Errata and Commentary on 
The First Quarter, A 25-year History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent
First Edition
by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)

This document lives at:  http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/kent.txt

***
created on Dec 26, 2000 
last update on Nov 9, 2001
***

*************
Second Edition Notes:

The second edition of this book has been published by Prima Publishing 
under the title "The Ultimate History of Video Games."  A cursory glance 
suggests that most (and probably all) of the factual errors and 
omissions listed below have been corrected in the new book (of course,
I'll have to check to make sure :).  

While I am currently obliged to Mr. Kent for his willingness to correct 
mistakes, future historians will owe him a grand and ever-increasing debt 
of gratitude.  An account that is not only interesting but carefully 
accurate has historical worth far beyond one that is merely interesting,
and the second edition seems to reflect that.  I'll determine if that is
true shortly. 
*************

Before I get to the corrections, I wish to say a few things about the
book itself.  I like this book.  A lot.  The quotes from industry people,
the tracing of the industry from amusement and pinball days and the section
on the legal aspects of the video game world make The First Quarter a
most interesting read.  It, along with Phoenix and Game Over should be
on every gamer's bookshelf.  

That said, there are two major but easily correctable problems with TFQ.
First, this book needs an index like nobody's business.  Second, there are
several infuriating instances where the author offhandedly mentions something
interesting without providing any details.  For example, he notes that
the first trackball game was a Taito soccer game, but never mentions the
name.  He also notes that Okamoto (the Street Fighter designer) made a couple
of little known games at Capcom before SF, but never mentions the names
of the games.  The author should know that it isn't polite to tease; 
either don't mention the interesting bits at all or provide all the details.
Please don't leave us hanging in future editions.

Notes on Errata:

Some of the entries below point out factual errors, some point out stylistic
or typographical errors and some are nothing more than my own biased
opinions.  This errata list is by no means complete and does not claim
to be.

Entries labeled [SLK] were kindly provided to me by the author himself.
Entries labeled [KG] were kindly provided to me by Ken Gagne.

Errata
------

p. 14 -- "Programmed Data Processor" should be Programmable Data Processor,
or at least the PGP-8 FAQ says so.

p. 15 (footnote) -- This one bothers me.  The author correctly mentions 
Willy Higinbotham (JC Herz please take note), but then dismisses his
1958 oscilloscope tennis game as an "isolated instance," and
"It appears that neither Steven Russell nor Ralph Baer were aware of
the existence of Higinbotham's game."

My response is "So?"  

Mr. Higinbotham's contribution, while perhaps not a factor in the chain
of events leading from amusements and pinball to the modern video game
is nonetheless (IMHO) much too important to be relegated to dismissive
footnote status, especially in a book that has the phrase "History of
Video Games" in its title.

p. 78-79 -- The timeline in this section is (to me) muddled.  First, there
is this:

"It looked as if the Telestar would have little competition when it reached
the market in June, 1976."

To me, this means that Coleco was shooting for a June release date.
No problem so far.  Mr. Kent then explains that the FCC gave Coleco four days
to fix the RFI problems or Coleco would have to resubmit the Telestar for
FCC approval, which would take months.  

Then Ralph Baer says:

"At that moment, they had $30 million worth of game inventory, and that would
have thrown them out of the Christmas business ..."

Now the muddled part starts.  It's not clear to me when the FCC gave Coleco
the ultimatum, that date's relationship to their "Christmas business,"  
and how long an FCC submission takes.

Almost surely the Telestar was in development before 1976.  Assuming that
Coleco really was shooting for a June 1976 release date, the submission for
FCC approval had to have taken place in late 75 or early 76, since such
submissions "take months."  Now, even if submissions "take months" (how
many? 2? 3? 6?), a release date of September or October would still have 
enough time to make an impact on Christmas sales.  So how would a 
resubmission have "thrown them out of the Christmas business"? 

A few more marker points in this section would be most helpful.

p. 83 -- "Pinball made a strong comeback in 1976.  The first generation
of solid state pinball machines appeared in arcades.  Though solid state
pinball machines played like older tables, they kept track of several 
players' scores at once.  Before solid state pinball, only one player
could play a table at a time."

Many pinball machines had multi-player play before 1976.  
Nip-it (1972) is one such game.  The Internet Pinball Database 
(http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/IPD/) has many other examples. 

p. 94 -- "Players lost if the invading alien army reached the bottom of 
the playing field."  [Space Invaders]

...or the player lost all their ships, of course ...

p. 95 -- "Taito beat Atari to market with a soccer game that used one
[a trackball].

Which Taito game?  I can find no reference to a Taito soccer game in the 
late 70s that used a trackball.

p. 104 -- [SLK] "Cinematronics was founded by Larry Rosenthal ...."

This is incorrect.  The History of Cinematronics page,

http://zonn.com/Cinematronics/history.htm

notes the following: 

"Jim Pierce and two other entrepreneurs, Dennis Parte and Gary Garrison, 
decided to get into the embryonic video game industry and started
Cinematronics in El Cajon, CA in 1975."

See the above page for the whole Cinematronics story.

p. 105 -- "... Raines ... suggested that the asteroids should get 
repeatedly smaller when the ship shot them."

There is no mention of the development of Asteroids nee Cosmos nee Planet
Grab "in which you had to claim a planet by touching it."  This is noted
in The Atari Anniversary Special: From Cutoffs to Pinstripes in the 
December 1982 issue of Video Games magazine, p. 48.

p. 106 -- [Asteroids] "When players jumped into hyperspace, they reappeared
in a randomly selected spot on the screen."

