Documentary: Rise of the Video Game

[Cantaloup]

Just to let everyone know, this airs TONIGHT (11/21/07) on the Discovery Channel at 8 p.m. EST. It's the first of a 5 part series, with the following parts to air weekly on Wednesdays.

More information:

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/video-game/video-game.html

Edit: According to the schedule, each episode will be re-run the following Saturday at 11 a.m. EST if you happen to miss the initial airing.

[sidnotcrazy]

Thanks for posting this. I always miss shows about video games, and it is only afterwards to I hear about them.

[Dark_Sol]

Cool!!

[ZackyH]

The scores for the games on that online portion were pretty low. New Super Mario Bros was like a 6.7 and is the highest ranking one.

[MachineGex]

My TIVO is set, many Thanks!

[XYXZYZ]

I don't have cable TV, I hope this gets uploaded to USENET later on.

[otaku]

I think I've seen this but am not sure, hopefully not.

[rolenta]

I hope the information in the show is better than what's on the website. On their timeline, under Space War, they have a screenshot of Pong! In the Atari & Pong section, it says that Space War was the first arcade game that Atari released.

[cyberfluxor]

Thanks for the heads up! We just started getting Discovery HD, hope it's broadcasted in HD.

[jjessop]

What a snoozefest! I stopped watching 20 minutes into it to go play BF1942. How could they spend so much time saying so little about video games? It looked like somethink E television or G4 would produce.

Did it get better? I recorded it just in case.

JJ

[ZackyH]

What a snoozefest! I stopped watching 20 minutes into it to go play BF1942. How could they spend so much time saying so little about video games? It looked like somethink E television or G4 would produce.

Did it get better? I recorded it just in case.

JJ

I thought it was pretty interesting from beginning to end. Then again I stared at the designs of a desk at the hospital the other day for seven hours so I guess I was willing to watch anything with interest after sitting in that waiting room for that long(I put money in a snack machine and got two ice cream sandwiches for the price of one, though. Awesome!). However, it kind of bugged me about this social commentary they were trying to connect with games. Seemed kind of like they were grasping at straws a little but it did make sense as far as saying why the population gravitated toward the hobby in the first place. I think most of the people who made these games weren't doing it as some sort of commentary of the times or anything. They made them because they were bored at these military jobs with these big computers and decided to make programs like that to pass the time.

[k8track]

What a snoozefest! I stopped watching 20 minutes into it to go play BF1942. How could they spend so much time saying so little about video games? It looked like somethink E television or G4 would produce.

Did it get better? I recorded it just in case.

JJ

Yep, agreed. QFT. I lasted about 7 minutes. I knew and feared beforehand that that would be exactly the case. I guess they were trying to put it into historical context, but ended up being very irrelevant. The way they presented it was very schizophrenic, with snippets of interviews here and there, supplemented by lots of irrelevant archival footage (they kept dwelling on the Cold War and the military way too much).

It suffered from what way too many documentaries have been afflicted with in recent years: an MTV/VH1-I-Love-The-80s style of pacing and editing. God forbid you have a clip longer than 3 seconds on the screen at a time (the ADD kids might lose interest and start txtng thr frnds!). I would greatly prefer a far more focused, relevant, Ken Burns-style approach to the subject. For example, for historical context, start with pinball and other early non-video arcade games (and pachinko in Japan), not a bunch of crappy archival footage about the Cold War. Actually show longer portions of the people you interviewed, and not with “snazzy” background graphics going on behind them (geez, I hate that!).

I would love it if Ken Burns took a crack at this.

[Flack]

I forgot this was on last night but the PiVo caught it so I watched it this morning. Not including commercials, I think it ran a little over 45 mins roughly. Based off of that, I'd say 25 mins was spent discussing the cold war, 20 mins was spent discussing Pong and Atari, and 5 mins was spent discussing Tetris. Those numbers may not be 100% accurate but that's how it felt. I think they showed more footage of rockets, astronauts and JFK than the average space documentary!

