Hey! Listen!: A journey through the golden era of video games

by Steve McNeil

For fans of Daniel Hardcastle's Fuck Yeah!, Videogames and Retro Tech by peter leigh.Equal parts hilarious and informative, Hey! Listen! should be in every gamer's library. - Lucy James, (Gamespot) An informative, accessible romp through the early years of the games industry. All hail Il pirata pallido; the gaming hero we never knew we needed.- Adam Rosser BBC Radio 5LiveSteve McNeil is funny, knowledgeable, and a massive, shameless, nerd. His brilliant book reminded me just how much of my life I've wasted. If the Golden Age of Gaming is a horse, then Steve's book is the stable. - Paul Rose (aka Mr Biffo), DigitiserA thoroughly enjoyable look at the early days of video gaming - comprehensive and fun. Loved it! - Stuart Ashen (aka ashens)The 'A La Recherche du Temps Perdu' of the gaming community. The 'A La Recherche du Temps Pew-Pew-Pew', as it were. - Dara O'BriainIf 'Games Master' was a Nobel title passed on through the ages like 'Duke of York' or 'Rear of the Year' rather than simply the name of a 90s magazine and TV show then Steve McNeil would surely be the current holder of the esteemed position. What I'm saying is, he knows a LOT about games... - Scroobius PipTaking us on a historical journey from the very early days all the way through to the late 1990s the book tells the stories of the men and women behind some of the most wonderful (and occasionally awful) games of the golden age, the fierce rivalries, bizarre business practices and downright bonkers risks taken during the pioneering days of computer and video gaming. This informal yet extremely well-researched book manages to educate and entertain in equal measure and this - dare I say - well-informed retrohead actually learnt a good deal. A thoroughly enjoyable read! - Mark Howlett (aka Lord Arse)Hugely funny, and full of fantastic facts about the history of video games. But enough about me; Steve's book is also quite good. - Ellie Gibson, EurogamerA hilarious history of the golden period of computer games from the creator of Dara O'Briain's Go 8 Bit.It is fair to say Steve McNeil likes video games. He took a Nintendo Wii with him on his honeymoon (obviously), and spent so much time playing smartphone games in bed in the dark that he got eye strain and had to wear an eye patch. The locals nicknamed him 'the pale pirate'.Steve's obsession with video games can be traced back to the golden period from the early 70s to the late 90s. In this book he will delve into these games - from the appallingly bad to the breathtakingly good. He will also take us through the nerdy geniuses who created them, their fierce rivalries and risks often leading to some of the most farcical moments in the history of entertainment.This is a story of obsession, full of tales of Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Mario, Sonic, Wolfenstein 3D, Worms and many more. It will also answer important questions about the golden age. Questions Why did Namco feel they had to change the name of Puck-Man to Pac-Man because they were worried about graffiti, when Nintendo were more than happy to bring out Duck Hunt?Joysticks at the ready.

Genres: Nonfiction, Video Games, Audiobook, Gaming, Games, History

449 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 18, 2019

Reviews

[Themistocles · Rating 2 out of 5]

I imagine the discussion about writing and publishing this book went something like this:

Author: -Hey, Mr Publisher, want to publish my book? It's about video games!
Mr Publisher: Oh, what, another one?
-Well, it's a history book
-Ok, what's the focus on?
-The golden era
-And what is that?
-Yeah, well, depends on whom you ask it can be a different decade, so I was thinking I'd cover everything from the first Pong to modern titles
-And that's the golden era?
-Yeah, I bet it'll go downhill from here
-Oh I see, and how many tomes will that be?
-Just the one, some 250 pages of content basically
-...and you're covering all the history of -sorry, the golden era of VG in 250 pages?
-....
-Yeah, ok, nevermind. So what's your hook?
-...
-I mean, this stuff has been covered so many times in the past you have to have something new. Do you have exclusive info? Rare insights? Connections in the industry to give juicy stories? Design documents perhaps?
-...
-But what will be unique about your book?
-IT'LL BE FUNNY!
-Oh f*ck yeah, that will work!

...except, it doesn't, not really. I don't know McNeil or his previous work, but the humor is of the "Ba Dum - tss!" variety, pretty juvenile and getting tiresome fast.