... or the ship blew up coming out of hyperspace.

p. 113 -- "Missile Command was controlled with an 8-ball-sized trackball ...."

I assume the author means Magic 8-ball-sized.  If memory serves, the 
MC trackball was much bigger than an ordinary pool ball.

p. 116 -- "Before Pac-Man, the most popular theme for games had been shooting
aliens.  After Pac-Man, most games involved mazes.  [snip]  Soon there
were maze chases involving cars, eyeballs, spaceships, monkeys, fish,
even a walking bucket of water. 

I have two nitpicks with this, based on speculation.  First, assuming that
the maze chase with eyeballs that the author is referring to is Rock-Ola's
Eyes, it must be noted that one did an awful lot of shooting in that game,
including shooting other eyeballs.  Second, assuming that the author thinks 
that "a walking bucket of water" is the hero from Guzzler, it is an awfully 
strange bucket of water that has eyes, hands, feet and antennae.

Also, it would have been nice to note the games he was referring to.

p. 119 -- [defender] "If the aliens managed to capture every astronaut, the 
planet exploded and the player found himself flying through hyperspace
with hundreds of aliens coming from every direction."

Hyperbole, in the finest "infinite colors" tradition.  

p. 122 -- "A dispute over zoning laws between Aladdin's Castle, a large
chain of arcades, and the city of Mesquite, Texas, ended up before
the Supreme Court."

And?  And?  And?  What is the case number?

CITY OF MESQUITE v. ALADDIN'S CASTLE, INC., 455 U.S. 283 (1982)

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=455&invol=283

p. 125 -- The author talks about Warp Speed, "a high-speed outer-space 
flight simulation in which players attacked a well-armed space fortress."

And then later ...

"Before it was released, they also changed the title of the game.  Through
a special licensing agreement with George Lucas, Atari received permission
to use the name Star Wars."

Since Atari Star Wars vectorally (?) reenacts some of the Star Wars bits,
and since it also uses voice samples (?) from the movie, I would guess 
that Atari did more than simply slap the Star Wars name on Warp Speed 
as the above paragraph implies. 

p. 128 -- Ignoring the problems with the footnote (see the next two entries),
the level order for DK presented is not correct.  The author states that
the order is barrels, springs and girders and then mis-handwaves around
the cement factory level.  From memory (I can verify this by tuning up
my DK skills), the American levels were:

barrels, girders, barrels, springs, girders, barrels, cement, springs,
girders, and then barrel levels even more frequently between the others.

One of the Japanese versions of DK (verified in Mame) starts with
barrels, cement, springs, and girders.  

p. 128 -- (footnote, part 1) -- "Though this level [the cement factory level 
in Donkey Kong] was not included in consumer versions of the game ...."

I don't believe this is correct.  The Vic-20 version certainly had all
four levels.  My guess is that most of the computer versions did, including
Super Donkey Kong for the Adam.  Interestingly, Nintendo managed to omit the
cement level from their own NES Donkey Kong.

p. 128 (footnote, part 2) -- "... it was in some of the coin-operated 
versions."

Could someone verify a single coin-operated Donkey Kong that did not have
the cement level?  All the ones I ever played (including the bootleg 
Congrilla) had four levels. 

p. 130 -- There is a period missing in the second to last paragraph 
after the word "charming."

p. 131 -- "Whenever the centipede collided with a mushroom, it changed
directions."

True enough.  It might be more accurate to say it either went up or
down and *reversed* direction.  One might also note that when a centipede
touched a poison mushroom (one touched by a scorpion), it headed straight
for the bottom of the screen.  When it reached the very bottom, it popped 
back up to row two and immediately started its back and forth progression 
again.  When it finally reached the bottom, it would start back up again
until it reached row 5 (?) and then start back down again.

p. 135 -- [Regarding tempest] "... it caused the security code to malfunction
and the player received 43 credits."

I can't verify any code that would result in 43 credits.  Most of the
documented codes give the player 40 credits.   

p. 137 -- "a new color schemes" should be "a new color scheme."

p. 141 -- "There were no known patterns to fool the ghosts in Ms. Pac-Man."

While it is true there were no static patterns in Ms. Pac-man (as an aside,
only five patterns were needed to play (nearly) forever in Pac-man), there 
were grouping techniques that allowed one to play for a while.  See "The Ms.
Pac-man Mystery" in the June 1984 Computer Games, p. 36.

p. 142 -- "Executives at Midway expressed great interest in Baer's camera
and commissioned him to install the prototype into one of their machines.
Baer installed his camera in an arcade machine ...."

Which machine?

p. 147 -- "Alcorn may have called the VCS an "empty box," but the people
who made games for it turned it into a full fledged computer."

IMHO, a poor choice of words.  The phrase "full fledged computer" conjures
up images of hardware with keyboards, monitors, disks, etc, along with
a lot of other baggage.  Perhaps a better phrase would be "very capable 
game machine."

p. 148 -- "A lot of the first games for the VCS were based on popular arcade
and board games of the time."

On the next page, the author provides a list of the first nine VCS games:

Combat, Street Racer, Air-Sea Battle, Surround, Blackjack, Basic Math, 
Indy 500, Video Olympics, and Starship.

