Since I was obsessed with Nintendo growing up, I had to read Game Over. The book details the early years of Nintendo (starting way back around 1890) as well as the growth of the video game industry overall. Growing up I just played Mario and Zelda, but reading about all the crazy industry stuff that went on behind the scenes was pretty entertaining.
From the early start when Nintendo brought the NES (known as Famicom in Japan) to the US after the early 80’s video game crash, it was all very interesting to learn about. Also the explanation of Atari and how the industry crashed in the US was great too.
Since the book was written in 1993 it’s really interesting to see just how much the industry has continued to change since then. While Nintendo is still a major player at this time, this is all before the Sony Playstation and XBox came on the scene. Also, it’s interesting to yet again find out just how rapidly the Interent burst on the scene and changed our daily life. Not once in this book was it even mentioned.
Even though it’s a bit dated, all the info leading up to 1993 was amazing to learn more about. I had no idea just how much battling went into getting Tetris out of the Soviet Union and on my Gameboy. Very good stuff.