GDLK

I am enjoying this documentary. But Netflix and the writers are misrepresenting history in order to shoehorn racial diversity into the documentary. The section I take issue with is with Jerry Lawson, a black man who is stated to be the "inventor" of the game cartridge. The documentary states that before Lawson became involved, it had "never been done before." This is just flat out wrong. The swappable ROM cartridge concept was invented by Wallace Kirschner and Lawrence Haskel. Lawson worked on the Channel F game console, the first of its type, but swappable game cartridges had already been invented before he came along. So while it's certain he played a role in the development of an actual marketable, sellable product that used cartridges, it was not his invention, and unfair to the actual inventors to deprive them of their credit. While I have no problem with Netflix very obviously choosing diverse individuals (transgender, black etc) to fit their well-known diversity mandates, it is NOT cool to twist the facts just to make the narrative work.

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.

For being arguably the most popular hobby since the invention of the television, there are scant few comprehensive documentaries about video games and their rich, immense history. You could easily identify 20 hours of solid historical content for this medium and still leave another 20 hours on the cutting room floor. That is why it is so disappointing that this series spends so much of its precious time on inane crap that you won't care about watching and clear "woke" diversity stuff. Between old clips of 1980s Nintendo gaming tournaments and a major portion of the episode being devoted to a gay video game that absolutely nobody has heard of, this series wastes way too much time on nonsense.

Rather than tell you what is in the series, let me give you a tiny sampling of what is not in it

Every other Atari 2600 era console besides the Atari 2600 Commodore (C64, Amiga) The Dreamcast Fallout The Playstation God games (e.g. Populous, Sim City) Bethesda's RPGs Early experiments with virtual reality Starcraft Age of Empires Thief, MGS, and the rise of stealth The rise of MMORGs like Everquest

Also, anything after the year 2000, which includes: Grand Theft Auto III and the rise of the open world game, The Nintendo Wii, the entry of Microsoft into the console market, the death and rebirth of PC gaming, the rise of user-made content, the explosion in popularity of E3 and its decline, Halo, the list goes on.

What is in here is still surprisingly fluffy and uninteresting compared to some of the other documentaries out there. If you want, for instance, to see an excellent documentary on the early arcade and Atari 2600 era, I highly recommend World 1-1, a great film produced by a couple of amateurs on a shoestring budget that came from crowdfunding.

I love the subject matter and wanted it to be amazing. The pacing and directing isn't amazing but it has potential. But the doc seems to actually be about gay gamers and lgbt games. Obviously nothing wrong with that but it seemed to be marketed as more just about the history of game evolution. Just wasn't what expected

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.