Errata and Commentary on 
The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent
by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)

This document lives at:  http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/kent2.txt

***
created on Nov 17, 2001 
last update on Dec 15, 2007

Updates

Jul  6, 2003 -- Myst was also released for the CD-I (p. 457). 
Dec 15, 2003 -- finally found reference to MS OS for "future" Sega systems
                (p. 460).
Nov 16, 2004 -- Some stuff goes back further than Higinbotham.
Dec 15, 2007 -- Clone may have been the Midway prototype with the Baer
                camera.
**

This is the second edition of The First Quarter, with many errors fixed,
a much-needed index and 100+ additional pages that carry the history up
to spring 2001.  One mark of a fine book is that it reveals something new
with each successive reading; The Ultimate History of Video Games, despite
its title and garish front cover, is a very fine book.  Anyone with any 
interest in video game history should own it.

Three intro notes:

First, I'm quite grateful to the author for fixing the errors in the first
book.  IMHO, it is most important for people interested in a subject to
have easy access to accurate information.  This does not mean, of course,
that any particular bit of information should be taken as gospel.  Indeed,
facts from any book or any errata (!) can and should be questioned and 
if they turn out to be untrue, should be changed.  To me, the recording of
history should be an ego-free zone; the goal is to get things as accurate 
as possible and if my feelings get hurt in the process, too bad.

Second, I'm embarrassed by the kind words Mr. Kent included in his 
acknowledgments.  I did not ask for such a thank-you, nor did I 
expect one but his kindness is most appreciated.  One bit of clarification
is, alas, in order.  Mr. Kent says that I have "... too much time 
on my hand ..." which is probably a typo.  Lest anyone wonder, I have 
two hands and both function just fine.

Finally, one may notice that some of the same notes from the previous errata 
are duplicated here.  Some of my opinions were not shared by the author
and he chose not to amend the text, as is his right.  I choose to include
those same opinions here, as is my right.  :)  In addition, some stuff
that is here was also in the first edition and so probably should be in
the first errata as well.  That, if it happens, will be last. 

Notes on Errata:

Some of the entries below point out factual errors, some point out stylistic
or typographical errors, some are nothing more than my own biased
opinions and some simply add additional information.   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 for the 
first edition and are still relevant in this edition.
Entries labeled [AT] were kindly provided to me by Adam Thornton.

Errata
------

viii -- [SLK] "Kahili" should be "Kalihi."

xii -- [SLK] The year 1970 appears twice in the timeline.

xii -- "... Gunfight, the first game to use a microprocessor."

Indeed, an Intel 8080.

xiii -- "Nintendo releases Othello, its first arcade game."

While it may have been, I cannot find any Nintendo arcade game under the
name Othello.  The closest I can come is "Computer Othello" mentioned in
this posting:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=nintendo+othello+arcade&hl=en&rnum=5&selm=35f3fda0.0%40news.spies.com

It is also mentioned as "Computer Othello" here as well:

http://www.videogames.com/features/universal/hist_nintendo/2.html 

xiv -- In the 1984 section, "Tamiel" should be "Tramiel."

xiv -- In the 1987 section, "116-bit" should be "16-bit."

p. 2 (footnote) -- "... an old political cartoon shows him [Abraham Lincoln]
playing it [Bagatelle] during his presidency."

Yes it does.  One 1864 cartoon is called "A LITTLE GAME OF BAGATELLE, BETWEEN 
OLD ABE THE RAIL SPLITTER & LITTLE MAC THE GUNBOAT GENERAL."  If you open
up internet explorer (the following URL doesn't seem to work in netscape):

http://loc.harpweek.com/LCPoliticalCartoons/DisplayCartoonMedium.asp?SearchText=bagatelle&UniqueID=3&Year=1864

you'll see the cartoon.  If you use netscape, go to http://loc.harpweek.com,
click on Search -> Advanced Search and then enter Bagatelle, you'll get
a link to the same picture.

