Arts & Entertainment
 

Video game history taught

New GSN documentary teaches the long past of video games

By Paul Saleeba
The Daily Cougar

GSN, formerly the Game Show Network, is airing a two-hour documentary on the history of video games. Like G4TV's 30 Minute Icons show it explores in-depth the names and companies behind the video game industry. What sets this documentary apart is its depth into the early days of gaming. While most gamers consider the Atari or Pong the dawn of gaming the documentary called Video Game Invasion, the History of a Global Obsession takes it back to its inception with the first tennis-like game on an oscilloscope and the Odyssey, the first home console.

If you can survive the cool guy voice during the intro and the painfully edited sequences with Tony Hawk, the actual documentary itself is a tribute to the ingenuity and creativity of gaming throughout the ages. With all respect for Tony Hawk the skater and the video game character, the director should have asked him to go through the lines a few more times so they would flow better.

But they couldn't have cast a better live and recognizable icon for video gaming unless they had John Madden host it himself. Luckily they did get Madden in for a wonderful interview for the inception of the Madden football series, as well as everyone short of Sega brainchild Yu Sasuki.

Each era of gaming is presented with interviews with the creators of the system, the software writers, the presidents and gamers. The best segment was the time spent on the games of the 1980s. The presentation was showed all the games true gamers played, the men and women behind them and even the hokey commercials for Zelda and Metroid. They showed the lesser-known PC games of the '80s like Zork and early companies like Sierra Online, the evolution of graphics and sound from blips and beeps to stereo music. This was by far the most satisfying segment, and it was followed up by coverage Wolfenstein 3D and Doom with interviews and commentary with John Romero about the early days of ID software. 

However the documentary begins to feel rushed toward the current era of gaming. The Sega Dreamcast's release maybe gets three lines of mention, which is harsh, as it is the precursor and model for the three modern game systems, Xbox, Game Cube and PS2. All three took heavily from the Dreamcast's design, but received too little coverage themselves. Also, many important footnotes in gaming were missed (as well as any mention of modern arcade gaming) such as the Turbo Graphics 16, NeoGeo, and Atari Lynx. However, the lack of breadth is easily made up for in depth of what it does cover.

This documentary could easily be featured in any multimedia course that mentions video games. With the industry pulling in $20 billion a year, anyone considering a career anywhere near it would do well to view this. It is entertaining, informative and a great flashback for those who lived it. The documentary first aired on Sunday and will be shown on Monday and Friday at 4 p.m., and Wednesday and Saturday at 2 p.m..

Video Game Invasion, the History of a Global Obsession

GSN

The verdict: It has flaws, but it speaks for an entire generation.

Send comments to dcshobiz@mail.uh.edu