The dark lord's dark side

[big_smile]

Moving house is always a stressful experience. In theory, the ordeal can be made more bearable by moving into a newly built home, which avoids the need to eradicate the previous occupants’ dirt, odours and ghastly colour schemes. In practise, however, a newly built home is simply a concealed nightmare, as everything in it, from the untouched bathroom and kitchen to the shiny brass telephone points, is just for show and will need to be refitted before it can be used. It’s been five weeks since my nightmare started, and while I’m still not nearing the end of it, I am finally back online.

The only good part of moving home is being able to revisit long forgotten items, such as these scans I made of Steven L. Kent’s book, The Ultimate History of Videogames.

Now that the study of videogames (or ‘ludology’, as academics call it) is becoming established, pop-sci style books on the history of gaming are a common occurrence. Kent’s efforts are one of the few that takes a suitably thorough approach. Rather than basing his account on the foggy memories of over-excited gaming fans, The Ultimate History of Videogames is informed by extensive interviews with key players from the industry’s past.

Unfortunately, most of the respondents are American, which gives the book a slight a bias. Despite this, it is still fascinating reading and comes highly recommended.

The scans presented here focus on Naka’s dark side and chart the development history of two of Sega’s biggest failures: the Mega-CD and 32X.

^_^

[chriscaffee]

Those are some interesting exerpts. I have a book about the making of the Xbox and that was pretty interesting.

As for moving, it's no big deal really. Then again I've been living out of a suitcase for the last fourteen months and have moved seven times throughout my life. Nightmare? No way. Not even uncomfortable.