[SLK] Alas, there may be more than one political cartoon showing Lincoln 
playing Bagatelle.  The author did not believe that the cartoon noted above
was the one he was referring to.

p. 5 -- It is noted that Fiorello LaGuardia finally got his wish with
the banning of pinball in NYC sometime in the 1930s or 1940s.  (Note:
http://pinballfun.com/hist.html puts the date as January 21, 1942).  
On page 6, the text notes that "New York's ban on pinball remained in
place for 35 years" but on page 8 it notes that "New York continued its
ban into the 1980s."  Something doesn't add up.  Donald Thomas's
ICWHEN site also notes that the ban was lifted in 1976 due to the 
talents of Roger C. Sharpe (http://www.icwhen.com/book/the%201970s/1976.html).
If that is true, my count is between 34 and 35 years for the ban which ended
in 1976.  

p. 17 -- "... they loved jerry-rigging systems."

The term "jerry-rig" is not in my Random House dictionary.  There is 
"jury-rig" meaning makeshift, quickly and from whatever is at hand and
there is "jerry-build" meaning cheaply and flimsily.  A search of the OED
did not turn up jerry-rig, only jury-rig.

p. 18 (footnote) --  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.

But this may be only the tip of the iceberg.  Recent discussion on the 
ccnuk mailing list suggests that patents exist as early as 1948 for 
playing games on an oscilloscope.  Indeed, Don Thomas's ICWHEN site 
mentions some 1948 patents from none other than Mr. Higinbotham himself.  
This is definitely an area that begs to be studied further.  Stay tuned.

Jed Margolin was also kind enough to put on his web site a very interesting
US patent, #2,455,992, titled _Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device_ by
Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr., et. al. that was submitted on January 25, 1947
and granted on December 14, 1948.  The link is here:

http://www.jmargolin.com/patents/2455992.pdf 

p. 30 -- If it's FORTRAN, then it should be GOTRAN, but if it's Gotran,
it should be Fortran.  GOTRAN was a stripped-down "load-and-go" version
of FORTRAN that originally ran on the IBM 1620 computers.

p. 61 -- "Pin Pong" should be "Pin-Pong."

p. 63 -- "It [Gunfight] was not an original concept; a Japanese firm created
the game ..."

Which Japanese firm?  On page 64, however, we find out that it is Taito.

p. 63 -- "Dave Nutting went on to create such classic games as Sea Wolf,
Gorf, Wizard of Wor and Baby Pac-Man."

I'll give you the first three, as will most.  Baby Pac-Man as a classic 
is a bit of a stretch, IMHO.

p. 77 -- "Breakout became the first issue in a growing rift that formed
between Atari and Namco.  The argument ended in a lawsuit that Atari
won in the late 1970s."

Case number?  I can't find anything online, alas.  More for my to-do
list.

p. 89 -- "... LaGuardia's 40-year ban on pinball removed."

The author puts the date in April 1976, thus the ban on pinball in NYC
(if the date listed in the p. 5 entry is correct) lasted 34 years and 
3 months.

p. 89 -- "Gottlieb and Williams had been marketing special add-a-ball
pinball machines ...."

I don't think "add-a-ball" is explained anywhere.  From 
http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/glossary/:

"Add-a-Ball -- A machine is a true AAB if you can earn more than one
extra ball per ball in play. Usually the backglass says Balls to Play
instead of Ball in Play. Most machines are a replay-type where specials
score a credit and if you can earn an extra ball, you can only earn one
extra ball per ball in play."

[Note: even this definition isn't completely accurate.  Most modern pinball
games allow both credits and multiple extra-balls per ball in play.]

So instead of giving extra games, these machines allowed multiple extra
balls.  Free games must have been too close to a gambling payoff in
the eyes of many politicians.

p. 100 -- "Mayer's decision to use the 6502 processor proved correct."

