Replay- the History of Video Games

Replay covers games from a pretty unique angle. Unlike the other game-centric books on this list, Replay comes from a more generalized and overarching perspective and tells the story of the industry from its very roots at laboratories on Long Island and school computer labs in Massachusetts and California to the present-day phenomenon we know all too well. Indeed, gaming's roots are incredibly humble and stretched out over decades. Tristan Donovan's exhaustive research pays credence to this fact and explores plenty of gaming's niches to tell an interesting story.

It's the actual European subject matter that makes this book truly worthwhile. We've heard the stories about Atari's rise and fall a million times. We know that gaming was dominated by Americans until companies like Taito and Namco got in on the act with Space Invaders and Pac-Man respectively. Donovan covers all of that, but he also covers the European side of the industry with a fair amount of depth, including the computer-centric early years of gaming, when consoles had yet to take hold around the world.

This is definitely a book that jumps around a fair bit, but it certainly covers all of its bases succinctly, and is definitely worth a read, especially for its coverage of European gaming and obscure computer-based gaming from the days of yore.