I see no board games on this list.  Later we do see checkers, chess, 
backgammon and hunt & score (concentration), but certainly not in the first
round of games.

p. 148 -- [KG] The last two paragraphs gather many unrelated concepts
together including the number of programmers that work on a game, what 
types of games were initially designed for the VCS, how much programmers 
are paid and how programmers' skills improved.  It's a bit disjointed.

p. 152 -- "Because Robinett's game was for the VCS, it was restricted in size
to 2K of code."

According to Kevin Horton's sizes.txt file: 

http://www.tripoint.org/kevtris/files/sizes.txt 

Adventure is 4K.  Robinett mentions the 4K size himself in a Konix interview 
(http://www.kinox.org/interviews/int_021.html)

p. 158 -- [KG] The last paragraph is part of a quote and should be in 
italics.

p. 159 -- "Coleco returned to the market with a bizarre triangular console
that had a steering wheel for driving games on one panel, a pistol for
shooting games on another, and knobs for games like Pong on the third."

For those of you still reading my tripe, it was the Telstar Arcade.

p. 160 -- "While it [the Intellivision] was built around the same basic
processor as the Video Computer System ...."

This is very, very wrong.  The VCS CPU is a 6507, which is fairly close 
to the 6502.  According to the Intellivision FAQ, the Intv CPU is a 
GI CP1600.

p. 160 -- The first two paragraphs in the Back to Atari section should
be in italic, as I believe they are part of the Ray Kassar quote
that ends on the next page.

p. 169 -- "Though ColecoVision only had the standard eight-bit processor
and 48K of RAM ...."

The ColecoVision FAQ lists the amount of normal ram at 8K, video ram at
16K and the carts themselves as large as 32K.

p. 169 -- "... but Coleco's marketers had a knack for selecting small games
with strong followings.  Coleco secured licenses for Mr. Do, Lady Bug, 
Cosmic Avenger and Venture."

Other than Mr. Do, which was the first kit game and thus received much
more exposure than it would have had it been dedicated only, the others
were pretty tough to find and thus play.  It's not clear to me how
strong a following Cosmic Avenger could have had if no one could play
it.

p. 170 -- "They [Coleco] created an adapter that enabled the ColecoVision
to play VCS games."

Sorta.  Expansion module 1 contained all the VCS guts.  The CV didn't really
play (or translate) the games; the adapter did most of the work.

p. 171 -- "Coleco created a flawless version of Donkey Kong, selling it
exclusively as a pack-in with ColecoVision ...."

This may be the silliest error in the whole book, compounded by the fact
that Mr. Kent has already said (incorrectly) that consumer versions of
DK didn't have the cement level.  Unless flawless means "missing a level"
he's incorrect.

Putting aside the missing level for a second, any reasonable person who has 
spent some time with the arcade DK and then spent 30 seconds with the CV DK 
will note that the two have many differences.

p. 179 -- "Atari had agreed to pay royalties on the VCS version of 
Donkey Kong ...."

This, to me, makes no sense.  Atari did not make a version of DK for
the VCS, it was a Coleco game (although much later it did come out on the
Atari label), so Universal would have gone after Coleco or Nintendo, but
not Atari.  On the other hand, Atari did have the rights to the computer
versions of DK, so I can imagine them going after Atari for that.  In
any case, I'd like a reference.

p. 180 -- "No one realized that the arcade business had begun to collapse
in 1982."

Hyperbole again.

p. 181 -- "Jarvis crashed his MGB and broke his right hand, shortly
after completing Defender II ...."

Stargate was the followup to Defender.  Sometime much later, some home 
versions of Stargate were introduced as Defender II.  For example, one 
can find the Atari 2600 version under both names.

See http://www.gamearchive.com/collector/badger/Evolution/EvolutionStargate.htm
for the full story.

p. 181 -- "... so they set their game in 2084 to give mankind an extra 
century to create a viable Big Brother."

Huh?  According to the game intro, we have the Robotrons concluding
that the human race is inefficient and must be destroyed; our super-powered
hero is charged with saving the Last Human Family.  Big Brother is who in
this scenario?  

p. 181 -- "The hero and his family are the last humans, and the robots
want to catch them and put them in a zoo."

This is not reflected in the game.  The intro states:

"The human race is inefficient and therefore must be destroyed."

There is nothing anywhere in Robotron 2084 that mentions a zoo.

p. 182 (typo) -- Sterns should be Stern. 

p. 182 -- "Jarvis loved the game [Berzerk] but hated its joystick-button
configuration because you had to run towards enemies to shoot them."

Complete rubbish.  While I admit that Robotron's two-joystick control
is better than Berzerk's, if one holds the fire button down, the joystick
controls shot direction.  Open up MAME and try it yourself.

p. 183 -- [KG] Last paragraph, first line could probably do without the
comma: "Lee, and a sound engineer named Dave Thiel came up with a
humorous device..."

p. 184 -- "... or when player ran Q*Bert off the edge of the blocks, he
muttered angry gibberish words ...." 

The "angry gibberish words" are not present when Q*Bert falls off the
pyramid.  Instead, he makes a trailing-away scream followed by a rather
sickening thud.

p. 184 -- "...[q*bert] muttered angry gibberish words and a word balloon
appeared above his head with messages like "@!#@!"".

Ah, the life of a nitpicker.  The word balloon message is actually "@!#?@!"
and, I believe, does not change.

p. 184 -- "...Dragon's Lair -- the first laser disc game."