I sure hope there is some mention that what is in the Atari VCS is
a 6507, not a 6502.  Yes, the differences are minimal.  According to
Kevin Horton in this posting:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=5erb9r%249uo_001%40ind-0002-10.iquest.net&output=gplain

the 6507 is missing both interrupts and lines A13-A15.  Mr. Horton guesses
that it may be a true 6502 "slapped into a 28-pin DIP."  Unlike the 6502
(which has a 64K address space), the 6507 has only an 8K address space
(this follows from the missing lines, natch).  See www.6502.org for a 
wealth of information about the 6502 family.

So, for the record and for all times, the Atari 2600 uses a 6507, a close
relative of the 6502.

p. 107 -- "... it also had a new device called joysticks ...."

"joysticks" should be "a joystick."

p. 116 -- Lots of stuff about Space Invaders.  The November 2001 Electronic
Gaming Monthly (EGM) has an interview with Toshihiro Nishikado, the man
who created the game.  One interesting bit (IMHO) is this:

"I called it Space Monsters originally ... but at the last moment high-ups
forced me to change it.  I didn't like that.  The word 'invader' wasn't
familiar to Japanese ears and it was tricky to pronounce.  I still don't
like the name."

p. 116 -- "... so many coins were glutted in the arcades."

glut in the passive voice?  Sure sounds odd.  "... so many coins glutted
the arcades." would be better? 

p. 118 -- "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. 124 -- "...his [Gil Williams'] last assignment was to set up a coin-op
manufacturing plant in Ireland."

The Atari 2600 FAQ (at least the version that I used to maintain) acknowledges 
both Gaz Reese and Jim Groom for separately noting that 2600s were made in 
Ireland.  It would be interesting to know if it was the same place.

p. 129-130 -- "Thanks to his vector-beam technology, the first game from
Rosenthal's designer had forty independent objects at a time.

The sentence doesn't make sense.  Should it be "Rosenthal's design?"

p. 131 -- "... 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. 131 -- "When players jumped into hyperspace, they reappeared in a 
randomly selected spot on the screen or the ship blew up if they were
hit by an asteroid or UFO while coming out of hyperspace."

No, as in the last errata, the ship can blow up coming out of hyperspace.
It does not have to be hit by an object while coming out of hyperspace.
Open up MAME and try it.

p. 141 -- (Pac-Man) "Each time the players cleared the maze, the value 
of the fruit increased."

Untrue.  Starting at round three, every two successive levels had exactly 
the same bonus item worth exactly the same value.  This continued until the 
bonus item became a key (worth 5000 points) and stayed that way until
the end of the game (mod whatever happens at the split screen, round 256).

p. 143 -- "... maze chases involving mice (Mappyland) ..."

Mappyland was a terrible NES game based on some of the play dynamics of
Mappy, the Bally/Midway arcade game.

p. 143 -- "... monkeys (Congo Bongo) ..."

Congo Bongo isn't a maze chase any more than Donkey Kong is.  Congo Bongo
is a platformer.

p. 143 -- "... fish (Piranha) ..."

I was thinking of Make Trax, but that works too.

p. 143 -- "... even a personified fire hydrant that slurped up water and 
spat it at bipedal flames."

That's Guzzler for those of you following along.

p. 147 -- (Defender) "In the beginning, the alien invaders slowly dropped
from the sky in an effort to snare an astronaut and fly back into space.
When the aliens escaped with an astronaut, they turned into fast-moving
mutants."

When a lander picked up an astronaut (?), he headed (vertically) straight 
for the top of the screen.  If he succeeded with the astronaut (?) still in 
tow, the two would (explosively) combine into a mutant.  If "escaping with 
an astronaut" means "reaching the top of the screen," then we are in
agreement.

p. 158 -- In the description of the levels in Donkey Kong, both the
barrels and girders levels are mentioned and the cement factory level
is mentioned in a footnote.  The springs level (or elevator level) is
completely omitted.

p. 162 -- "Whenever the centipede collided with a mushroom, the
centipede 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. 165 -- Typesetter error.  The gray bar denoting a quote is positioned
incorrectly.

p. 169 -- "The programmers who worked with Toru Iwatani on the creation of
Pac-Man had not been as efficient, and their code was twice as long [as the
code for Missile Command].

