Comic non-fiction book: A drawn journey through the decades of games

Contents

The history of video games has been told many times. As a book, as a documentary and as a podcast. Now even as a comic. Games expert Jean Zeid and illustrator Émilie Rouge have dedicated themselves to this task. The original French edition was published in December, the German translation "Gaming – Eine Pixel-Zeitreise" is available now. An English version of the graphic novel has been announced for July.

The idea: the illustrator and the author themselves are the heroes of a journey through time, teleporting to numerous stations and into the games. It begins at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where "Spacewar!" was created in 1961/62 on a PDP-1 with a round graphics screen. Environments, computers, people and the games themselves are drawn. This works well and gives the book a consistent style. The heroes are aware that they have to process their experiences into a book, which always leads to cute comments. "This is going to be fun to draw,"

Through the decades

What follows is a wild journey through the ages. How the Magnavox Odyssey table tennis game first became a success as "Pong" from Atari. How the "Space Invaders" machine caused a shortage of 100-yen coins. How the Fairchild Channel F and the Atari 2600 become the first console with removable cartridges – and the three pillars of developer, publisher and console manufacturer emerge. How the Apple II became the first important gaming machine among home computers, with designers such as Jordan Mechner ("Prince of Persia"). How games grew up in the 1990s thanks to the new possibilities offered by CD-ROM and 3D. How the narrative adventure genre became the breeding ground for experiments such as "In Memorian".

The stages lead to smartphones, online adventures and adult games for an adult audience such as "Heavy Rain", with cinematic images and the power to evoke unpleasant emotions. Instead of heroes, the focus is now also on normal people, such as "Shenmue", which makes "everyday life the heart of its narrative". On the one hand, developing games is a creative and fulfilling activity, while at the same time you can look for "meaning" in the games themselves.

Spirit and wit

Despite the few lines of text per page that a comic offers, an enormous wealth of knowledge is expertly presented and correctly categorized. Time and again, additional information is provided and terms such as "gameplay", "pathfinding", "porting" and "mod" are explained.

Many anecdotes provide entertainment without ignoring innovations. Always in interplay: Jean the teacher, Émelie the (not so clueless) student. "Bushnell has betrayed Baer, and Pong catapults the video game from the labs into the entertainment industry." – "I feel especially sorry for Ralph Baer. After all, Bushnell stole his game."

Not very surprising: French games and developers are regularly mentioned. Germany, on the other hand, is only mentioned in one sentence ("In Germany, gamers tend to play management games such as The Settlers or Anno.") Not to mention the GDR and the entire Eastern Bloc.

Female designers put in the spotlight

It's nice to see that women are repeatedly honored. Even when men were "in the game". Starting with Mabel Addis, who went down in history as the first female game designer in 1964 with the first economic simulation "The Sumerian Game". Dona Bailey, who (co-)developed "Centipede" – and thus became the first woman to design an arcade game. Kim Swift, who worked on "Portal". Carol Shaw, who designed "River Raid", among others.

People, games and devices can be found in the somewhat overly extensive index, which spans two columns on nine pages.

A few carelessnesses can be overlooked. Sometimes "Castelvania" (instead of "Castlevania") is written, sometimes the game "Versailles" is incorrectly assigned to the CD-i (it only comes years later for PC, Mac and PlayStation). Elsewhere, it is claimed that "Dune" relied on the CD-ROM instead of the floppy disk right from the start –. In fact, it is one of the first floppy disk games to be later expanded for the CD. And "25 million consoles sold and 20 million modules sold" for the Atari 2600 surely means 120 million games.

It is a nice little book in which retro enthusiasts will also find new facts and considerations and which goes far beyond a timeline from Pong to the present day. And at a fair price of 25 euros for 240 color pages with a hardcover binding. Perhaps the format could have been larger; at 173 mm x 245 mm, it is more A5 than A4, so the drawings and texts are quite small. It was published in Germany by Carlsen; the translation was done by Tanja Krämling, who is experienced with comics.

(vbr)