All Your Base Are Belong to Us

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

  • by Harold Goldberg
  • Narrated by Eric Martin
  • 12 hrs and 29 mins
  • Unabridged Audiobook
4.08 (114
Ratings.
)

Publisher's Summary

Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most-beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy - and passion - behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon.
Over the last 50 years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entertainment. But as the gaming industry grows in numerous directions, and everyone talks about the advance of the moment, few explore and seek to understand the forces behind this profound evolution. How did we get from Space Invaders to Grand Theft Auto? How exactly did gaming become a $50 billion industry and a dominant pop culture form? What are the stories, the people, the innovations, and the fascinations behind this incredible growth?
Through extensive interviews with gaming's greatest innovators, both its icons and those unfairly forgotten by history, All Your Base Are Belong to Us sets out to answer these questions, exposing the creativity, odd theories - and passion - behind the 21st century's fastest-growing medium.
Go inside the creation of:


Grand Theft Auto
World of Warcraft
Bioshock
King's Quest
Bejeweled
Madden Football
Super Mario Brothers
Myst
Pong
Donkey Kong
Crash Bandicoot
The 7th Guest
Tetris
Shadow Complex
Everquest
The Sims
And many more!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful

Some noticable flaws and incorrect information.

Pretty good but got noticable things wrong including calling the twisted metal clown calypso in stead of Sweet Tooth which is the characters name. Also it states that from the get go the Xbox 360 had simple wifi connection when in reality, the first generation required a separate add on to access wifi. The last issue was small but he mistook the name of South Park's character Kyle for Lyle. Proofreading is important.
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- Kristi

A History of Game Developers, Not Games

The book's title is somewhat misleading. Instead of an exploration of the effects that video games have had on pop culture, it reads much more like a collection of short scattered biographies of the men and women that made them, often spending far more time on the childhood and business practices of developers than the games that they created. Although the information provided is interesting, the writing becomes dull after the repetitive use of certain phrases and devices. The book also suffers from horrible organization, mentioning Nintendo in the 80's, EA in the 90's, then jumping back to Sierra in the 70's, and then to Nintendo again in the 2000's.

It's obvious that the book could not be completely comprehensive of video game history, but for a book claiming to be about the effects on pop culture it has some very odd entries and omissions. The author praises "Crash Bandicoot" for it's soundtrack but never mentions Koji Kondo or his compositions for the Mario and Zelda series's, which are arguably the most recognizable soundtracks of all time. The creation of the failed 3DO gaming console gets its own entry, yet Sega's long history is barely a footnote used for comparison to a few other companies. Pokemon, the third highest selling franchise of all time, that has spawned card games, 19 movies, a tv show about to start its 20th season, comics, physical stores, and it's own theme park, doesn't even warrant a mention in this title. Even "Zero Wing", the game this book gets it's title from is only briefly mentioned in the introduction.

A few times in the book, notably "World of Warcraft" and "Bio-shock", Goldberg does describe games with passion, and delves into the emotions a game made him feel, and descries why he finds them special. These parts are the most enjoyable, and made me want to replay those titles. I think that the book would have been much more successful if instead of writing so broadly about video games, Goldberg had gone deeper with a select company that he was passionate about.

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- Brandon

Book Details

  • Release Date: 04-01-2015
  • Publisher: Harold Goldberg
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