The Dragon's Lair Project page on Astron Belt: 

http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/games/pages/astron.asp

notes the following:

"Astron Belt was the first laser disc arcade game ever created, but
unfortunately, constant delays kept it from reaching the US arcades
until late 1983."

p. 187 -- [KG] Last paragraph refers to the store "K-mart" but page 195
calls it "Kmart".

p. 188 -- "Food Fight was a fast-paced chase game in which a blonde-haired
boy picked up pies and bananas and other foods and threw them at adults
as they tried to corner him."

This needs some clarification.  Our hero is Charley Chuck and his
goal is to eat the ice cream cone on the other side of the board.  Also, the 
enemies are chefs, not simply adults.  The author might have mentioned
that the game had an instant replay feature as well.

p. 192 -- [KG] Second paragraph of quote seems to be missing the word
"we": "they were going to leave us alone because [we] had shown
them..."

p. 193 -- [KG] Second line, the semicolon should be a comma, otherwise 
you have an incomplete clause: "; a system originally launched as the Bally
Astrocade..."  There are other uses of the semicolon in this fashion
elsewhere in the book.

p. 205 -- "Jack Tramiel" is the start of a section and should be in bold.

p. 208 -- "coups" should be "coup".

p. 208 -- (footnote) "Atari hired Alan Alda as the spokesman for their 
computers and Mattel hired George Plimpton."

Atari had other spokesmen as well.  Billy Martin, manager of the Oakland A's
and New York Yankees, was called in for Atari Realsports Baseball (if memory
serves).

p. 213 -- (quote) "... and that was to make a universal cabinet and
just change the software with a cartridge.  He wasn't the first to come up 
with such a 'system,' that was Nintendo."

Two points of note.  First, the Data East DECO system existed before both
Bushnell's and Nintendo's, but that system used tapes instead of carts.  
Second, SNK built (most of) their company around the changable-cart idea.
The Neo-Geo MVS arcade system survived long after its technology had been
surpassed because the games were so easy to change (the one notable exception
is The Irritating Maze). 

p. 213 -- "...Sente's hardware was expensive and all but one of its games
got bad reviews."

Which game?  Who reviewed the games? I remember Hat Trick, Mini Golf and 
Gimme a Break in my local arcade and all were fairly fun to play.

p. 215 -- "The Commodore 64 could read both game cartridges and floppy
disks.  Since floppy disks cost less to make and held more information 
than cartridges, both entertainment and serious software makers preferred
publishing their products on disks."

Three notes about this paragraph.  

First, the C64 couldn't read floppy disks without a disk drive.  Most
computers at the time (including the Vic-20) had floppy disk peripherals
(admittedly, people who bought the C64 were at the higher end of the market
and therefore more likely to also purchase a disk drive).  Second, while
the second sentence is true, one should note that releasing games on disk
narrows the potential market.  Not all C64 owners had disk drives, but
all had cart slots.  Finally, there should be a note somewhere (in the
book, not necessarily here) about cassette drives and games as well.

p. 221 -- Mindlink / Bionic Breakthrough was never released.

p. 229 -- "Video Computers System" should be "Video Computer System."

p. 229 -- "Nintendo built the Famicom around the 6502 processing chip,
the same chip that Atari used in the original Video Computers System (sic) 
...."

No, the VCS has a 6507, a close cousin of the 6502.

p. 230 -- "...Nintendo engineers were able to reap more power from the
chip by backing it with two megabytes of RAM -- nearly ten times the
256K of RAM in the VCS."

Unbelievably wrong.  The VCS has 128 *bytes* of RAM.  That is not a misprint.
Cart sizes were as large as 64K, but that is ROM, not RAM.  (Aside: some
carts did come with RAM: the Atari superchip holds 128 bytes of RAM, the 
CBS Ram+ 256 bytes and the M-Network carts 2K; see Kevin Horton's sizes
file for this information).

The Famicom has 2K (not two meg) of RAM and 2K of video RAM.

p. 230 -- "VCS joysticks were versatile for their time, but they were
uncomfortable to hold.  To use them, players had to grip their square base
with one hand and move the stick with the other."

People with large hands (like myself) tend to like the VCS joysticks
because we can hold the base in the bottom of our hand and move the
stick by applying pressure on the top of the stick with the thumb.
Admittedly, we are very much in the minority.

p. 235 -- "Atari had purchased the floppy disk license; the Adam version of
Donkey Kong was cartridge based."

I do not know the history or the chronology, but the following things are
true:

1) DK was available as an Atari cart.
2) DK for the Adam was also available on tape.
3) The unreleased Super Game Module (Expansion Module #3) for the 
Colecovision used a mini-cassette or "wafer" drive, and DK was planned
for it.

p. 237 -- "In fact, for many years, the people organizing CES treated video-
game makers like the ugly stepchildren of the industry.  Computer-game
and video-game companies eventually formed their own trade show."

This trade show is called the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for
short.  This is mentioned later in the book.

p. 238 -- "Stacker" should be "Stack-Up."

p. 239 -- In the Lincoln quote, "Hogans" should be "Hogan's."

picture section, no page number -- The text by the picture of Dave Theurer
states that he created only 3 games:  Missile Command, Tempest and I Robot.
Alas, on page 110 is a mention of Mr. Theurer's first game, Four-Player
Soccer.

p. 242 -- [KG] Second quote begins "Joel came to me..." but the quote is
attributed, probably mistakenly, to Joel Hochberg.

p. 247 -- "The first step in Jumpman's evolution was a name change to
Mario.  In one of his next projects, a game called Mario Brothers ...."

