Movie review: The entire history of videogames
Yesterday I finished watching "The entire history of videogames", a fantastic 6-hour documentary available on YouTube.
Six hours might seem like a lot, but if you watch even half an hour of it you'll realize that the author did a great job of balancing depth and duration. In fact, I think it wouldn't hurt if it were even longer: one of my very few criticisms of the video is that it sometimes feels a bit rushed or incomplete, which can only be fixed by adding more runtime.
The history starts right after the second World War and runs through to the release of the Xbox Series X and the PS5. It goes over the rise and fall of Atari, the release of the NES, the console wars of the 90s, the fall from grace of Sony with the PS3, the fall from grace of Microsoft with the Xbox one, the initial difference and later convergence between PC and console games, etc., etc.
Just covering those periods would be enough to make a good video. What makes this great, besides the high quality bar, is the range of topics that he touches on. It's not only about the videogames themselves: he addresses things like hardware, business, marketing, politics, and much more.
For many of these stories, I know that there's much more to them than what he has time to explore. For example, if you have read Masters of Doom, you'll see how much is left on the table. And in other cases, even without knowing much beforehand, it's clear that there must be an interesting story behind it (I really want to learn more about Atari's history).
Random notes:
- Interesting that the NES, when released, wasn't on the cutting edge of technology. Nintendo winning with underpowered consoles seems to be a recurring theme in their story. As far as I can tell, the only Nintendo console that had the most powerful hardware at the time of its release was the N64. And yet...
- The Nintendo 64 not using CDs meant there was less storage available for games. This resulted in Square's decision to develop Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation, and Konami doing the same for Metal Gear Solid. In both cases, they wanted to have cutscenes that wouldn't fit in a cartridge. And in both cases, they had been developing mainly (or exclusively?) for Nintendo up to that point.
- Many transitions gave me the chills. For example, take this moment when he says "For Nintendo, disappointment wouldn't last long however, because they were about to stumble onto a game that would single-handedly conquer the world", and then the Pokemon theme starts to play.