Video Game History with Steven L Kent (Part One)

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Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Show Notes

This is part one - of four - of a conversation with author and video game historian Steven L Kent, and is a collaboration between ourselves and Zoom Platform. Whilst this is an audio episode, it was originally recorded as a pair of video interviews. What we've done is cut the two video interviews into four parts and will be releasing them as audio episodes. But if you'd rather watch the first two parts as a video you'll find it here.

Part One of Four

In his own words, Steven describes his books as

My books are called "The Ultimate History of Video Games".
Volume 1 starts out with Abraham Lincoln and Bagatelle, and goes all the way to 2000 and sort of the collapse of the Dreamcast - or it's about to collapse, you can tell that it's faltering - PlayStation 2 has been announced and is just coming out, and Xbox has been announced.
Book two has some overlap, because there will be some people who read volume 2 without reading volume 1, so it's got a bunch of overlap. But what's interesting is that I thought I'd be able to go from 2000 to the present, but I only got to 2012. So volume three should come out around 2026.
- Steven L Kent

A Sense of Discovery

Jay mentioned that the sense of discovery related to technology may be lost on the younger generations via a story about when he and Squidge got their first NES:

It's December 26th, 19-mumble-mumble, and we've gotten up early... Dad walks in with a present under his arm, and it's a NES.
And it's the memory of opening up the box and saying, "Oh, what's this?" because we'd never even seen a video game console before. And it being a family activity that we're discovering what the contents of this box are, together.
And I remember so vividly. We had Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt on the cartridge. I remember fumbling my way into starting Super Mario Bros. and suddenly I'm controlling a cartoon. It's not a video game, because it looks like a cartoon to me.
And I was talking to someone the other day about this...
- Jay

The "someone" was Jay's appearance on the Gamerhood Podcast, where he talked about being a gamer and a father.

Video Game Commercials

When discussing Crash Bandicoot, Steven brings up a fantastic commercial for Crash Bandicoot which was filmed in the parking lot of the Nintendo US headquarters. Here is that commercial.

Which lead us on to the "Michael" commercial for PS3.

299

No discussion on video game history would be complete without a discussion on "the price heard" around the world. Which you can find here.

And for those who don't know, there is a very long story behind the crowd reaction here. Essentially, the story is that Sega had just announced their Saturn (only a few hours earlier), which was a surprise to most of the retailers who were in attendance (because Sega hadn't told them that it was being announced). Sega also announced it with a $399 price tag.

As such, Sony's entire announcement of the PlayStation was simply

299
- Steve Race, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

What have you been playing recently? Do you agree with the anonymous review that Chief read during this episode? What would you take with you to the Thunder Plains?

Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, leave a comment on the show notes or try our brand new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in this episode:

Jay & Jay MediaJay & Jay on Ko-FiOur Facebook pageUs on TwitterSteven on Penguin Random HouseThe Ultimate History of Video Games volume 1The Ultimate History of Video Games volume 2Zoom PlatformOur suggested titles from Zoom Platform's catalogue:Squidge:Moto Racer 2Rogue TrooperZ: The GameJay:Oddworld: Abe's OddyseeCannon FodderDuke Nuken 3D Atomic EditionJay's appearance on the Gamerhood Podcast

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