This seems to imply that longer code is less efficient (how is code efficiency
measured anyway?) than shorter code, which may be true when other variables 
are held constant.  However, Missile Command <> Pac-Man and a 6502 <> Z80.  

p. 173 -- "Ms. Pac-Man was also faster [than Pac-Man]."

I don't believe it.  Both games start with their main characters fairly
slow and the speed usually increases on board 3 or 5 (depending on the 
settings).  I could not convince myself that Ms. Pac-Man is faster than
Pac-Man after several tries in MAME.  Note:  this does not consider the
Ms. Pac-Man speed-up kits that made Ms. Pac-Man much, much faster.

p. 173 -- "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.  Also see:  

http://www.gamer.uk.com/gamefaqs/ms_pac_man_a.txt

p. 173 -- "Junior Pac-Man" should be "Jr. Pac-Man."

p. 174 -- "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?

If this page is correct:

http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=journey&page=detail&id=1227

the answer is Clone.  It is also mentioned in this article:

http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=17&id=622

p. 180 -- "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. 182 -- "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. 186 -- "The VCS, with its memory limitations and joystick controller, was
not suited for text-based games."

I agree with this statement, but it should be noted that two recent 
homebrew VCS games are text adventures.  [AT] They are Greg Troutman's 
Dark Mage,

http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=865

and Adam Thornton's Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,

http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=2023

p. 187 -- (Re: 2600 Adventure) "Making the proper selection for each 
situation was crucial, since a certain sword might defeat one enemy but 
be useless against another."

There is only one sword in 2600 Adventure, alas.

p. 188 -- (Robinett quote) "...I filled with the words, "Created by 
Robinette.""

If memory serves, the secret room message is "Created by Warren Robinett."

p. 188 -- [AT] (footnote)  "Robinette" should be "Robinett"

p. 200 -- "(light-emitting diodes)" should be "(light-emitting diode)."

p. 206 -- "Coleco powered the ColecoVision with a chip set from General
Instrument ...."

According the the Colecovision FAQ, the CPU is a Z-80A from Zilog and both
the video and sound chips are from Texas Instruments.  GI had previous 
dealings with Coleco to provide chips (AY38500) for Coleco's Telstar pong 
system, but I can't find anything about GI and the Colecovision.

p. 207 -- "... 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. 207 -- "by creating 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. 218 -- "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.

p. 220 -- "No one realized that the arcade business had begun to collapse
in 1982."

Hyperbole.

p. 220 -- "... so they set their game in 2084 to give mankind an extra
century to create a viable Big Brother."

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. 221 -- "The hero and his family are the last humans, and the robots,
according to Jarvis, 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.  The
"according to Jarvis" was added in this edition of the book, which makes
the statement more accurate, but the fact remains that the zoo bit is 
simply not in the game itself.

p. 221 -- "... every scene in the game [Robotron] began with the hero 
and his family completely surrounded by robots."

First, the family is the Last Human Family.  I don't believe the hero is
part of the family itself.  Second, it isn't true that on every "scene"
every member of the family is completely surrounded by robots.  Certainly,
in many of the early rounds it is not true.

p. 221 -- "... [Jarvis] thought about a popular game from Stern Electronics,
in which players helped a man run through a maze while shooting slow
moving robots."

I'm not sure why the name itself (Berzerk) was left out of the description,
but there it is.

p. 222 and others -- "Q*Bert" should be "Q*bert."

p. 223 -- (footnote) "It [the pinball knocker] went off when Q*Bert fell off
the cubes, making a loud "thwack.""

