The Comic Book Story of Video Games: The Incredible History of the Electronic Gaming Revolution

Although video games entered pop culture in the 1980s, their roots date from much further back. In fact, as Hennessey (The Comic Book Story of Beer) argues in this detailed, if sometimes too cutesy, history, electronic gaming developed not as an offshoot of the computer revolution but right alongside it. Hennessey traces electronic gaming’s roots to America’s sprawling postwar military-collegiate-research ecosystem, which used games to experiment with and display the uses of early computer technology. The line from the first game—which was actually named the Cathode-Ray Amusement Device of 1947—to Minecraft isn’t a clear one, and at times Hennessey gets a little lost in the weeds. The book’s jumpy approach helps batch gaming evolution into its component parts, from the MIT origin mythology of the pioneering open-source game Spacewar to the influence of role-playing games and the later console battles. In his graphic novel debut, McGowan supplies lively caricatures of key players in a fluid, realistic style, which break up what could be endless pictures of computer consoles. For anybody wondering how we went from Pong to Pokémon Go in just a few decades, this history is a great starting point. (Oct.)