High Score

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.

The documentary has its strengths with showing the people that actually made the game and give some background to the games we loved to play as kids. The bit annoying part is that the documentary is trying too hard to be inclusive on diversity, including people on project just for the purpose of diversity, not for technological or creative break-throughs. Annoying too is that they half-jokingly make E.T. responsible for bringing down the video console industry in 1983. My personal bet is that Commodore 64 and sharing games on floppy had a huge influence on that.

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

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.

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.