No, that was only when Coily (the snake) fell off the pyramid.  As mentioned 
on page 224, when Q*bert falls off the pyramid, he makes a trailing away
scream followed by a sickening thud.  The knocker may have also gone off
when a player was awarded a bonus Q*bert, but that's just my memory and
untestable in MAME.

p. 224 -- "...[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. 229 -- Food Fight bits.  Food Fight was also interesting because it
incorporated an instant replay feature and may have been the first game 
to do so.

p. 238 -- Yar's Revenge bits.  Yar's Revenge started out as a VCS port
of Star Castle, or so says Steve Bloom in "30 Secrets of Atari" in the
February 1984 Computer Games magazine.

p. 251 -- (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. 257 -- (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."

Some 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, it appears that Sente preceeded Nintendo.  The July/August 1984
Computer Games magazine has this bit in the Hotline section on page 24:

"NINTENDO (Donkey Kong, etc.) is also introducing an interchangable arcade
system.  The first two games will be TENNIS and BASEBALL.  SENTE, which was
the first company to introduce the cartridge idea to arcades, has just
been SOLD to BALLY (Pac-Man, etc.) for $3.9 million ..."

Also, other companies walked down the interchangable path.  
http://targets.mame.net/exidy.html notes:

"Max-a-Flex was *Exidy's* stab at an interchangeable game system (seems 
like everybody tried this, but nobody except Nintendo made any money on it). 
It was basically an Atari 600XL with timed game cartridges."

Finally, SNK built (most of) their company around the changeable-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. 258 -- "...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. 268 -- (footnote) "Warner also retained Atari, which later sold 
technological assets to Mitsubishi and BSR."

The footnote needs some clarification, as in "Atari what?"  Tramiel got
Atari Corporation and Warner kept the coin-op division as Atari Games, so
what does "Atari" refer to in the footnote?

p. 274 -- "You Might Think I'm Crazy" should be "You Might Think."

p. 278 -- Yahoo! The 6507 is noted as the chip in the VCS.  Can that be
noted on page 100 too?

p. 278 -- "Minter ... designed the VCS."

"Minter" should be "Miner." 

p. 284 -- "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. 286 -- In the second footnote, "Charger's" should be "Chargers'" .

p. 303 -- "... 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."

The author correctly notes that Sega's K was really a kilobit, 
not a kilobyte, making all of their specs 8x what they really were.  
However, 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 published Famicom figures are correct (2K ram, 
2K video ram), the SMS had 4x the memory and 8x the video memory.  In
addition, the "128K of RAM" bit is incorrect unless RAM is changed to 
"video RAM."

p. 305 -- "Some show attendees had never heard of Sega, and a few mistook 
the company for Saga Foods, commenting that it was strange that a food
distributor would enter the video game business."

Strange it may be, but it has precedent.  US Games, a division of the 
Quaker Oats company, made several 2600 games during the early 80s.

p. 306 -- (Lincoln quote) -- "Super Mario Brothers" should be "Super
Mario Bros."

p. 307 -- (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?

picture section, no page number -- "...Dragon's Lair, the first laser 
disc-based arcade 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. 342 -- "In late 1981 Rosen proposed that Gulf & Western buy out the
minority shareholders, including himself.  The decision was to buy out
the minority shareholders."

It's a bit awkward, no?  Couldn't the second sentence read "The proposal
was accepted." ?

p. 349 -- "...analysts believed that the resurgence of video games would
be little more than a brief fad.  This put Nintendo in a dangerous 
position.  Parents would not spend $80 purchasing an NES ...."

The $80 figure seems a bit low.  On page 305, the two prices listed
for an NES are $129.95 and $149.  

p. 352 -- (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. 353 -- "Unlike Super Mario Bros., a side-scrolling game in which 
players could move only forward or backward ...."

Not quite true.  Players could also go up (plants that climb into the 
clouds) or down (pipes that lead underground) and at many times, they 
could only go forward, not backward.

p. 355 -- "Punch-Out" should be "Punch-Out!!".

p. 355 -- "While the home version did include three of the original 
fighters -- Glass Joe, Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman ..."

