-
The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 1
- From Pong to Pokemon and Beyond . . . The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 23 hrs and 29 mins
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Publisher's summary
The definitive behind-the-scenes history of the dawn of video games and their rise into a multibillion-dollar business
“For industry insiders and game players alike, this book is a must-have.”—Mark Turmell, designer for Midway Games and creator of NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and WrestleMania
With all the whiz, bang, pop, and shimmer of a glowing arcade, volume 1 of The Ultimate History of Video Games reveals everything you ever wanted to know and more about the unforgettable games that changed the world, the visionaries who made them, and the fanatics who played them. Starting in arcades then moving to televisions and handheld devices, the video game invasion has entranced kids and the young at heart for nearly fifty years. And gaming historian Steven L. Kent has been there to record the craze from the very beginning.
The Ultimate History: Volume 1 tells the incredible tale of how this backroom novelty transformed into a cultural phenomenon. Through meticulous research and personal interviews with hundreds of industry luminaries, Kent chronicles firsthand accounts of how yesterday’s games like Space Invaders, Centipede, and Pac-Man helped create an arcade culture that defined a generation, and how today’s empires like Sony, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts have galvanized a multibillion-dollar industry and a new generation of games. In this audiobook, you’ll discover:
- The video game that saved Nintendo from bankruptcy
- The serendipitous story of Pac-Man’s design
- The misstep that helped topple Atari’s $2-billion-a-year empire
- The coin shortage caused by Space Invaders
- The fascinating reasons behind the rise, fall, and rebirth of Sega
- And much more!
Entertaining, addictive, and as mesmerizing as the games it chronicles, this book is a must-have for anyone who’s ever touched a joystick.
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Critic reviews
“A major triumph.”—Next Generation
“If anyone knows game history, it’s Steve Kent.”—Dave Theurer, creator of Tempest, Missile Command, and I, Robot
“This is the best video game history book I’ve ever come across.”—John Romero, founder of Ion Storm
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No Better Time
- The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet
- By: Molly Knight Raskin
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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No Better Time tells of a young, driven mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would create a faster, better Internet. It's the story of a beautiful friendship between a loud, irreverent student and his soft-spoken MIT professor, of a husband and father who spent years struggling to make ends meet only to become a billionaire almost overnight with the success of Akamai Technologies, the Internet content delivery network he cofounded with his mentor.
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An Overlooked Hero of 9-11
- By Jean on 05-27-16
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Open
- How Compaq Ended IBM's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing
- By: Rod Canion
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Open provides valuable lessons in leadership in times of crisis, management decision-making under the pressure of extraordinary growth, and the power of a unique, pervasive culture. Open tells the incredible story of Compaq’s meteoric rise from humble beginnings to become the PC industry leader in just over a decade. Along the way, Compaq helped change the face of computing while establishing the foundation for today’s world of tablets and smart phones.
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Wrong narrator for this book
- By Wick Smith on 07-13-14
By: Rod Canion
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Trade-Off
- Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't
- By: Kevin Maney
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In Trade-Off, Kevin Maney shows how these conflicting forces determine the success, or failure, of new products and services in the marketplace. He shows that almost every decision we make as consumers involves a trade-off between fidelity and convenience between the products we love and the products we need.
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No Trade-Offs for Reading Trade-Off
- By Joshua Kim on 06-10-12
By: Kevin Maney
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The Big Picture
- The Fight for the Future of Movies
- By: Ben Fritz
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In the past decade, Hollywood has endured a cataclysm on a par with the end of silent film and the demise of the studio system. Stars and directors have seen their power dwindle, while writers and producers lift their best techniques from TV, comic books, and the toy biz. The future of Hollywood is being written by powerful corporate brands like Marvel, Amazon, Netflix, and Lego, as well as censors in China. Ben Fritz chronicles this dramatic shakeup with unmatched skill, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood.
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Who is overseeing the audio part of this project?
- By Lori P on 11-19-19
By: Ben Fritz
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Electronic Dreams
- How 1980s Britain Learned to Love the Computer
- By: Tom Lean
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Electronic Dreams, Tom Lean tells the story of how computers invaded British homes for the first time, as people set aside their worries of electronic brains and Big Brother and embraced the wonder technology of the 1980s. This book charts the history of the rise and fall of the home computer, the family of futuristic and quirky machines that took computing from the realm of science and science fiction to being a user-friendly domestic technology.
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Awesome outline of electronic history
- By Johnny on 09-28-17
By: Tom Lean
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The Friendly Orange Glow
- The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
- By: Brian Dear
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 21 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.
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Memory lane for the cyberist.
- By Robert C. Hickcox on 08-08-18
By: Brian Dear
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You Only Have to Be Right Once
- The Unprecedented Rise of the Instant Tech Billionaires
- By: Randall Lane
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
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Over the last three years, Forbes has published in depth profiles of this new batch of billionaires, including the founders of Spotify, Dropbox, Tumblr, and Twitter. Now, in a compilation introduced and updated by Forbes editor Randall Lane, fans and critics alike will get a comprehensive look at who these super-entrepreneurs are and what they say about their own success and their plans for the future.
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Awesome book!
- By Jamal Love on 06-17-15
By: Randall Lane
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Alibaba
- The House That Jack Ma Built
- By: Duncan Clark
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In just a decade and a half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded Alibaba and built it into one of the world's largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China's booming private sector.