I mean, the blurb says "A hilarious history of the golden period of computer games". If you find this book hilarious then you'd better stay away from, say, any Édika comics, they'll probably kill you. Fair warning and all. Seriously, 'hilarious'? Chuckle-worthy at best...
Also, the humour is seldom integrated well in the context, as he's just trying to find an excuse to throw a joke out there that could work in a lads' magazine but that's about it. Contrast it with the subtle, organic humour of The Digital Antiquarian (https://www.filfre.net/) and you can see the difference in quality.


Speaking of elements that don't blend with the general context: upon opening the book you're almost immediately faced with a "joke" about... Brexit. Kid you not. There are several political quotes in the book and, regardless of whether you agree with them or not (I personally agree for the most part), one has to ask, WHY ON EARTH ARE THEY IN THE BOOK.

Another in the same category: those darned footnotes. The book is just choke-full of them, with several on each page. Most of them are silly jokes, the rest could (and should) easily be integrated in the main text. For some reason the author likes his asterisks. For the reader, it breaks the flow very often, for no reason whatsoever (and on a Kindle they're pretty hard to hit, but that's another issue altogether).

And now for the meat: it's a history of video games. So far, so good. I love video games, I love history, ergo a perfect match. Except the book is very short, very shallow by necessity and although you can't fault its conclusions and insights, you won't find anything in it that hasn't been done to death before. No in-depth research, no original interviews, no material to present, nothing. Just a story (I hesitate to even use the word 'history') of how things and markets went, with sometimes questionable focus.

It's a light read, and I didn't abandon it, though I regret the full price I paid for it. It's just that, if I had bought the print edition it'd have ended with the Nuts pile in our bathroom.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mildly diverting before it gets a bit bogged down in an ocean of maddeningly irritating footnotes and “asides” littering every page. It just becomes annoying, as does having to remember a stream of video game company executives for when they reappear in the narrative fifty pages later. A bit of a slog but some interesting tidbits and Youtube diversions along the way.

[Jozua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book that needs 50 extra pages about the PS2 (best sold console ever) to be perfect.

[Rhi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This felt like research notes with a few jokes inserted.

It's a list of things that happened, and companies that merged, and people that went to new companies and oh my god who cares.
The jokes weren't even funny. I call them jokes only because that's the format they're in.

I do feel bad writing this review, because it clearly took a lot of time to disentangle all of the comings and goings, but sadly all of that work is on the page in the worst possible way.

It feels like no attempt was made to talk to anyone during the process, the author has a handful of opinions and occasionally attempts to explain what a game is like or why it was important, but that's it as far as insight goes.

Also, and this is irrational, but I listened to the audiobook and he insists on pronouncing every letter in NES and SNES instead of using the words and this really grated on me, but I know this point is unfair, because he's not wrong. But it's still annoying.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on the history of videos games, full of interesting facts and humour. A must buy. The audio book is also a treat.

[david Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very quick and fun look at video game history. A topic that as much as I love to find out more about it can be a bit dry this keeps it fresh and entertaining.

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, summarised overview of the history of gaming upto the PS1/N64 era which is unfortunately tarnished by some really terrible, unfunny and cringe worthy jokes.

This wouldn't be so bad but these jokes are included ever other sentence and by the end of the audiobook they just grate on you. It's a shame really as the contents and info is interesting but feels like the jokes are added as a low effort way to pad it out into a full book and a bit of a cash grab.

[Roman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Довольно поверхностная история видеоигр от самого начала до конца 90-х. Местами было любопытно, местами скучновато. К сожалению, автор считает, что умеет хорошо шутить, поэтому ни одна странице не обошлась без смешнявки (улыбнулся около 2-3 раз за всю книгу). Также отмечу наличие некоторого количества фактических ошибок, которые заботливо приметили в сносках редакторы русского перевода. Читать можно, но необязательно.

[Steve Fiori · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun and agreeable read about a period of video games I'm hugely nostalgic for!

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable look at the history of the video games from the '50's to the late 90's, written in a way which sounds like you are having a chat with your mate in the pub. Well recommended.

[Jodie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wasn't much content about the games themselves. More about the creators which I found interesting to start with but became boring very quickly

[Ewan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a reasonably entertaining summary of the history of video game technology up until about 1998. It's a fairly lightweight affair, and my main issue was the author's tendency to insert little jokes or humorous bits - sometimes even a whole paragraph dedicated to some little jokey diversion or sarcastic dig - which for me weren't very funny and took away from the actual narrative. I know the writer is a comedian, and of course the expectation is therefore that the book will be funny, but I didn't really need this stuff, and it felt more like the publishers lacked any kind of faith that readers would find the subject matter interesting by itself without jokes to 'liven it up'.