The home version also had Piston Honda (instead of the arcade's Piston 
Hurricane) and fighters from Super Punch-Out!! (Great Tiger, Super Macho Man).
It also had Soda Popinski, the sanitized version of Vodka Drunkenski from
Super Punch-Out!!.

p. 355 -- ... it also had ten all new opponents ...."

According to this page:

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Limo/9801/po/overview.html

there were 11 fighters total.  Other than Von Kaiser, Don Flamenco and Tyson,
all of the others were either in the arcade games or were sanitized 
modifications of arcade game characters.

p. 359 (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. 360 -- The ; in the last line of the second paragraph isn't needed.

p. 403 -- "StarPath had abandoned a project based on the Olympic games."

This was Sweat!: The Decathalon Game, developed for the Starpath Supercharger.
The unfinished game was included in the Stella Gets a New Brain CD releases 
(see http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/1698/cyberpunks/stellagetsbrain2.html
for more info).  It doesn't seem to have been very far in development: 
a title screen and one event (javelin) is all that have been discovered.

p. 406 -- "49er" should probably be "49ers'," but that's terribly pedantic,
so ignore it.

p. 408 -- "It [Sega] also released the Power Base Converter, a pricey 
adapter that allowed consumers to play Master System cartridges on their
Genesis consoles."

The Power Base Converter accepted both SMS carts and cards.

p. 412 (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. 412 (footnote) -- "Technically, Genesis could display only 61 colors
at a time, though a method for displaying 128 colors was developed in later
years."

The TG-16 FAQ (sic) notes:

"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"."

So the 61 bit is correct.  The 128 colors may or may not be.  According to
many of the Genesis related documents, the 128 color "trick" is done through
something called "Hold and Modify" or HAM.  Jay Miner mentions HAM in 
relation to the Amiga in a 1992 interview, found in many places including
http://www.enteract.com/~enf/afc/amiga.  The CD32 FAQ notes the following:

"Hold And Modify - 8 bit. An Amiga screen mode which can have up to
262144 colours on screen at once by changing some colour registers on
each succeeding pixel on a given scanline. This is most useful for
static pictures or predefined animation sequences, as it is difficult
to constantly compute the best pixel colours in constantly changing
action games. HAM8 is often used to display JPEG format pictures or
predefined animations ...."

So, assuming that the Genesis does use HAM as described above, we're 
left with a muddle.  Without knowing more about programming the Genesis,
it isn't clear to me if the total number of colors is 128, 125 (64+61),
122 (61+61) or some other number.  One thing is clear: if the HAM method
was used to get the Genesis over the 61 color limit, it must have been
used sparingly due the to CPU power needed to pull it off.

p. 428 -- "... and Ghouls 'N Ghosts for Genesis, a flawless translation ...."

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

p. 444 -- "Okamoto created a couple of little known games after arriving
at Capcom ...."

Which games?

http://zx-museum.org.ru/www.fortunecity.com/victorian/delacroix/184/mm005.htm

notes at least one of them is Son Son.  Son Son is little known, but is
interesting.  It mixes elements from Bubble Bobble and side-scolling 
shooters and is quite fun to play.  One can also see where many of the
elements of 1942/1943 came from.

p. 446 -- "According to a former Capcom spokesperson, the arcade version
of Street Fighter II earned more money than the movie Jurassic Park made
in box office receipts."

My guess is that this spokesperson was exaggerating more than a little.
According to this page:

http://us.imdb.com/Business?0107290

Jurassic Park took in 931.1 million dollars worldwide.  Assuming that 
60,000 machines were sold, that would mean that each machine would have
had to have taken in more than $15,218 (not including the original cost
of the machine).  Somehow, I doubt it.

p. 457 -- "... and went on to release Myst on the 3DO, Jaguar CD, 
Playstation and Saturn."