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Strange: Best part of story happens "off-screen"
- By Tristan on 09-02-16
By: Duncan Clark
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Frenemies
- The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else)
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the best-selling author of Googled. Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has.
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Good; not for beginners
- By DV on 10-05-18
By: Ken Auletta
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Comic Shop
- The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture
- By: Dan Gearino
- Narrated by: Douglas R. Pratt
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The early 1970s saw the birth of the modern comic book shop. Its rise was due in large part to a dynamic entrepreneur, Phil Seuling. His direct market model allowed shops to get comics straight from the publishers, bypassing middlemen. Stores could better customize their offerings and independent publishers could now access national distribution. In this way, shops opened up a space for quirky ideas to gain an audience and helped transform small-press series, from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Bone, into media giants.
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A good listen.
- By Amazon Customer on 08-30-20
By: Dan Gearino
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The Starfish and the Spider
- The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
- By: Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy, and "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.
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Centralized and decentralized models
- By Chan Meng on 12-07-07
By: Ori Brafman, and others
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The Click Moment
- Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World
- By: Frans Johansson
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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On the one hand we aren’t surprised by the uncertainty of everyday life, but on the other we believe that success can be analyzed and planned for. It is a revealing paradox. The implications are explosive and they obliterate every common-sense notion we have about strategy and planning. The Click Moment is about two very simple but highly provocative ideas.
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Outstanding book!
- By Anilyn Karel on 08-26-24
By: Frans Johansson
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Blood, Sweat, and Pixels
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Behind the Scenes
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Not Exciting
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Behind the Scenes
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Super Mario
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Not Exciting
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5 star book, but obnoxious
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A riveting account of the birth and remarkable evolution of the most important development in entertainment since television, Replay is the ultimate history of video games. From its origins in the research labs of the 1940s to the groundbreaking success of the Wii, Replay sheds new light on gaming's past.
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a fitting ending to Sierra
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Disrupting the Game
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Engaging Autobiography
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Video Game Storytelling
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Nice but shallow
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Do you like quotes?
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Game On!
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This is one of the best books I’ve read
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Press Reset
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Audio Quality is Inconsistent
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Fight, Magic, Items
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Excellent history of the JRPG genre
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Masters of Doom
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Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to produce the most notoriously successful game franchises in history - Doom and Quake - until the games they made tore them apart. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry.
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How it was
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Long Live Mortal Kombat, Round 1
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To politicians and parents, Mortal Kombat was a menace to society. To gamers, it was a way of life. From dedicated hustlers who put thousands of miles on their odometers driving coast to coast to challenge the top players in arcades, to fans who devote their free time to collecting action figures, setting world records, and plumbing the depths of its lore, the Mortal Kombat franchise has topped sales charts for thirty years, and its popularity shows no signs of waning. But before Mortal Kombat offended politicians and sold over 12 million units, executives at Midway saw it as filler.
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A lot of filler, and very little substance
- By Fred on 12-09-23
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The Secret Science of Games
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The Secret Science of Games is an accessible and entertaining guide to the hidden role of science in making games more fun. User experience (UX) research is a vital part of the story of how video games have become a cultural juggernaut, but game developers generally don’t speak publicly about how data shapes game design and game development.
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Worth reading if you are remotely interested in games and UX
- By Ayman on 10-14-23
By: John Hopson
What listeners say about The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 1
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mike
- 08-29-23
Truly remarkable
This is an incredibly engaging and in-depth look at the history of video games. I believe this is a must have for anyone interested in this topic. I absolutely loved it!
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- Thomas Strande Hansen
- 05-30-23
Loved this
To my Big surprise i loved this book, more than any other book on videogame history
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- IG88
- 07-03-23
Not so bad history of video games volume 1
Super interesting and enjoyable. This was a pretty deep dive into the minds of the forefathers of what gaming is today, and what it might become in the future. It’s interesting to learn that a lot of the decisions behind these influential companies where purely business related but through luck, timing, and what the market wanted were propelled into era defining moments in gaming history. Worth a listen if your interested in that kind of thing, for sure.
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- Ben
- 04-05-23
so much I didn't know
my first game system was the NES and it was delightful learning about it's predecessors.
what I found most interesting was learning the corporate dealings, like the origins of playstation. I've played games my whole life, but never paid attention to the people behind the curtain. this book gave me interesting context to one of my favorite hobbies
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- Scott B. Delaney
- 05-01-24
Great history of Gaming up to 2000
Great detail of an incredible industry! If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, this is a must read!
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- TechChic
- 06-22-24
Back to the foundations of Gaming
In my opinion, it was an excellent way to revisit some of the ‘even before my time’ foundational days of gaming. It took me back to games I played and gave me a background two ones I never knew existed. For me it was a bit too much on the business side of things, but still overall great read.
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- jmsc1
- 04-02-23
Very good
Very informative and interesting. Helped me learn a lot. I suggest this book to others.
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- Thomas M Paletta
- 10-05-23
Long Live Gaming
Very interesting history of gaming that I never knew! The console wars of the 90s was the most entertaining part! Sega still rocks!
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- James R.
- 05-23-24
A wonderful history
Read this in high school and loved it. Am enjoying revisiting it. Odd pronunciation of random names and words. Yama oochi Hole oh gram. Strange.
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- Tony
- 08-10-24
just awesome
If you're remotely interested in video games you'll love this book. Especially if you've been gaming since the 80's like me or even further back.
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