Rusel DeMaria

This is not really an investigation into ground-breaking animation and AI development, but it is an interesting insight into how various aspects of a game lead developers to the final outcome from the original vague idea several years earlier.

The book is full of sketches and screenshots of various stages in the game's development, and neat little vignettes from lead designers, animators and developers.

While the game development has spurred a lot of new techniques in animation (the animators show more didn't even know what creatures would need animation beforehand, so they and the develop had to come up with a generic system which could cope with whatever a user might try in the creature creation labs), this book only glances over briefly on this, and other technical marvels.

But the book isn't really a serious insight into the science behind computer games. Rather, it is an insight into the process of development, and very enjoyable at that.

One for the coffee table, or the bathroom pile. show less

I enjoyed reading this book; it was like a trip through memory lane. The authors start with the pre-Pong days and go all the way up to modern consoles and online games. It took me almost a week to get through it; each page of this full-color book is crammed with articles on various products and quotes from industry insiders. I read about a lot of things from childhood that I had all but forgotten. Definitely a good read if you're interested in knowing the roots of modern electronic gaming.

If you like videogames, buy this book. Period.
It's a full-color romp through the history of gaming from 'Space War' to 'Lara Croft'.
DeMaria doesn't just dwell on the games, however; he also profiles the people and companies who made them. This is a comprehensive, scholary, but very, very fun history of a modern obsession.
And it was great to see pictures not only of games that were my old favorites, but many of the people I knew in the game publishing industry from my computer magazine days.

I like to flip through this classic whenever I get nostalgic about my Genesis gaming days. Compared to the vast stores of info online, this book is not worth the purchase today, but I won't give it up easily.