Nitpick time.  The game was called Mario Bros.  Also, Donkey Kong Jr., which
came out before Mario Bros., called our hero Mario.  ("Get key from Mario.
Save your Papa.")

p. 248 (footnote) -- "Cobra" should be "Super Cobra."

p. 251 -- [KG] The beginning of "An Old Competitor" section has a quote
that is not in italics.

p. 251 -- "... Sega introduced a console called the Master System that 
featured the Zilog Z-80 processing chip and 128K of RAM, nearly twice
the memory of the NES."

First, note that Sega started the 'orrible tradition of size-by-bit naming.
In the rest of the world, 1K means 1 kilobyte (meaning either 1000 or 1024
bytes).  To sega, 1K meant 1 kilobit (meaning either 1000 or 1024 bits or
1/8th the size of what 1K normally meant).  

The SMS faq lists the following, taken from the SMS I packaging:

RAM: 64K Bits ( = 8K )        
Video RAM: 128K Bits ( = 16K )

So, assuming that the Famicom figures are correct (2K ram, 2K video ram),
the SMS had 4x the memory and 8x the video memory.

p. 252 -- "Sega's long line of hits included early favorites such as
Space Firebird ...."

Space Firebird was a Gremlin game.  I believe Sega merged or bought Gremlin;
many of their early games are by Sega/Gremlin or Gremlin/Sega.

p. 252 (typo) -- "Nintendo's dvertising slogan" is missing an 'a.'

p. 255 (Lincoln quote) -- "They were all coin-op companies -- Data East,
Konami, Capcom and Bandai ...."

I can't verify that Bandai was making arcade games during the time that
it became a Nintendo licensee.  Can anyone point to a Bandai arcade game
from that era?

p. 255 -- [KG] Fourth paragraph: "Fischbach, Atari's vice president...."
It should be "Activision's vice president...."

p. 260 -- [KG] Opening quote is attributed to "David Rosen, Founder,
Nintendo of America," when he founded Sega, not Nintendo.

p. 273 -- "...Tengen ... invented technologies to disable the security chip
that Nintendo embedded in the NES to lock out unlicensed games."

True enough, although Game Over details how Tengen was unsuccessful at
reverse engineering the lockout bits until a copy of the "10NES" computer
code was illegally retrieved from the Copyright Office (see p. 247-8 of
Game Over).  It's also mentioned later by the author (p. 292-293).   

p. 274 -- The quote from Howard Lincoln includes a quote itself, and
should end with a quote punctuation mark.  At the end of the second-to-last 
sentence ("...for a period of two years.") is where it should go.

p. 275 (footnote) -- "Lack of innovation may have hurt the game's [Donkey
Kong 3] sales."

It certainly didn't help that Mario was nowhere to be seen (he had been 
replaced by an exterminator), but IMHO the problem was that it was such 
a radical change from the previous DK games.  The game, on its own, is
actually pretty good.

p. 276 -- [KG] Last paragraph is a quote from Minoru Arakawa which is
not in italics.

p. 278 -- "up-and-coming contender"

Because of the quotes, I assume that the author was quoting the Punch-Out 
game itself.  Unfortunately, I believe the line (in full) is "Great fighting.
You're an up-and-coming boxer."

p. 278 -- "If the player dodged the punch [from Bald Bull] and responded
with a properly timed counterattack, Bald Bull would fall to the canvas."

The player did not dodge.  When Bull charged, one properly timed "body blow" 
would send him to the canvas.

p. 279 -- "Unlike the arcade game [Punch-Out], the home game was played
from the third-person perspective."

Yes, the wire frame is gone but our perspective is still from behind our
hero.  I suppose it was the best the NES could do.

p. 280 -- [KG] The "Konami Code" ends with the sequence "B, A, Start"
not "A, B, Start" as the third full paragraph contends.  Also, it should
be noted that the three button presses are sequential (first B, then A
then Start), not simultaneous (B+A+Start) as one might infer.

p. 280 -- "Sun Soft Corporation licensed a 1983 driving simulation called
Spy Hunter from Williams."

Spy Hunter was a Bally/Midway game, not a Williams game.

p. 281 (footnote) -- "Ten years after Sega released its 3D Glasses, a number
of smaller companies released products that utilized the identical technology
to enhance PC games."

I'll bite.  Which games?

p. 282 -- "under 3D Glasses" should be "under the 3D glasses."

p. 288 -- [KG] "Lasting Decisions" first paragraph has another
semicolon that creates an incomplete clause.

p. 289 -- Traditional Karate attire is a gi or gie (pronounced with a hard 
g sound); my dictionary doesn't list the spelling as gee.  Anyone have the
OED around?

p. 290 -- "gee" again.

p. 291 -- [KG] There should be a comma after "Warner Communications" in
the first sentence in the Atari Games Corporation v. Nintendo of America
section.

p. 292 -- [KG] First paragraph, second sentence needs a semicolon after
the word "banner," as it currently reads "He could not publish the
games under the Atari banner the consumer rights to the Atari name
belonged to the Atari Corporation."

p. 292 (quote) -- "Atari analysts chemically peeled layers from the NES 
chips to allow microscopic examination of the object code."

