. Just play the game, kill some time, and have some fun.
I miss gaming like that. I know it still exists, but it seems few and few between titles.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
And I'll bet some of you were hoping to finish High School before you grew old...
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ooO Ooo
I picked this up at the book store, noticed nothing about Nethack, and decided it was one of those books in which the author just wanted to talk about old games he liked, history be damned. That's not a bad thing, but that's also not what the title would lead one to think.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I find it interesting that Dune II was chosen over C&C. Dune II is definitely the origin of a lot of concepts in RTS, but I always found C&C (also by Westwood Studios) to be the more significant title of the genre (and I did own/play both on DOS). Recently I got the original C&C (now freeware) running in wine, and it still feels close to a modern RTS (I had just beaten C&C3). A couple years ago I tried playing Dune II again, and didn't get that feeling.
Overall that seems like a good list of vintage games. I would have like to have seen a representative from a couple dead genres like Mechwarrior (mech games) and something like Night Trap for FMV's games. Also, I do hope they mention Sonic in the Mario section.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
I saw no mention of M.U.L.E. in there anywhere. It is a vintage game and in my opinion introduced some interesting game mechanics, one of them being the simulated economy.
"A sample size of one is really just statistical masturbation."
For example, CRPGs don't all trace back to Ultima. Within that same age of gestation there were also such luminaries as Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Might & Magic, Phantasie, Questron, and others. In fact, I always kind of disliked the single-avatar system of Ultima/Questron and preferred the controlling a party of players ala Bard's Tale/Wizardry/Phantasie. Also, Questron was one of the first games that I came across that used mini-games for certain tests, which was quite novel.
I agree that the arcade was the birthplace of a lot of great titles and ideas, but the Apple ][, C=64, Amiga 500, and Atari ST all were fantastic petri dishes for the wild growth and speciation of all the games we know and love. I think some of the titles mentioned in the book can be traced back to much more fundamental roots and that in many cases those roots are plural, in the form of several good games that were synthesized into a transformative game title that broke through to the mass market.
I also agree that some of these games really aren't "vintage." If you can play it without digging out old equipment of finding an emulator, then it doesn't really qualify.
I admit I have not played the Madden line of games since the 90's, but I can tell you why we preferred Madden to anything else starting in 92. Madden football focused on realism in the game, above how hard you can hit (NFL Blitz) or how well you can guess the other player's play (Tecmo SuperBowl). Madden in 93-94 even allowed various play formations, and tried to mimic the sport as accurately as possible. As technology improved, the game continued with trying to portray football as real as possible. That is what drew myself and my friends into it years ago. Although many football games have tried since (the 2K series, Joe Montana football, etc.), they were already behind the curve. I think EA made their sports niche with just that...realism.
It would appear that the title would be better read "Vintage Console Games"
VGA Planets and L.O.R.D (Legend of the Red Dragon) where some of the earliest Time Share MMO type games only now being ressurected in the form of Mob Wars\Mafia Wars on places like Facebook.
Oddly one of the first "3D" space flight games "Star Voyager" for the NES is missing and would have even settled for Descent or Wing Commander for the first space combat games to really change the nature of flight games. Especially with the mention of Ultima but laps the Wing Commander series...
The Gold Box series of D&D games is also absent.
But most of all, oddly enough, where are the edutainment games from Math Munchers, Carmen Sandiego, and Oregon Trail? The edutainment section is absent...
Just some thoughts for the second release.
Also Battle Chess made Chess accessable to millions of players over the years and took Chess from stuffy to damn near cool as the Fonz for its time...
Lets not forget the niche area of historical sims that kept KOEI staff employed with Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunga's Ambition.
Another lacking one is Populous now I think of it...
Dungeon Keeper, Tecmo's Deception...
Shin Mega whateverthehell it is called (Devil Summoner series) broke some new ground...
And let us not forget several games (regardless of theme) that contributed:
Password based continues
Battery Backup saves
light zappers and other specialized periphrials
First game with multi-layered backgrounds
Paper Mario being one of the first games to switch the whole perspective concept
What no gauntlet on of the first 4 player games I can think of?
Killer Instinct for first major use of pre-rendered 3D environments?
Mortal Kombat for the first grusome death option (fatalities) and as far as I can tell one of the first to have an option (hidden or not) to FINISH an opponent?
Rush series of arcade games I think were the first to use a force feedback steering wheel.. In fact I think the arm wrestling game was the first to use any form of force feedback....
