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Pull Out Your Old Nintendo Cassette Games: Netflix's High Score

I started this thread in Old Town, and have already finished it, but I'd like to see what others think of it, so here we are. Also, my OP from that first thread:


I'm already on episode 3. A lot of the stuff I already knew, but it's all presented in a very engaging and nostalgic way. Plus the interviews run the gamut from Hip Tanaka to Roberta Williams to Yoshitaka Amano to Howard Scott Warshaw (and even Lord British himself).

Plus it's pretty good about showing a lot of little-known representation in early gaming history. For instance the winner of the first ever video game championship is trans, the designer of the first cartridge based console was black, and a woman designed the layout of Nintendo Power.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I wasn't going to watch it because I was expecting it to stink, but apparently it does not stink at all, so I guess I WILL watch it.

Check and MATE
 
I wasn't going to watch it because I was expecting it to stink, but apparently it does not stink at all, so I guess I WILL watch it.

Check and MATE
Anything narrated by Charles Martinet is bound to be fun. While this isn't the perfect history of video games, it's fun and covers the big stuff while also mentioning things we should know but may not.

This series has also had me hunting down classic arcade collections and got me to finally fill out my Genesis collection on Steam.
 

Positronic Brain

Out Of Warranty
(He/him)
I wasn't going to watch it because I was expecting it to stink, but apparently it does not stink at all, so I guess I WILL watch it.

+1. Videogame story is easy to get wrong after decades of whitewashing (see also: story of computers, and how everybody thinks it has always been a white man's field), so it's nice to know this doesn't fall into that. Into the queue it goes.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Watched the first episode, and wow, it’s terrible that the Channel F was so completely forgotten by history.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
I watched through episode 4 now and my only criticism is that the filmmakers have expressly done a good job of highlighting several instances of marginalized people in video game history, but when they did the Sega vs. Nintendo episode, it kinda glanced over how that entire thing contributed heavily to a "video games are for boys and men" mentality.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Now, I thought I had a good handle on retro video game trivia. And compared to the average joe, I feel that is very much still the case, but the shows revealed a lot of things I hadn’t known before

Chief among them; I had no idea that Richard Garriot was not British.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I really enjoyed this, although I was thinking the same thing YangusKhan was during the Sega vs Nintendo episode. I found the Night Trap info interesting - I had no idea how that game was created, I thought it was just misconceived from the get-go, but apparently the dude actually wanted to make something potentially cool with it and kinda got screwed?

The best part about all this, though, is how every episode is clear that videogames are not exclusively the domain of cishet white men and never were. Also, it apparently happened too late to include much footage, but they found GayBlade!
 

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)
The best part about all this, though, is how every episode is clear that videogames are not exclusively the domain of cishet white men and never were.
Indeed. the creator of the modern American video game periodical was a lady.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
The narrator keeps calling Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat “Fight Games”.

And I thought that was wrong, But it’s Super Mario saying it. If anyone is going to mispronounce something about video games it certainly wouldn’t be him.

So... plainly I’ve been wrong all these years.
 
Charles Martinet actually takes old Sega and Nintendo cartridges and makes them do battle. He's so used to yelling "Fight, games!" when he's playing pretend that it was likely a slip of the tongue.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
I enjoyed the whole series. I appreciated the personal stories of marginalized people, but I think the show did not do a particularly good job of integrating them with the rest of the show. To be clear, I am very glad it told those stories, I just thought the construction of the individual episodes sometimes left something to be desired.
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
I just finished the first. Ken Williams popped in on a FB group I'm in to let everyone know he and Roberta were in it, that it was a very good interview. And that he was a little disappointed they used so little of it. So, I know to be prepared to be disappointed about that part.

Looking forward to the rest of it.
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
I did not know that Kirby the pink puff was named after Nintendo lawyer John Kirby who saved them from Universal Studios.
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
I finished this yesterday. Overall, I really enjoyed it and I appreciate that they tried to highlight people we don't often hear about, especially Rebecca Ann Heineman and Jerry Lawson. Wish it had been a little longer and gone a little more in depth, but that's always a complaint I have.
 

lincolnic

can stop, will stop
(he/him)
I finished this yesterday. Overall, I really enjoyed it and I appreciate that they tried to highlight people we don't often hear about, especially Rebecca Ann Heineman and Jerry Lawson. Wish it had been a little longer and gone a little more in depth, but that's always a complaint I have.

I felt exactly the same. I also wished the segment with Roberta and Ken Williams had been longer, because those Sierra adventure games were a huge part of my childhood (I don't think the show even mentioned Sierra), but overall I was very pleasantly surprised.
 
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