Uh ... yes, well, there it is.  I sure hope this quote doesn't convey the
impression that object code is stored in such a way that it is readable
with a microscope or other object once the chips are chemically treated.

p. 297 -- "PDP" again.

p. 300 -- [KG] The one paragraph between the two quotes refers to Al
Miller.  This is the only instance in the book when he is not called
Alan. I think consistency would work better here.

p. 300 (footnote) -- "Judge Reinhardt is best known as the judge who
presided over the famous Roe v. Wade abortion case."

First, I can't verify that Judge Stephen Reinhardt had *anything* to do
with Roe v. Wade.  Second, Roe v. Wade was ultimately decided at the
Supreme Court which Judge Reinhardt is and was not a part of. Third, 
he was appointed to United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
in 1980, so if he was involved at all, he must have been involved in
a lower court.  Finally, Roe v. Wade started as a Texas case and I can
find no reference of Judge Reinhardt being appointed anywhere near
the South.  Reference please?

(The closest I can come to tying the two together is that Judge Reinhardt,
writing for the majority in

Compassion in Dying v. Washington, No. 94-35534, 1996 WL 94848 
(9th Cir Mar. 6,1996)

cites Roe v. Wade in the decision.)

p. 302 -- [KG] First paragraph, "Turican" should be "Turrican."

p. 307 -- [KG] First paragraph, "as much as six cents" should read
"as little as six cents."

p. 309 -- [KG] Fifth line down, "upon protected upon material" should
read "upon protected material." 

p. 315 (footnote) -- "Bubble Bath" should be Bubble Bath Babes and "Panevision"
should be Panesian.

p. 319 -- "... approached Epyx in 1986 with a design for a color handheld
video-game system."

Even though there is a section on it later, a note saying that this became
the Atari Lynx might be nice.

p. 319 -- [KG] The quote from Michael Katz includes a quote itself, and
should end with a quote punctuation mark.  At the end of the first sentence
in the third paragraph ("...for the computer division.") is where it should 
go.

p. 321 -- [KG] Paragraph between quotes has an extraneous comma:
"Instead, of reciting technological achievements..."

p. 324 -- [KG] Third line down, Michael Jackson says the Genesis is the
first system powerful enough to "hand" his system, which should be
"handle."

p. 327 (footnote) -- "TurboGrafx could display 241 colors at a time."

The TG-16 FAQ tries and fails to answer the question about colors.  It says
that it can display 482 colors out of 512, but then it also says that both
the foreground objects ("sprites") and the background are split into 256 
colors each (16 palettes of 16 colors each).  Only one background can be
active at a time and each sprite is limited to one color palette.  The FAQ
also says that some colors of the 512 are duplicated.  In all, it's a muddled
mess; still, other than noting that 241 is 1/2 of 482, I'd like a reference
to the 241 color bit.

p. 327 (footnote) -- "Technically, Genesis could display only 64 colors
at a time ...."

Technically technically, it's 61.  The TG-16 FAQ (sic) says:

"For instance, the Genesis has 8x8 tiles which use 16 colors from one
of 4 palettes each, which would be 64 colors, except that the 16th is a
"transparent" color that is the same for all 4.  Listings for Genesis
colors tend to ignore this and say "64" instead of "61"."

p. 328 -- "CD-ROM discs could store nearly 2,000 times more data than 
TurboGrafx cards."

According to:

http://www.classicgaming.com/thedump/tg16/

the largest game on HuCard format was 20 megabits (Street Fighter 2:CE),
which is 2.5 megabytes.  A cdrom holds roughly 650 megabytes of data which
is 260 times SF2:CE.

p. 329 -- Here, the T in TMNT is "Teen Age" whereas on p. 334. it is
"Teenage."  The believe the latter to be correct.

p. 331 -- "The chips they looked at would have had heating problems ...."

Could this be changed to "heat problems," as the above seems to suggest
(to me, anyway) that the chips would have problems "heating up"?

p. 331 -- 6502 / Atari again.

p. 332 -- [KG] "The company needed financial backing in order to bring out
a new game system [so he] invited ...."

The [so he] bit is missing from the sentence making it a tad confusing.

p. 332-333 -- [KG] Quotes are attributed to RJ Mical, whereas earlier 
quotes were attributed to R.J. Mical (note the periods).

p. 337 -- [KG] Second quote contains a quote but has no closing quote mark.

p. 340 -- "... and Ghouls 'N Ghosts for Genesis, a flawless translation ...."

While I have not personally seen it, I sincerely doubt it was flawless.

p. 341 (footnote) -- "The finished Sonic spun and jumped, requiring two buttons."

I don't have the original Sonic, but this page:

http://atlantiscity.net/poscom/Sonic/SonicGames/Sonic1/#TC

suggests that it really was only a one button game.  The fact that Sonic
is not a two button game is noted on page 30 of the April 2001 EGM.

p. 342 -- "Sonic the Hedgehog was released in the United States in 1991.
As part of Kalinske's proposed plan, it replaced Altered Beast as the game
that came bundled with the system.  People who had purchased the old package
with Altered Beast were allowed to mail in for a free copy of Sonic, in
effect giving them an extra game at no charge.  The Sonic cartridge was
also sold separately for those who already owned Genesis."

