Hey! Listen! - A Book Review

As you may know, the history of computing and video games is one of my things. I have a decent, if not complete, collection of books on the topic and whenever a new title is announced, it gets my attention pretty quickly. And so it was when "Hey! Listen!" was released earlier this week. I picked up a copy at Waterstones in short order and read it within a couple of days.

A bit of background here: Steve McNeil is definitely a video game fan. The blurb on the back tells you this but having seen him in the TV show "Dara O Briain's Go 8 Bit" which lasted 27 episodes over three series on Dave (a show he created off-screen before the on-screen shenanigans) he does know his stuff. His natural enthusiasm for games, both playing them, and their history, translates very well into this book.

Now the author admits that there are more detailed and in-depth books out there on the subject, and he provides an excellent bibliography at the back of "Hey! Listen!" to prove that, but that cannot be taken as a negative point about this book. McNeil sets out his aim in the introduction: this will cover the industry from the date of his earliest experiences with it to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (where the title of the book also comes from). And what a journey it is.

This is a history of computing and video gaming, from the background given about Space War and the founding of Atari, to the bitter court fights between Sega and Nintendo in the early '90's but told through the eyes of a slightly hyperactive man child - and that's not a criticism. In fact, it makes for a very well written and easy to read book. McNeil's voice is clarity itself through the writing and he peppers almost every page with footnotes as well. I must admit that when I started having to look at these, I found it a bit tiresome - I am a believer that footnotes should be used sparingly as they can take you out of the narrative very quickly, but with "Hey! Listen!", they do exactly the opposite. McNeil uses these for comic anecdotes, remarks and just plain fooling about, whilst also keeping on topic. By the half way point of the book, I was looking forward to these to see what gems he had added. And this is the thing that makes "Hey! Listen!" such a good book: it gives you a very readable account of the industry's history whilst making you laugh (at times out loud). I have even recommended it to my wife, not because she is a video game history nerd like me, but that she'd find the book itself a funny read. That she'll learn about the video game crash of '83 is just an added bonus!

If there are any negatives, it must be that it ends where it does. There are twenty years of gaming to write about after the scope of the book ends but, and I say this with a hint of sadness, there might not be the variety that made video gaming up to 1998 so interesting in those years. True, we had Microsoft enter the hardware field after Sega left it, but to me, at least, the industry matured and became more money focused, and that took a bit of the excitement and personality away. McNeil points this out too when mentioning the likes of Activision and Electronic Arts - two companies founded because of the way corporate behaviour was treating developers in the early days. They have become what they strove to avoid. I can only hope though, that the author gets round to another book on the topic, because I'll grab a copy of that one too!

Anyhoo, back to "Hey! Listen!". My recommendation: buy it! You'll have a laugh anyway and you'll maybe learn some things you didn't already know.