Great books on classic video games • Hacker News Board

Re: Great books on classic video games

#51

Post by PostOnce » Sun, May 16, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

mister_tee wrote: post #15

Appreciate the suggestions in this thread. Adding recommendations for Blake Harris's "Console Wars" on 90s Sega vs. Nintendo competition, and Jason Schreier's "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels" for more of the development angle. It looks like he has a new book out just last week, "Press Reset" -- seems to be on studios/projects that shut down and the aftermath. Adding that one to my reading list. For the link to Boss Fight b…

Blake Harris's "Console Wars" documentary...

I was hyped going into it and it opened strong, but then it devolves into being a bunch of clips of Tom Kalinske & friends talking smack about a dead Japanese guy (head of Sega Japan) with no one to speak on the dead guy's behalf.

It felt super dishonest and one-sided, less a documentary than a PR piece to rehabilitate Kalinske's reputation, to the detriment of everyone at Sega Japan.

It only covers the good things SOA did and only the bad things SOJ supposedly did, and none of the opposite.

Re: Great books on classic video games

#52

Post by mtlynch » Mon, May 17, 2021, 12:59 AM UTC

bishnu wrote: post #19

Has anyone read Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia journal? Was thinking of checking it out: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0578627310?pf_rd_r=HMREHVA...

I read it and enjoyed it. As a kid who grew up playing computer games in the late 80s and 90s, it was interesting to hear what was happening on the production side. Here are my notes from the book:

https://mtlynch.io/book-reports/making-of-prince-of-persia/

Re: Great books on classic video games

#53

Post by gryson » Mon, May 17, 2021, 1:00 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #51

mister_tee wrote: post #15

Appreciate the suggestions in this thread. Adding recommendations for Blake Harris's "Console Wars" on 90s Sega vs. Nintendo competition, and Jason Schreier's "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels" for more of the development angle. It looks like he has a new book out just last week, "Press Reset" -- seems to be on studios/projects that shut down and the aftermath. Adding that one to my reading list. For the link to Boss Fight b…

Blake Harris's "Console Wars" documentary... I was hyped going into it and it opened strong, but then it devolves into being a bunch of clips of Tom Kalinske & friends talking smack about a dead Japanese guy (head of Sega Japan) with no one to speak on the dead guy's behalf. It felt super dishonest and one-sided, less a documentary than a PR piece to rehabilitate Kalinske's reputation, to the detriment of everyone at…

Small correction: Hayao Nakayama, the long-time president of Sega Enterprises who is made out to be incompetent in Console Wars, is still alive.

He, along with Sega co-founder David Rosen, were interviewed in the excellent 2014 book Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works, and their accounts don't really go along with Kalinske's. Rosen flat out rejects the (absurd) idea that the Japanese parent company was trying to sabotage Kalinske (a claim Kalinske has made many times in recent years). Rosen says Kalinske just had a hard time understanding why the Japanese side had to make the decisions they did.

As someone who is currently writing a book tangentially related to the Japanese history of Sega (plug: https://rasterscroll.com/product/legends/ ), I feel the need to say that Console Wars (however entertaining it might be) is not very accurate.

For one, it omits what I consider to be one of the biggest factors in Sega's decision-making from 1993 on--the massive drop in revenue that occurred in the U.S. and European markets. I've written about this recently with some interesting data on export revenues:

https://mdshock.com/2021/04/14/segas-financial-troubles-an-a...

Re: Great books on classic video games

#54

Post by darren_ » Mon, May 17, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

I see a lot of comments about other book series but not many about the specific bossfightbooks ones. Has anyone read any of them other than the Spelunky one?

I read the Spelunky one and enjoyed it, and grabbed the Baldur's Gate II one because I was under the mistaken impression that all these books were by developers or people otherwise involved in the game's creation, and they'd be war stories or other interesting insights. It wasn't, it's just some guy (he's written a D&D novel but not related to BG in any way) writing general stuff about the game - nothing really in any depth - and a whole lot of stuff about himself. Not at all what I was looking for (my fault, should've read the blurb).

Some of the other books seem to have interviews with creators or serious research done - are these good?