There is at least a Further Reading section in the back, so if you want a more detailed historical account of some of this stuff, you could follow it up.

I also have a bit of a bone of contention with the sub-title of the book, referring as it does to the 'golden era' of video games. From the sounds of it, the time period covered here was more like the Wild West of video games. I was around during the SNES/Mega-Drive era, and for most people it was a pretty clear cut case of Nintendo vs Sega, but it is also true that there were games consoles popping up and sinking without a trace all the time, a lot of uncertainty about what tech was going to stick, and let's face it game were pretty basic compared to now. This book goes into detail about just how chaotic a time the 80s and 90s were for the business. Nothing like the relative simplicity of now, where we basically have four or five platforms to choose from (and most gamers probably have more than one of those options).

Ironically enough, the book seem to end at what I would say it the exact point where video games opened up and became much more interesting and deep in terms of both gameplay and narrative - the releases of Ocarina of Time and Half-Life. It does spell out just how important these games were and how much they fundamentally changed the medium, but if anything I would say the golden age is from then onwards, or even now. We live in a time where huge advances have been made in both graphics and gameplay innovation, there are great releases coming out from big studios and indie developers, games themselves are more accessible than ever, and we have access to most games both future and past. But I guess the term 'golden age' has a ring of nostalgia to it that helps to sell the book.

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm familiar with Steve McNeil initially through Go 8-Bit and then seeing his fantastic WiFi Wars show (which you must definitely see once we're allowed out again!) and when I discovered he had written this book, I hunted it down.

As the subtitle implies, it's a whistle-stop tour through the development of video games from behemoth room-filling computers nestling in universities up until 1998 and the release of Ocarina of Time and Half-Life. It's full of information yet very easy to read (or at least as easy as he could make it: some of the relationships/spats between competing companies were incredibly convoluted).

Though I can see why it might gall some people, I very much enjoyed the humorous/self-deprecating writing style and use of footnotes and was repeatedly chuckling away, and his passion for the subject matter really shines through.

Whilst there is obviously a lot of coverage of seminal games (it would be a poor book about video games were there not), there is definitely a focus on the people behind the scenes and development of the hardware, so if you're looking for a list/breeze through all the top games over the year, this might not be precisely what you're looking for. (Having said that, there is some very good discussion of important games and also some really interesting recommendations of underappreciated titles/hidden gems that I'll definitely be following up on.)

All in all, I really enjoyed this, and ploughed through it at a speed which I haven't read at for quite some time. I'd definitely recommend it and if there were ever a part two I'd very much like to read!

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

My formative gaming years were defined by the late '80s to the late '90s. I was a PC gamer primarily and absolutely fell in love with point-&-click adventure games made by companies like LucasArts and Sierra On-Line. At various times we also ventured into consoles and had an Atari 2600, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Sega Master System and later a Nintendo 64. My sister owned a Game Boy which I tried to steal time on as often as possible.

As anyone else can tell you, this was a golden age for gaming and an exciting time with new innovations coming year on year. It's a shame that this book doesn't reflect that feeling.

Hey! Listen! is an account of this golden age and dutifully goes through all the releases and accomplishments made in the world of gaming during this time. It's a light and easy read and it adds a lot of sarcastic British humour to things. This humour is welcome (despite rarely eliciting more than a chuckle), and yet the book is incredibly dry. It does nothing more than say "[x] person worked for [x] company and made [x] game which cost [x] amount of money and sold [x] amount of units. But then [z] company bought [x] company and created [z] console which was better than [x] console."

There is no emotion here. There is nothing about what the games were actually ABOUT, how they felt to play, what the intention behind them was, what they were trying to accomplish or what they actually MEANT to people. It's an interesting enough account of a fascinating period in games history, but I was hoping for something with a lot more heart.

[Andrew Garvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stuffed full of anecdotes and boasting some good jokes (and some entertainingly awful ones), this is a chatty narrative history of videogames from their 1950s origins, through to the late 1990s. It's an enjoyable, easy and nostalgic read and it has one of my favourite corporate anecdotes - that time Universal tried shaking down Nintendo over Donkey Kong, due to their ownership of King Kong. Yes, the same Universal that had argued in court that King Kong was a public domain character when they swiped the Kong IP from RKO for their late 1970s remake. Nice to see so much space given to the UK game market, too. Great fun.

