All Your Base Are Belong to Us cover art

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture

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All Your Base Are Belong to Us

By: Harold Goldberg
Narrated by: Eric Martin
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About this listen

Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most-beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy - and passion - behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon.

Over the last 50 years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entertainment. But as the gaming industry grows in numerous directions, and everyone talks about the advance of the moment, few explore and seek to understand the forces behind this profound evolution. How did we get from Space Invaders to Grand Theft Auto? How exactly did gaming become a $50 billion industry and a dominant pop culture form? What are the stories, the people, the innovations, and the fascinations behind this incredible growth?

Through extensive interviews with gaming's greatest innovators, both its icons and those unfairly forgotten by history, All Your Base Are Belong to Us sets out to answer these questions, exposing the creativity, odd theories - and passion - behind the 21st century's fastest-growing medium.

Go inside the creation of:

  • Grand Theft Auto
  • World of Warcraft
  • Bioshock
  • King's Quest
  • Bejeweled
  • Madden Football
  • Super Mario Brothers
  • Myst
  • Pong
  • Donkey Kong
  • Crash Bandicoot
  • The 7th Guest
  • Tetris
  • Shadow Complex
  • Everquest
  • The Sims
  • And many more!

©2011 Harold Goldberg (P)2015 Harold Goldberg 20th Century Americas Modern Social Sciences United States Video Game

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All stars
Most relevant  
A great achievement in the relatively new subgenre of video games history. The stories of the founding fathers and mothers of the industry are well written and human.

A brilliant industry biography

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Great retelling of key events in videogames creation and history. Covers events in depth and with insight from the people involved and the narration with the main narrator is excellent.

However, the authors inclusion of an introduction and an outro that sounds as if it was recorded on a cheap phone from inside a bathroom stall really lets the overall audio book quality down. Just have the narrator read it or leave it out because the content of the book is excellent.

Amazing but….

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I enjoyed this, but the writer's devotion to the word "nerds" felt at odds with the topic and target audience.

great bits and pieces, but rotten similes

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Ok as others have commented I'd consider "nerd" to be a derogatory term and it's overuse was unnecessary it was only near the end when these talented people are referred to as game makers. Also some of the facts / views had inaccuracies or the balance of some of the chapter content was I felt wrong. The narration was also a problem with such a slow delivery that at times I felt compelled to speed up the playback. Finally I thought the way the author cut off the narrator on the last chapter was a wtf moment with the words fumbling and sounding like they were recorded in a small bathroom. I did expect more from this book but hey

Ok but with some annoyances

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Interesting book, well read. A little disjointed as the chapters would start at different points in time. There is a lot of subject matter that could have also been included that wasn't such as the origins of the fps but overall the book was a nice length.

Worth a listen

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The content is clear, thorough and funny.
At the start I thought the book was going to be hard going, but it really wasn't. It was very interesting and funny at times too.

Deserves a second read too.

For any gamer that what's a good understanding of how it all began...

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If you have been a hard core gamer, or even just dabbled in consoles or pc gaming, this is aa book which will have you saying "oh my god, that game was my life..."

It is slow to begin with but it turns into a tour de force which covers alll the landmark games, formats/consoles, the creators and companies that changed gaming, for better or worse. All the stories are engaging, telling how lives were changed through the products and how the genre continues to be relevant as muh as both music and film. Narration is good but nothing particularly special.

The four stars for the performace is only relative in comparison to my favourite fiction audio books read by the likes Frank Muller or Stephen Fry so it could be a 5 star review. It is a great insight into the industry and I highly recommend it.

An interesting history that i was part of.

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cover most of gaming history, but ignore most indie games that will be great to cover.

Great

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What’s with the weird low recording quality at the beginning and end? Sounds like he recorded it on his laptop mic

Otherwise, brilliant!

Great but..

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