Re: Great books on classic video games

#55

Post by jccalhoun » Mon, May 17, 2021, 1:18 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #28

I realize now that I would read a book on half life or counter strike and its inception.

Not a book but Geoff Keighley has done articles on Half-Life 1 + 2, a kind of app of Portal 2 and Alyx https://store.steampowered.com/app/1361700/HalfLife_Alyx__Fi... https://store.steampowered.com/app/1361700/HalfLife_Alyx__Fi...

Re: Great books on classic video games

#56

Post by jccalhoun » Mon, May 17, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

In addition to the books mentioned here, I would also suggest Atari Inc. Business is Fun which is a super well researched book about the early days of Atari. They were going to write a second one but one of the coauthors died last year so I don't know if work continues on it or not.

Re: Great books on classic video games

#57

Post by PostOnce » Mon, May 17, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

gryson wrote: post #53

PostOnce wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blake Harris's "Console Wars" documentary... I was hyped going into it and it opened strong, but then it devolves into being a bunch of clips of Tom Kalinske & friends talking smack about a dead Japanese guy (head of Sega Japan) with no one to speak on the dead guy's behalf. It felt super dishonest and one-sided, less a documentary than a PR piece to rehabilitate Kalinske's reputation, to the detriment of everyone at…

Small correction: Hayao Nakayama, the long-time president of Sega Enterprises who is made out to be incompetent in Console Wars, is still alive. He, along with Sega co-founder David Rosen, were interviewed in the excellent 2014 book Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works, and their accounts don't really go along with Kalinske's. Rosen flat out rejects the (absurd) idea that the Japanese parent company was trying to…

Wow, thank you for the correction, the movie made it sound like he was gone.

The ending to the console wars movie was basically "Sega failed, Nintendo was runner up, and Sony won", but didn't cover the almost-made-it Dreamcast comeback -- best selling launch of all time at that point. They almost made it, and it fixed pretty much everything the Saturn did wrong.

Hey by the way, your book looks cool, reminds me of "The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" by John Szczepaniak

Re: Great books on classic video games

#58

Post by mgkimsal » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

salamandersauce wrote: post #7

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read it, but Racing the Beam also seems well regarded. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam

Racing the beam is very good. Been a while since I read it though but I really enjoyed it at the time.

Another upvote for this. borrowed a copy and ... have never given it back (ed z - if you're reading this, that's who has it!)

It may only appeal to a certain niche audience, but it's so full of great details. It's a good balance between describing the technical challenges and then the hacks/tricks/wizardry that got around the sometimes insane limitations!

Re: Great books on classic video games

#59

Post by pengaru » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

andrewf wrote: post #44

pengaru wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book I'd temper one's expectations on this one. It's a massive, unwieldy book, mostly speaking to old PC VGA graphics programming techniques, in pages taken verbatim from Abrash's previous Zen of Graphics Programming book. It definitely isn't focused on a specific game, but it does go a bit into the BSP tree stuff used in Doom, if memory serves. Maybe it's just because…

Abrash wrote about Quake in Dr. Dobb's Journal while he was working on it. These columns weren't in the earlier printings of the book but were added as Chapter 62 onwards in later printings (by which point it'd be fair to label the earliest chapters historical). PDFs at: https://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/graphics-programming-black-...

Thanks for the tip! My edition didn't contain those, looking forward to when I can check out the PDFs.

Re: Great books on classic video games

#60

Post by joshthecynic » Mon, May 17, 2021, 3:01 AM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #13

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #2

Not sure what's in them because I can't find their Table of Contents, but if you're looking for other great books on specific games: 1. Masters of Doom 2. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book

A note about Master of Doom: There is a small part about the departure of ID Software guys from Softdisk that is inaccurate and has been corrected by John Remoro himself when he spoke to the blogger who writes the famous CRPG Addict series (btw, completely out of topic but this blog is EXCELLENT if you want a COMPLETE view of pretty much every RPG out there since the 70s). The correction (as the blogger wrote) was a…

Also, Masters of Doom reads like it was written by a 14-year-old. It's so bad that I couldn't finish it.