Author Doug McCoy

A few weeks ago I learned about Video Games by Daniel Cohen, and I just had to have it.

Video Games is a survey of the video game universe as it stood in the early 80s.  Written for young adults, it covers arcade games, home systems, computer games, and even portable electronic games.  It doesn’t give a world of information about any of these things, but it does give an okay overview.  It also contains some information that was incredibly interesting, such as these screenshots of of Intellivision games that were in the works at the time of writing.

It also says that Pac-Man was also known as Packy.  Really?

Now it would be easy to laugh at how simplistic as well as outdated this book is.  But I have to admit that it was still a ton of fun to read.  It didn’t tell me a lot, but it reminded me not only of the kind of books I used to read as a kid but also how I mined them for every bit of information I could.  Books like these were my lifelines to my interests in the pre-Internet world, and for that they have a special place in my heart.  I know an 8-year-old me would have loved this book, and a 38-year-old me liked it pretty well.