Joystick Nation How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts and Rewired Our Minds J.C. Herz ISBN 0-316-36007-4 [Zube (5/14/98), last updated on Mar 22, 2008.] I had such high hopes for Joystick Nation. (Sigh) The prologue points out some very interesting bits about the people who grew up with video games, to wit: "The kids that wiled away endless hours playing Galaxian are the same ones who'll walk six blocks to an ATM rather than wait for a bank teller." This describes me and many others perfectly. Later, we are given a bit more: "Videogames are perfect training for life in fin de siecle America, where daily existence demands the ability to parse sixteen kinds of information being fired at you simultaneously ..." In essence, the people who grew up with video games are better adapted to today's sensory-overloaded, fast-changing world. This insight is (IMHO) spot on and led me to believe that the book would continue in a similar fashion. But instead of writing the obvious, I think I'll scream. DOES ANYONE, *ANYONE*, ACTUALLY CHECK THE FACTS BEFORE WRITING????? The book starts in 1961 at MIT with the PDP-1. We are guided down memory lane, with a bit of humor, to the origins of SpaceWar. Later, we are told that Steve Russell, one of the programmers of SpaceWar, *invented* videogames. In fact, this is completely false. The current wisdom is that Willy Higinbotham is the person Herz should have been looking for. Higinbotham and his associates developed a tennis game on an oscilloscope at Brookhaven National Lab in 1958. This is documented in Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Video Games by Leonard Herman, in John Anderson's article "Who Really Invented the Video Game?" in the Spring 1983 Video & Arcade Games magazine (which is probably where Herman got his bits), and in the FAX arcade game by Exidy (although they spelled his name incorrectly). [2/25/2006 -- As time goes on, our history gets better. OXO, a tic-tac-toe game written by A.S. Douglas for the EDSAC computer dates from 1952 (see the Wikipedia entry for OXO for more information). The current winner is _Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device_ by Goldsmith et. al. This was submitted to the US Patent office on January 25, 1947 and was awarded patent 2,455,992 on December 14, 1948. Jed Margolin deserves the credit for mentioning this patent as "the first video game patent" on his web page. Finally, a mention of Leonardo Torres Quevedo is in order. He invented a chess-playing automaton, an electromechanical device with a vertical chessboard, that played a KRK (king and rook vs. king) endgame. This was demonstrated at the Paris World's Fair in 1914 (ref: Twisty Little Passages by Nick Montfort, p. 76.). See http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1799 for pictures.] Thus, our once promising book is off to a tenuous beginning. Unfortunately, it gets worse. Chapter 2 is called "A Natural History of Video Games." Unless "Inaccurate" is a synonym for "Natural," there is a rough ride ahead. We are treated to the following facts [and my corrections]: "Asteroids ... was the last great black-and-white game." [Herz might think so, but Ripoff (released in 1979, same as asteroids) and Star Castle (1980, B&W with a color overlay) might not agree with such a definitive statement. There was also Kaitei Takara Sagashi ("Underwater Treasure Hunting" if Wikipedia is accurate) that was a 1980 black-and-white game from Namco.] "To this day, Missile Command is still the only game to use a separate sighting device for aiming." [Rubbish. Liberator qualifies for sure; Megazone, Xevious, and Alpha Mission among others might also qualify depending on what is meant. Also, there was an enhancement kit for Missile Command called Super Missile Attack released by General Computer Corporation in 1981.] "Tempest. The final descendant in a proud and ill-fated line of vector graphics games ...." [According to the KLOV, Tempest was Atari's *first* color vector game. It is certainly true that Black Widow, Gravitar, Major Havoc, Quantum and Space Fury, among others, were post-Tempest. In addition, I don't think most people would call Star Wars (the 1983 Atari color vector) ill-fated.] "Frogger had more ways to die than any other videogame before or since." [I guess research would simply waste valuable time, eh? Anybody want to jump in here? I'll start with the following: According the the Jan/Feb 1985 Computer Games, there are 70 ways to die in Infocom Sorcerer.] "Pole Position. The first hit driving game ...." [Depends on "hit" I guess. Both Turbo and Monaco GP saw their share of arcades. Night Driver also qualifies.] "... Donkey Kong Country 2, the swan song of 16-bit video games." [Oh stop, you're cracking me up.] and it goes on ... and on ... and on. I had to stop because it was both too funny and too painful. Kudos are due to the author, however, for mentioning VGR (Craig Pell) in conjunction with Indenture. They are then instantly revoked for calling classic gamers "Atari saps" in the same sentence. In short, I'll paraphrase Crow from MST3K: "I'd like to hurt this book, but I could never hurt it the way it hurt me." If you want a fictional non-fiction book about videogames, run right out and get it. If you care about facts, though, I'd suggest going to a place far, far away where it can't hurt you. Finally, in the acknowledgments section at the end, Herz thanks her professors in the Harvard Biology Department with the phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." I couldn't agree more.