Something doesn't add up here.  If all Genesis pack-ins were either
Altered Beast or Sonic, and people who had the former could send in for
the latter, why would Sonic need to be sold separately?  The only
people who would buy Sonic would be those people who bought a used
Genesis or those people who couldn't find their receipt or whatever to
send in for one.  It seems more likely that people who had purchased a
Genesis within some delta of the pack-in changing from Altered Beast to
Sonic would be able to send in for a free Sonic.  Clarification?

p. 343 -- [KG] PPU-1 is defined as Picture Processing Chip.  Wouldn't
that be PPC?  Is it a Picture Processing Unit?

p. 344 -- [KG] The footnote points out that the PSX also shipped on
9/9; would it be worth mentioning the Sega Dreamcast did as well?

p. 346 -- [KG] The second quote from Howard Lincoln contains a closing
quote mark, but no opening one.

p. 347 -- [KG] Last line: "Since the purchase, Yamauchi proven to
be..." is missing the word "has."

p. 348 -- [KG] First quote from Howard Lincoln is not in italics.

p. 350 -- [KG] Consistency is the issue: is the company called Square
Soft or SquareSoft?  This also comes into play during later chapters on
PSX & Final Fantasy VII.

p. 351 -- [KG] A quote is attributed to "Chris Stamper."  Note the period.

p. 353 -- "Okamoto created a couple of little known games after arriving at
Capcom ...."

Which games?

p. 354 -- "Street Fighter II:  World Warrior" should be "Street Fighter II:
The World Warrior".

p. 355 -- [KG] According to this page, Street Fighter II had nine characters, 
in addition to Ken & Ryu.  That's a total of eleven; there were twelve.

p. 358 -- [KG] The quote from Tam Kalinske has a closing quote mark
that is unnecessary.

p. 358 -- Any mention of the NeoGeo system/cart price should be accompanied 
by the qualifier that one was playing the exact same code as the arcade game.
"Flawless" might be applicable in this case.

p. 359 -- [KG] The Michael Latham quote speaks of ROMS, when it should 
be ROMs.

p. 362 -- [KG] Last paragraph, first sentence.  Either remove "Sega released"
or remove "was released."  

p. 364 -- [KG] Is the company's correct name "Sun Soft" or "Sunsoft"?

p. 364 -- "Sun Soft ... went on to release Myst on Sega CD, 3DO, PlayStation
and Saturn."

While it was in development, I don't believe the Sega CD version was ever
released.  Also, there was a version of Myst for the Jag CD.

p. 366 -- "id games were distributed via a unique new method called 
"shareware.""

Shareware may be unique, but in 1992, it was not new.  See:

http://www.pslweb.com/history.htm

to see that it goes back at least to the early '80s.

p. 367 -- "Doom created a phenomenon unlike any PC game before or after it."

I can't comment directly, but it seems to be a bit of hyperbole.

p. 367 -- John Romero's quote should be in italics.

p. 367 -- [KG] "Decent" should be "Descent."

p. 382 -- [KG] "C-span" should be "C-SPAN."

p. 384 -- [KG] Sometimes Fatalities and Friendships are capitalized and
sometimes they aren't.

p. 387 -- comment about how the NeoGeo CD and CD-i were "historically 
insignificant."

As you might imagine, I disagree.  The NeoGeo CD was the first cdrom console
to allow the "exact" arcade game to be played at home (albeit with extremely
long load times due to the cdrom).  The CD-i was the first console to admit 
decent versions of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace (with the DV cart), to
claim a Mario title not on a Nintendo system (Hotel Mario), and to showcase
how not to market a console system.

True enough, these consoles did not set the video gaming world on fire.  
"Historically insignificant" seems a bit much, though.

p. 388 -- "Lo- cost" should probably be "Low cost."

p. 390 -- "Crash and Burn" should be "Crash 'N Burn."

p. 392 -- "The first was Jeff Minter, a former Atari 2600 designer ...."

Other than a hack on his web page in which he changed Space Invaders into
Beast Invaders (http://www.magicnet.net/~yak/beastinv.htm), Minter was not
a 2600 designer.  The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers
(http://dadgum.com/giantlist/list.html) shows that he programmed for many
a machine but not the 2600.

p. 397 -- The second quote on the page mentions the Sega Neptune, but 
it is never explained anywhere.  For the record, it was Sega's never
released Genesis/32X all-in-one system.

p. 398 -- [KG] Last paragraph: "500,000 copies was mostly sold out,"
should be "were mostly sold out."

p. 401 -- [KG] The third paragraph should start with "The Saturn was" else
we don't have a sentence.

p. 401 -- [KG] "Hand-On" should be "Hang-On."

p. 402 -- "The incarnation of Virtua Fighter that appeared on Saturn was
almost indistinguishable for the the arcade game."

First "for" should be "from."  Next, while "almost indistinguishable" is
better than "flawless," it still isn't true.  Virtua Fighter Remix was
much better and was also available for free to those who bought the Saturn
with the original VF pack-in.

p. 402 -- [KG] Third paragraph, last sentence, "Virtua Fighter CD" is
in italics - the "CD" part should not be.

p. 402 -- (footnote) [KG] "Hard Driving" should be "Hard Drivin'."

p. 406 -- [KG] "Though Sony was new as a company ...." should probably be
clarified to "Though Sony was new as a console company ...." or perhaps to
"Though Sony was a newcomer to the console industry ...."

p. 412 -- [SLK] "mitt-mapping" should be "mip-mapping."
 
p. 416 -- (footnote) Miyamoto mentions a game called "Yoshi's World Hunters."
What the heck is that?

p. 417 -- [KG] Is it "Win95" or "Win 95" ?

