"Video Games" doc reviewed...

[uncamark]

Ben Fritz of Variety reviews GSN's second one-shot documentary.

He says that the first part of the show, about the Odyssey/Pong days of gaming, is the best part and that the line we've heard in that promo over and over again about the first video game president is "silliness."  He also criticizes the show for not being Fair and Balanced (tm Fox News Channel) regarding detractors of video games.

No Variety-isms to translate here--I think you'll know what "docu" means.

[urbanpreppie05]

I guess it's all about opinion. I saw the documentary already(reviewed it for my school's paper), and I thought it was done well. I was glad to see them not show the other side( mainly because I'm sick to death of politicians saying "the industry needs to be taking better care of what they put out there")-this is a fun ducmentary, not to be taken seriously after all.  But, reserve your judgement for when it airs.

[DjohnsonCB]

Is this special going to be on any other days besides Sunday the 21st?

[ChrisLambert!]

My TiVo's recording it from 6-8 pm (EST) the following Monday.

[JMFabiano]

I thought it was decent myself.  Of course, I liked the parts about the "classic" eras in the '80s and early '90s the best, as my gaming interests lean towards that.  One glaring omission I noticed is how they made it sound like Nintendo stayed neck and neck with Sega at the time of the Genesis with only the NES.   There was just a later passing reference to the SNES.

Oh, and is it just me, or does the author of that Ultimate Video Games History book look like Paul Lynde?  (Combine him with the GSN voiceover that did the Lynde imitations, and you can have the star of a future biopic...)

[CaseyAbell]

The show got a few good reviews around the web. For instance:

http://www.nynewsday.com/entertainment/tv/...manheadlines-tv

It also got some nice comments on the GSN boards. Don't know if I'll watch, though. I'm not enough of a video gamer for a two-hour investment.

Besides the Monday rerun that Chris mentioned, there are also reruns at 4:00 PM Wednesday 3/24, 6:00 PM Friday 3/26, 4:00 PM Saturday 3/27 and 9:00 PM Sunday 3/28, according to the sched on the GSN site. So it's not like you won't have a chance to see it again.

[PeterMarshallFan]

From the part that I saw [ColecoVision to King's Quest], it stunk. Tony Hawk comes off as annoying and arrogant to me, and the jumping from 1988 to 1979 was pointless.

[cmjb13]

I didn't see the whole thing, but did they mention Dragon's Lair at all?

[adamjk]

It was good, though no mention of the N64 was made.

[ezbidder]

Warning: Spoiler content






I liked the documentary.  They covered 3 main streams:
- early arcade games up to the Pacman era, and then also Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat era.  Not enough coverage here, arcades were definitely short changed in this documentary.

- console gaming from the Odyssey through the Atari right up to the X-Box (no mention of the Jaguar, Turbografix 16, N64 but images were shown of N64 games) - coverage pretty good.

- consumer personal computers (Commodore 64 and Apple, and then a bit about the IBM PC) - a bit less coverage than needed - left out the VIC 20, Trash 80, hardly any Macintosh coverage, left out Atari ST and Amiga, both major players in the mid 80's.

Other areas I thought were lacking:

- not enough on handhelds.  They mentioned Gameboy, but left out Atari Lynx
- too much on the Quake/Doom era
- not enough on the history of Midway and Williams.

[CarShark]

[quote name=\'cmjb13\' date=\'Mar 22 2004, 08:49 PM\'] I didn't see the whole thing, but did they mention Dragon's Lair at all?

 [/quote]
 Nope, not at all.

PMFan, you think Tony Hawk is arrogant and annoying? He came off as robotic and uninspiring to me. I see nothing wrong with going back in time, though. Haven't you ever read a book with flashbacks? Come on.

[PeterMarshallFan]

[quote name=\'STYDfan\' date=\'Mar 23 2004, 08:27 AM\'] you think Tony Hawk is arrogant and annoying? He came off as robotic and uninspiring to me. I see nothing wrong with going back in time, though. Haven't you ever read a book with flashbacks? Come on. [/quote]
 That too. He comes off as smug to me...I guess you can tell I just don't like him.

Flashbacks within reason are fine. But talking about events in 1988 and then jumping NINE years back is inispid, IMO. No reason they couldn't have covered King's Quest when they were at that point the first time. Very sloppily produced, outside of the 88/79 thing also.

[wvoutlaw2002]

- not enough on handhelds. They mentioned Gameboy, but left out Atari Lynx

Maybe they left out the Lynx because Atari Corporation has been dead for 8 years, and maybe people still hate the Tramiels for Atari's demise (even though Ray Kassar did some really boneheaded stuff when Warner still owned Atari).

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'wvoutlaw2002\' date=\'Apr 17 2004, 08:43 PM\'] Maybe they left out the Lynx because Atari Corporation has been dead for 8 years, and maybe people still hate the Tramiels for Atari's demise (even though Ray Kassar did some really boneheaded stuff when Warner still owned Atari). [/quote]
 While I agree with your reasoning, I think revising history because of some kind of personal vendetta is awfully damn lame. Especially when the significant contributions the Lynx made to the hobby are considered.