High Score

Enjoyable, but I think there's a ton of missing info they could have used to give a more profound view of things. The show is basically guided by the personal experiences of some people in the industry, and it ends with 16-bits consoles.

An entertaining series that creates feel good feelings connected to nostalgia and childhood memories.

What let this series down in a big way, was the need to create a narrative that didn't really exist. Focusing on current hot topics such as LGBT, womans rights and race. Whilst important issues in many ways they had no relevance on this platform (pun intended). Celebrating these areas as reasons to why we have the games we have today. When in actuality it always boiled down to what sells. Sadly that is still the case. The creaters of this show are using political agendas to sell their product.

If you can ignore the political statements and accept them for what they are, over indulgent memories. Then what your left with is actually quite entertaining and worth a watch.

There are some fantastic interviews and enactments with actually legendary people like Richard Garriott and Roberta Hall among others, whose influence have shaped a whole industry to this day which impacted billions of lives. Then it moves onto some nobody who did something nobody cared about who talks about how he was oppressed by some long gone bigots. Seriously, it's mind boggling how they cannot just keep talking about games and creators without inserting totally irrelevant stuff. It's a massive disservice to many people who literally ceated history and I get why many didn't take the time to talk as it dilutes the experience. Just cut some 10-15 minutes each episode and there is a decent enough, even if lacking documentary.

I'll get the obvious out of the way right up top here: calling "High Score" a "history of video games" is a massive blunder. In no way, shape, or form does this doc attempt any sort of comprehensive look at the game industry. That being said, the simple access to key figures of that very industry makes this an interesting watch for gaming fans/historians.

Somewhat ironically, the biggest hallmark of "High Score" is also, in part, its biggest weakness. It gets access to some of the key figures to ever shape the gaming industry, whether that be Nolan Bushnell (early history), Tom Kalinske (Sega), John Romero (Doom), or Ken & Roberta Williams (adventure gaming). Those names were all enormous movers-and-shakers in the business, and provide first-hand accounts of the behind-the-scenes action.

The problem, however, is that "High Score" takes that access and tries to shape the video game narrative around it. In short, the doc makes the case that this is all the history one needs to know, which is a bit ludicrous. It would have been much better to structure/promote this doc as a series of interviews with industry luminaries and leave it at that.

Each episode here also features an aspect of competitive gaming, which often comes off as a bit odd. Not bad or boring, per se, but just a little strange as to why that angle was pursued so hard in the face of other much more interesting conversations to be had.

Overall, I enjoyed "High Score" just enough to keep watching--no more, no less. Had it been structured differently, it could have been a lot better. But even as-is, the one-on-one interviews with such high-profile figures give it a certain amount of cache.

Enjoyable series, though totally absent is Amstrad, Spectrum and Commodore for some reason and they played a major role in games long before Nintendo and Sega.