p. 419 -- It should be noted that JTS and Atari merged on July 30, 1996.
On Dec 4, 1998, JTS filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy ("we're just reorganizing")
and then converted it to Chapter 7 ("we're going under") on January 29, 1999.

p. 419 -- [KG] A quote is attributed to "Bernie Stolar, President and
COO, Sega of America".  All his other quotes are listed as "Bernard
'Bernie' Stolar".  Also, shouldn't he be listed as the _former_ 
president & COO?

p. 420 -- [KG] "T-pad" should be "D-pad."

p. 421 -- [KG] Second paragraph, quote by Hiroshi Yamauchi: "If you think 
this is just another game pad, than you know nothing about video games."  
"than" should be "then."

p. 422 -- In the paragraph starting with "Yokoi left Nintendo," it mentions
Yokoi's new monochrome handheld game system, but not by name.  In the last
paragraph, it mentions the Wonder Swan.  It wasn't clear to me that the two
systems were the same (although I suspect they were).

p. 422 (footnote) -- [KG] Footnote, second and third sentences should
be a single sentence separated by a comma, not a period.

p. 425 -- "... Donkey Kong ... contained approximately 20K of code."

MAME's DK is 37,094 bytes in size.  This, of course, proves nothing.  :)

p. 425 -- "... he and his team would write eight megabytes of code -- 320 times
more code than in Donkey Kong."

It doesn't add up.

Assume that DK is 20K or 20480 bytes.  If 8 megabytes is 8*1024*1024 or
8388608 bytes.  The multiple in this case is 409.6.

Now then, if instead we use 1K = 1000 bytes, and 1M = 1000000 bytes then we 
get a multiple of 400.  I can't make the stuff come out to be 320x.

p. 426-7 -- [KG] Text notes that Super Mario 64 & Star Wars were
demonstrated the day before E3.  I was there, and I believe it was
Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings; unfortunately, I was late to the showing
and I may have missed the Star Wars demo.  But Pilotwings was definitely
featured; I remember Ken Lobb crashing his hang glider into a cliff.

p. 432 -- "To accommodate the red-hot U.S. market, Nintendo rerouted consoles
earmarked for the Japanese and European markets."

I can understand and even believe that consoles could be rerouted from Japan,
since they use the same television standard as the US (NTSC).  However,
Europe uses PAL and SECAM, so consoles already made could not simply be
rerouted and used here.  A PAL or SECAM console does not play well with
an NTSC TV.

p. 434 -- "After joining Square Soft, he made three computer games ...."

Which games?

p. 435 -- The first full paragraph after the first quote is in italic, but
shouldn't be.

p. 435 -- [KG] "Legend of Mana" should be "Secret of Mana."  Legend of Mana
was released for the Playstation not the SNES.

p. 436 -- "... they [Square Soft] did not release Final Fantasy III and V 
in the US."

This statement is true, but does not tell the whole story.

FF II was also not released in the US.
FF IV was released in the US as FF II.
FF V & VI were eventually available as a US PSX release (FF Anthology).

p. 436 -- [KG] "Mario RPG" should be "Super Mario RPG."

p. 450 -- "Dreamcast's final design included ... two operating systems --
one from Sega, the other from Microsoft."

The fact that MS was working with Sega should have been a tipoff to the
whole industry that MS would eventually introduce a console.  Note, however,
that the MS/Sega connection goes back much farther than that.  I have
a one-line blurb from an old Computerworld (?) magazine that mentions MS
working on an OS for the Sega Genesis.

p. 452 -- First there is the mention of Moore's Law.  Next there is:

"This generally resulted in companies simply doubling the size of their 
processor."

Completely untrue.  CPU hardware does not scale this way, nor does a 
double-sized processor imply double the speed. 

Then this:

"... the engineers .... decided to isolate the operations that impact
gaming and increase them exponentially."

This statement leaves an awful lot unanswered.  What are these operations?
How does one increase them exponentially?  It sounds like some hand-waving
press release from Sony.  :)

p. 455 -- [KG] "... Peter Moore, a former Reebok" should be "... Peter Moore,
a former Reebok executive ...."

p. 457 -- It should be noted that the Japanese release of Pokemon Green
became the US Pokemon Blue.

p. 457 -- [KG] Second-to-last paragraph, last line: "Nintendo and its
partners were marketing Pokemon trading card game was a form of gambling."  
"was" should be "as."

p. 458 (footnote) -- "NGPC never stood a chance."

I disagree.  The NGPC made some inroads, getting into both Toys 'R Us
and Best Buy stores.  SNK's relationship with Sega put Sonic on the NGPC;
it also allowed the NGPC to be used with the Dreamcast.  If the Dreamcast
had done better and the Dreamcast/NGPC interaction been emphasized and
the NGPC had a really good pack-in (note how the Wonder Swan color was
packaged with a Final Fantasy game), the world might be different.

p. 459 -- [KG] "... the huge amount of PlayStation 2 offered ...." should
be "... the huge amount of flexibility that the Playstation 2 offered ...."

p. 460 -- [KG] Fourth paragraph, last sentence: "The stores began handing 
the consoles out on the March 4."  The second "the" should be removed.

p. 463 -- [KG] Chapter 14, note iii, cites year "199" as the magazine
publication date.

p. 463 -- Chapter 15 is called "The Aftermath," but in the source notes
it is called "The End of the Golden Age."

p. 465 -- Chapter 25 is called "Moral Kombat," but in the source notes it is
called "Moral Combat."