Myst was also released for the CD-I, although it isn't clear how long
that took.

p. 459 -- "... 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. 464 -- (Mortal Kombat) "One you won the fight, you had to get within
range of your opponent and then know special combinations of joystick
moves and buttons to punch [to perform a fatality]."

Untrue.  The range varied depending on the fatality.  For example, Sonya's
could be done at any distance, while Cage's fatality had to be performed
at very close range.

p. 483 -- 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).  

[This may not be true, alas.  According to 
http://www.penny-arcade.com/snk_1.php3:

"... many popular arcade titles were altered for release on the Neo-Geo
CD. Something many fans of the AES system, with its arcade perfect
translations did not find to appealing." 

I'm still looking for confirmation on this. ]

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

p. 502 -- "The incarnation of Virtua Fighter that appeared on Saturn was
almost indistinguishable for the the arcade game."

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

p. 510 -- "A quick scan of old Nintendo cartridges would have revealed
that Rare was the company behind Battle Toads, but that was the only
thing anyone outside of Nintendo knew."

It would have to have been an awfully quick scan.  Even my very fallible 
memory recalls that R.C. Pro-Am and High Speed, two pretty good games, 
were both developed by Rare.  Regardless, the second clause is pure
hyperbole.

p. 512 -- "Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter" should be "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter"
unless Nintendo misspoke the title of Acclaim's upcoming game.

p. 513 -- "Kay*bee Toys" should be "Kay-Bee Toys" or so says:

http://www.kbtoys.com/help/KBToysCorpInfo.html

The name of the company has been K (dot) B Toys since 1996.

p. 514 -- "Kay*bee Toys responded by dropping Sega from its lineup."

I don't think it is true that they "dropped" Sega as much as they refused
to carry any Saturn merchandise.  Genesis/Sega CD systems and games were
still available, or at least they were at my local store.

p. 517 -- (footnote) Miyamoto mentions a game called "Yoshi's World Hunters."
What the heck is that?

p. 525 -- "In 1999, Bandai released a new handheld video game system 
called "Wonder Swan."" 

In Japan, yes; in the US, no.

p. 531 -- TRST stands for Toy Retail Sales Tracking and comes from the NPD
Group (http://www.npd.com).  According to one of the pages on that site,

http://www.npd.com/corp/content/ie/in_videogames.htm

"Data are collected on an aggregate basis from each of the 23 chains
participating in NPD's retail sample, whose sales represent approximately 
80% of total industry sales in the U.S."

p. 535 -- (Latham quote) "These were nine-hour meetings. ... You'd get
there at 8:00 A.M. and then you'd get out of the meeting at like, 4:00 A.M. 
...."

The second A.M. should be a P.M, I suspect.

p. 538 -- "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. 540 -- "After joining Square Soft, he made three computer games ...."

Which games?

p. 541 -- [KG] "Legend of Mana" should be "Secret of Mana."  Legend of Mana
was released for the Playstation not the SNES.

p. 541 (footnote) "Square later released Final Fantasy IV in the United
States as Final Fantasy II for the NES."

"NES" should be "SNES."

p. 559 -- "DVDs (digital versatile disks)"

The DVD FAQ (http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html) notes the following:

"DVD once stood for digital video disc or digital versatile disc, but now 
it just stands for DVD -- the next generation of optical disc 
storage technology."

p. 560 -- "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.

The Jan 24, 1994 _Pipeline_ section of Infoworld Magazine contains the
following bit under the "Announced" section:

_Microsoft to provide OS for Sega games_

"Microsoft Corp. is taking another stab at the market for home computer
devices with a new operating system for Sega game systems.  The unannounced
OS is expected to allow future Sega systems, from Sega Enterprises Ltd.,
to run more sophisticated PC-style software."

p. 561 -- 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. 567 -- (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. 575/576 -- "EtherNet" should be "Ethernet."  It's that way on page 562.