If we are looking to measure games that 'change the nature of gaming' they have missed quite a few story telling options and some very odd exclusions.
Case in point, Bowling. One of the first games to use the over-grown track ball that golden tee owes it's sorry ass too...
Ikari warriors to use a rotating joystick?
I don't even know which game was the first to use analog controls for a joystick rather then digital...
How about the first arcade game that allowed players to save their game data on a card?
Such a minor sample of game changers...
Even from a content standpoint:
First to swear?
First to have someone die?
FIrst to have someone have children in the game?
Breaking the old literary norms of games change a lot and opened up a historical chance that game developers took to expand their story telling.
Lots of missed opportunities... I wait till a second revision...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I had the opportunity to buy "Intellivision Lives" for the PS2 the other day. It had Utopia on it as well as Sea Battle, Sub hunt, and others. It was only $10, but I was on a road trip and didn't get it. Now I could kick myself.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
He seems to have missed the very heart of Madden, which was Bethesda Soft's Gridiron. Most people are unaware that the original engine for Madden was bought and it's extremely hard to find the original Gridiron on any abandon ware sites because of this. The heart of Gridiron was it's inertial engine. Players were represented as dots and accelerated at a speed based on of their Speed stat (one of two stats, the other being Strength). You could create you own plays with a way-point system and a flexible set of commands like run-block-right or call from the pre-set plays in the game. The entire game was revolutionary, but is sadly lost to the legacy of it's licensing.
Ha ha!! There were so many of those, it's impossible to list them all.
The best, and most popular were the Infocom games, where failure to light a torch, lantern, match, etc. would put you in danger of being eaten by a grue (a theme that spanned the whole lineup, regardless of genre).
You can find the Infocom games here:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3398113/Infocom_Universe_Bootleg
Pirated, but it's very hard to get the actual copies of the games these days, and the items that came packaged with the game were essential in completing those games (and also very enjoyable to read).
While the link above may not sit well with you, since it's to a torrent site, the original Zork trilogy has been released as freeware, and you can find them here:
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/
Text based interactive fiction was very popular on the old 8bit computers (one reason was that it was easier to port to the multiple different home computers around at that time) and there are too many different ones to be able to identify the game you played. The Infocom games are possibly the cream of the crop in this area.
Also, interactive fiction is still alive and you can get all sorts of great games here:
http://ifarchive.org/
Some of these are better than other ones, so be sure to read the ratings and reviews. A few of them match or exceed the quality present in the old Infocom games.
MULE was certainly super-cool, but I'm not sure that it changed the industry. I guess I could stretch to say that all resource-management games, like Warcraft, etc., inherit something from that game, but I'm not sure that it's true.
From that set of games, I'm surprised you left out Arcon. It also didn't change the industry as it didn't spawn its own genre, but man, it was cool. Like chess, but you've gotta battle it out for every space? How cool is that?!
The CB App. What's your 20?
That is 'just' a graphical redo of a previous game.
Ah, yes, the days of meticulously programming "a/s/l?" on punchcards.
Talk about a game that made a difference! I actually went out and BOUGHT a brand new joystick to handle all of the different input requirements just so I could run and gun while turning the torso. That's what made me unstoppable! Man, I still miss that game.
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been wide
Hey, guys, thanks for the comments and the support. One thing I should point out is that the vast majority of games you're saying that are not in there, are in fact in there, and then some (in fact, games and even systems never mentioned in any other book are in there). Utopia, Civilization, Pong, Pinball Construction Set, Tecmo Bowl, Nethack, etc. The content covers countless hundreds of games. Consider the 34 main games the launch pad to talk about all the other games that both came before and after in that same general category. If you're having trouble reading the master game list in the review, by all means go to the book's official site on Armchair Arcade, which gives an alternate TOC and has well over 100 bonus images not found in the book or in the online only bonus chapters. Besides the free online only bonus chapters - which are exactly like the content you'd find in the book - you can also read excerpts from the book itself on both Amazon and Google. The image quality if through the roof and the book is full color glossy throughout. As for the title, well, sometimes you have to go with the title the publisher wants (and I'll leave it at that). It really is a book on the most influential and important games from all eras, regardless of platform, and the subject matter goes from the 1940's right up to 2009.
Just for the record... If a game is not immensely popular, not innovative, and not novel, how can it "change videogames forever"?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.