The short bit on Tetris at the end felt tacked on and way out of place. I guess they were trying to tie it into the whole cold war theme, but it took them 45-50 mins to get to the Atari 2600 and then (of course) they talked about ET and burying carts in the desert, and all of a sudden there was footage of Ronald Regan and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then a short bit on Tetris. The end of the program showed footage of Donkey Kong, so I assume episode #2 will either cover arcades in greater detail, or the NES. Episode #1 did talk about arcades but if all you knew about arcades came from this program you'd think there were only two games, Space Invaders and Pac-Man.

After this year's CGE I heard some people complaining about the speakers, saying that they'd heard all these stories before. That's how I felt about this program. Every story they mentioned I thought, yeah, heard that one before. I've heard all of them before.

[diskoboy]

I tivo'ed the 1st part, and am watching it now.

When is part 2 coming on? According to my cable listing, it's not on next Wednesday (of course, this thing has been wrong from time to time)..

[cyberfluxor]

Man, I was expecting something better than this. Flack and k8track hit it on the head. It almost felt like a high school or crummy college documentry project. It is lacking, full of filler and rambles off topic. If part 2 is as bad I don't believe I'll watch the others unless someone comes forward letting me know it's worth the time. At least it's not the worst job ever, thank god.

[rolenta]

I was very disappointed with it. Videogames were born from the cold war? Give me a break. I contacted Ralph Baer last night. Here's what he had to say about that: "The reason why everything is "related to the military", which is of course a total fiction, is simply because the producers employed (Heather Chaplin) as a script writer. She wrote a book that makes that precise assertion on every other page. Of course, she never contacted me...."

And I never knew that Tetris was the reason why the videogame industry "rose from the ashes" (hmmm, where did they get that line?).

Bushnell is now claiming that what made Pong fun over the Odyssey was the segmented paddles which caused the ball to return at different angle. He only started speiling that line about three years ago, after he ginally admitted that yes, he "did see the Odyssey, but it was a failure". Of course he doesn't take into the account the Odyssey's English feature which performs almost the same function.

And nobody saw the crash coming except good old Bushnell who made a fortune by selling Warner stock short.

And they pulled in JC Hertz to make a commentary! Oh please!

I could go on but I rather use my energy and work on finishing the new edition of Phoenix. Someone has to try and get it right.

[RJ]

Why WOULDN'T we have heard them before? It's not like they're producing it for members on a video game forum... How many different ways can they do a documentary on video game history? Are you expecting new info from these shows?

Keep in mind it's mainly for the general public, people who may not know the rarity of a given game cartridge, or that Atari or Nintendo DIDN'T actually create every gaming system known to man, or there was more than 1 type of Atari VCS.

Last night I saw it was on just an hr or so before it aired. My wife said "what would be on there you dont already know about?" & she was right...but I still watched & enjoyed it.

I admit I played PS2 as it DVRed, then watched it at my leisure.

[jjessop]

Thank goodness it was not just me. The true story of videogames and the individuals involved is far more interesting than the fluff they tossed in. Get it right Lenny, I'm counting on you!

JJ

[sidnotcrazy]

I was very disappointed with it. Videogames were born from the cold war? Give me a break. I contacted Ralph Baer last night. Here's what he had to say about that: "The reason why everything is "related to the military", which is of course a total fiction, is simply because the producers employed (Heather Chaplin) as a script writer. She wrote a book that makes that precise assertion on every other page. Of course, she never contacted me...."

Yeah, I hated how they tried to spin everything in the direction of the cold war. Now I don’t expect them to cover much of the actual events that transpired during video game history. However, I hate it when a documentary tries to make connections, and assert ideas as fact instead of treating them as what they really are. Which is just the opinion of the creators of said documentary.

Even though I said all of this I will still watch this entire documentary. I am just a sucker for anything that mentions video games even remotely. I did enjoy seeing Ralph Baer, Nolan, Al, and the rest of the gang. But enough with the highbrow intellectual analogies. Video games are interesting enough without having to go into the mindset of the populace at the time.

[otaku]

I swear I've watched this show (or one damn similar) and even taken part in a topic damn similar. Needless to say I've lost interest-its a terrible show and very misinforming.