Introduction
For whatever reason, books on the video game phenomenon have been few and far between. Despite the rise of this exciting new form of electronic entertainment over the last decade, few authors apparently have chosen to detail and break down the entire industry, from the economics to the culture, over its 30-plus year history. Instead, most of the better-known books on video games have focused on a particular aspect, historical period, or sub-segment within the industry. Tomes that come to mind are "Masters of Doom" by David Kushner - a chronicle of the making (and unmaking) of the Doom empire and its famous co-creators, John Carmack and John Romero - as well as David Sheff's "Game Over," which examined the history of Nintendo.
Now comes "Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Video Game Revolution" from authors Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby. Released in November by Algonquin Books, "Smartbomb" attempts to deliver a definitive history of the video game revolution, without providing a sweeping, comprehensive record of all things gaming. Armed with an insider's perspective, Chaplin and Ruby succeed by using deep character studies of key figures to illustrate the odd and almost unbelievable history of video games. (After all, the first video game, according to the book, was developed by a man who also worked on the first atomic bomb.)
If "Smartbomb" has one noticeable flaw, it's the book's first chapter, "CliffyB and the Dawn of a New Era." It's out of chronological order, for one - the second chapter, titled "In the Beginning," focuses on the aforementioned first video game and its creator, the iconic William Higinbotham, as well as other early developers. Instead, Chaplin and Ruby use the first chapter show the climactic period between 2001 and 2003 through the eyes of Cliff Bleszinki, or CliffyB, a lead game designer at Epic Games who serves as the "everyman" of this tale. While his transformation from an acne-coated nerd to a "pimp-suit-wearing rockstar" is interesting, CliffyB doesn't match up well with the luminaries in the book, such as MIT hacker Steve Russell or Nintendo's legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto.
"Smartbomb" recovers with its second and third chapters, detailing the road from Pong, to Atari, to the first Nintendo. The authors do a superb job of profiling Miyamoto, who they describe as a "present-day Gepetto." Miyamoto built Nintendo into the video game version of Disney during the 80s and early 90s through magical games like Super Mario Bros., which featured Italian plumbers as unlikely heroes, rather than samurais or commandos.
Miyamoto is portrayed as a brilliant and complex character. "Smartbomb" shows the game maker grappling with criticism from concerned parents and critics about children playing too much Super Mario Bros. When children would approach Miyamoto with questions about the game, he would encourage them to play outside instead. It's ironic that these same children would years later outgrow Nintendo and Miyamoto's magic touch, to embrace more mature and violent action games during the late 1990s.
