Who says history has to be about boring dates and faraway events? Indeed, the gaming medium, while still young, has progressed very rapidly and there is no time like the present to learn more about its past. If you are curious, we’ve collected some of the best books to learn about gaming history.
The best books to learn about gaming history
“Can it run Doom?” is now a classic meme and not by a random coincidence. All 30+ years later, the first-person shooter by ID Software remains one of the most seminal gaming experiences, a title that has reached most of the platforms and consoles and, well, even fridges and pregnancy tests. This true hardcore FPS has also been made endlessly replayable thanks to its fanmade mods and maps. But its dev history is also quite fascinating, with two creative people such as John Romero and Adrian Carmack going head to head, plus the huge controversy following its release, that would later lead to the creation of ESRB.
Masters of Doom by David Kushner follows the story closely, interviewing them along with mostly everyone else involved with the development. You will learn how Doom came to be, how the experience with the previous Wolfenstein 3D was, of course, the base for the game, and how ID Software, at the time, had way more experience with 2D platformers than demonic first-persಞon shooters.
The book also covers what happened with the sequel and, subsequently, with Romero leaving the company. Masters of Doom is now a classic book about one of the 💙most important games ever made, not to be missed even if you have a slight interest in gaming history.
Whatever your favorite game is, be that Minecraft, Final Fantasy VII, or Halo, one thing is for sure: video games as we know them would not be the same without Japanese culture. Chris Kohler takes us on a journey through the Japanese gaming industry, analyzing its early games and how they managed to introduce narrative and other gameplay facets to the nascent medium. The book is enriched by many interviews with important figures of Japanese gaming such as Shigeru Miyamoto✃ and Hideo Kojima.
Despite the book being published in 2005 and containing several slightly outdated topics and takes, this is still a great starting point to learn more about how Japan influenced video games and how their affluent RPG experience came to be. Clearly, this is not a book to learn about the entire world of Japanese gaming or the history of its industry and Kohler’s claim was never that. It is written from his personal perspective and his experience while living in Kyoto. It remains a great introduction and a fascinating read on how Japan first perceived gaming in a much different light than Western culture.
This onꦦe might be a little bit for the gaming history nerd, but if you have a slight interest in how the gaming medium evolved, it is impossible to forget about Atari and how the company managed to shape the early years of the gaming industry. If you ever wanted to know more about the early days of coin-operated gaming, along with how the company came to release one of the most successful early consoles ever, the Atari VCS (or 2600), Atari Inc. provides more information than you could ever dream of.
A huge project eight years in ﷽the making, made up of 800 pages with hundreds of interviews and accessဣ to materials never before available, including nearly never-before-seen photos, memos, and court documents, you will learn everything from the genesis of the company to the $538 million death spiral in 1984.
There are also bonus chapters on Steve Jobs’s time at Atari, which will definitely interest the Apple fans out there, along with the creation of the seminal arcade game Breakout. Not to be missed is also the creation of Atari’s “Xerox PARC”, a research facility up in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. Atari Inc. also covers the creation of “Rick Rats Big Cheese Restaurants”, which would later become the well-known “Chuck E. Cheese’s” chain of restaurants.
Love or hate it, the Grand Theft Auto series remains one of the biggest gaming franchises ever and one that has well transcended the boundaries of the gaming medium. Still, even many hardcore fans might not know that the first game was released by a small UK studio in 1997, as a top-down game on PC and PlayStation. Jacked by David Kushner is a great read if you are interested in findinᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚg out all that happened since then and the birth of Rockstar Gaming as one of tཧhe biggest and most influential companies in the industry.
Kushner spent years researching and interviewing many former developers, in Jacked he reveals the juicy details of what was going on behind the scenes. In the end, a toxic blend of egos, crazy PR campaigns, and an obsessive work ethic came together to create a huge company that, more than once, almost spiraled out of control. The book also covers the full story behind Hot Coffee, the controversial hidden minigame in GTA San Andreas that nearly killed the company. Whether you are a fan of the series or not, Jacked will be an engrossing read on what it takes to c🧔reate one of the biggest games ever released.
Game Over by David Sheff was one of the first gaming history books ever written, at a time when the subject wasn’t really being researched at all (the industry was still too young). Despite its age, having been first published in 1993, and some of the later chapters not having aged well at all (prophesizing the downfall of the PC industry…), it is still a fascinating read and a must-have for anyone who calls themselves a Nintendo fan. Sheff went to great lengths to research how Nintendo managed to make its foothold in America, despite being a Japanese company at heart and in culture.
While 🐼Game Over naturally focuses on the story of Nintendo of America, there is nothing about what was going on in Europe, but plenty of attention is also devoted to the Japanese branch. The key players in how Nintendo rose to fame are all interviewed, with many of their personal stories interspersed with the overarching business narrative.
Despite its age (or perhaps because of it), the author also does not avoid some controversial topics on how Nintendo rose to power. It might also bring a smile to the reader to ride on Sheff’s predictions for what was going to happen to Nintendo post-1993.
The 90s were all about the console wars. Schools were plagued by fights, with many young children arguing about who had the best console, the best graphics, or the best version of Mortal Kombat. Perhaps that is a bit of a dramatization, but the console wars were definitely real and would never again be as tough and violent. But what was really going on behind the scenes🉐? While in the early 90s, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the American video game industry, less so in Europe. Sega, on the other hand, seemed to have no hopes of ever competing with Super Mario.
Based on over two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars retells the story of how Sega managed to reposition itself as the market leader in the United States, albeit for a brief time. While some of what Tom Kalinske told in this book can be taken with a grain of salt, the overall narrative of the underdog is still very much there. Through ideas like a combined US and Japanese team to follow up the original Sonic the Hedgehog and incredibly aggressive market campaigns, it would be a battle foug✤ht everywhere, from living rooms and schooly♌ards to boardrooms and Congress. Console Wars is a perfect retelling of a time that, most probably, will never happen again in the same way.
Today, it might feel like the “Shareware era” came and went, leaving nothing in its wake, except distant nostalgic memories, but that impression would be incorrect. In the book, Richard Moss explains how shareware, a term meaning “a program or game that was meant to be shared”, was a cultural phenomenon first and foremost. Not only was it the same industry that would birth the likes of ID Software, Apogee, and Epic MegaGames, but also would lead to the release of industry-wide shocks such as Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.
Shareware Heroes retells the story of this unique time in gaming through interviews and research, from the beginnings of the shareware model to the evolution of the concept through BBS and the internet, along with the rise of shareware’s major players. Developers managed to plug gaps in the video gaming market by creating games in niche and neglected genres on PC, such as vertically-scrolling shoot-’em-ups, racing games, or RPGs. Then, in the early 90s, as the video game market was growing and shifting, major publishers ended up taking control, with the shareware system fading into the background. This is a great way to find out about a subculture that had an enormous influence on how games would be developed and sold after the 90s.
Published: Jan 28, 2025 07:33 am