[Gerard Costello · Rating 1 out of 5]

To be clear, I didn't get past the first chapter. The contains a long intro not about games but about the self-enamoured author. He makes a spiteful Brexit 'joke' (everyone who voted Brexit is racist! Haha!') for some reason that has nothing to do with video games. Cheesy writing, 3rd rate mid afternoon TV humour that clutters the already weak prose. I cast it back into the depths of literary sewage from whence it spawned, and reclaimed my Audible credit, which I will spend on something that is not utter shit.

[Chip · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dozen interesting facts to tell at parties.

The author was commissioned to write a book covering a vast scope and while he covers everything there isn't much depth. The book is like a collection of Wikipedia summaries strung together. While I learnt a bit about the history of gaming along with a dozen or so facts that are quite interesting there wasn't enough for me to recommend this to friends. The narrator/author is also a bit too mate-y which is a stylistic choice but one that rubbed me the wrong way.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is clearly a labour of love for McNeil. I find his writing style entertaining, and he does a good job of chronicling the history of the video game industry. While I enjoyed reading this book, I noticed an error on page 193. The author writes that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Simpsons arcade games were published by Taito. They were actually published by Konami. The pedant in me was also distracted by formatting errors, such as not italicizing the titles of games.

[Boris Ishkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Прочитал "Hey listen". Книга с плотно и хорошо собранным материалом по истории аркад и видеоигр с 1970-ых и до конца 90-ых (акцент на 80-ые - автор известен как адепт 8-битного гейминга), которую интересно читать ровно до тех пор, пока не начинается "нёрдовский юмор". С ним всё печально. Он не смешной. Он глупый. Он не нёрдовский. Он никакой. И его много. Так что рекомендовать такую книгу - это как сватать абсолютно хорошего мужика, но с одним изъяном: резиновой курицей вместо пениса.

[Vladimir Sechkarev · Rating 1 out of 5]

Я писал на эту книгу подробную рецензию. Повторюсь: эта книга глубоко вторична по отношению ко остальным книгам на ту же тематику, она не добавляет к их материалу ничего нового, а от авторского юмора у меня сводит зубы. Единственный плюс Hey! Listen! — ей посчастливилось выйти на русском языке в хорошем переводе, которого она совершенно не заслуживает.

[Igor Averyanov · Rating 2 out of 5]

На 70 процентов книга состоит из перечислений имен и названий компаний, персоналий и игр, о которых вы вполне даже могли и не слышать. Кто кого нанял, почему игру назвали так, а не сяк, откуда куда такую-то игру портировали. Действительно интересных фактов и историй здесь от силы 20 процентов. Ещё 10 приходятся на скабрезные и утомительные ерничанья автора.

[Jon Athan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads like a Wikipedia list of video game companies. There is far too much emphasis on videogame company mergers and financial decisions. The timeline of the events are all over the place. Many ‘facts’ are poorly researched or barely explained and the humour is pure childish rubbish.

Give it a miss.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't really sure what to expect with this one. It's a fun, light-hearted run through video gaming history and had a lot of interesting trivia. It did jump around a little, although Steve McNeil does explain at some point that it would have been impossible to create a cohesive narrative by rigidly sticking to a chronological timeline.

[Tracey Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome, funny dive into the beginnings of Video games.
Not just a book that tells you about the games and their producers, it draws on Steve's childhood eith anecdotes and humour all the way through.
A must buy.

[Jonathan Foley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book - particularly if, like me, the Golden Era was when you grew up playing games!

The only downside for me was the kindle edition has all the footnotes at the end - some of them are really interesting but you lose the context.

[Cormac · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up as the "free" in an audible buy on, get one free, alongside something else I was already planning to get. I have minimal interest in games, but I really enjoyed this. Made it very accessible and, despite a seemingly endless list of Japanese names, interesting and engaging.

[Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Badly written, boring book by someone who thinks they're funnier than they are.

I stopped reading at the bottom of page 277 when McNeill makes an extremely crass joke about the death of Gunpei Yokoi, comparing his death to the game Frogger ( Yokoi was killed after being hit by a car).

[Jaroslaw Jozefowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned quite a bit from this book, which is a plus. It wasn’t the worst to read as well… But the author’s sense of humour was a massive cringe, so if you can’t bear awful jokes just steer clear of “Hey! Listen!”

[Adrian Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book, alot of information about the history of gaming, funny too. I feel like a video game historian after reading this lol

[Danny Fullbrook · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Bible for video games (if the person who wrote The Bible was actually funny).