Very interested take on the history of video games. Very informative and easy to follow, even if you're not a video game fan. The book also had a lot to say about cultural history in general. My only qualm is that the format of the book was a bit limiting. Focusing on just one game per year left out a lot of games that I think it would have been beneficial to examine.

*ARC Provided by NetGalley in return for an honest review*

I will admit, I used to be an avid video game consumer. I kept up to date on the latest games and spent countless hours trying to win Halo and Tron matches. So I like to imagine I was still in the demographic this book was aimed towards.

It gave me giggles (Hi Scott Pilgrim's random fact about Puc Man) and it felt like I was talking to a friend about their favorite games and what they found memorable. That being said it skipped a lot of years... and am I lost in not knowing Depression Quest? Or did others also not know that this was a game until reading this book?

P.s. There is no Five Nights at Freddy's, which shocked me quite a bit.

The book was hard to read on kindle, but the content is thoroughly researched and a fascinating tale of the history of the art form. Video games are more relevant than ever today in pop culture but it took some years of growing pains. This book serves as a great timeline of the past and present of the gaming world and what made games special each year with changes through each era.

A fun, quick read that you don't necessarily need to be a hardcore gamer to understand. Its written in a funny, conversational tone that makes it you want to keep reading.

I imagine the book, when it's released, will work really well as a coffee table book. My fear was that the format was going to make for a very strange read on my Kindle, and while it mostly works, the short blurbs and graphics are probably better suited for an oversized hardcover.

The book needs at least one more pass-through from a proofreader. The small typos become unavoidable, particularly in the second half of the book where they appear on almost every page. The chapter on Resident Evil cuts off mid-sentence. "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" remains the title in the footer long after that chapter ends. 1977-2022 is a forty-five-year span, not forty. Most alarmingly, entire chapters advertised earlier in the book (2009-2011, 2014, 2015, 2017-2022) are missing from my copy entirely. You can't charge people money for the book in its current state, honestly.

The book is a fun concept with strong bones that isn't quite ready to be released yet.

I want to thank NetGalley and ABRAMS for my advanced copy.

Video Game of the Year delves into the topic of video games, and offers input about how and why the video games mentioned in the book rose to popularity. This book would be great for avid gamers, casual gamers, and anyone who has a curiosity about gaming and/or pop culture. I found the format of the arc to be difficult to read, but the photos and illustrations included in the book were bright and added a lot of charm to the content.

This is a very interesting take on the history of video games. Rather than just list the most popular or award-winning game of a given year, the book lists what is deemed the most important, influential, revolutionary or otherwise transformative game that came out year. The nostalgia for the early games of the 70s and 80s made for some of the best chapters, and those of the 90s on provided many details I would never have known otherwise. Each chapter is pretty short, so you could easily choose to sit down and just read about one or two years in a few minutes. In addition to the main games listed, most chapters include secondary entries intended on being further informative about that game and others not included as a game of the year. However, while some of those subsidiary entries relate directly to that chapter's title, or at least its theme, many of the secondary columns seem randomly placed. The one big drawback of this book is, it was obviously imagined as being a hardbound coffee table-like volume. For the copy I read on Kindle the text was ridiculously small, and it wasn't really text, it was an image, so you can't adjust the size of the text. The secondary entries are even worse, with smaller print and on a puke-green background making them even harder to read. My biggest disappointment came when I discovered that the chapter I most wanted to read, Resident Evil 4, abruptly ended mid-paragraph - there was definitely a page or more missing, as there appeared to be in the chapter on The Walking Dead game. Hopefully those missing pages will be corrected before publication. Because of these issues, I would rate this 3.5* rounded up to 4.

I'm not much of a gamer, but I wanted to preview this for our collection. This is a beautifully designed year-by-year chronicle of video games, from Pong to Pokemon Go (and more). While some might argue over the selected games, gamers of all kinds will enjoy this entertaining look at video game history.

This was a truly fun read (introduction) into the history of both video games and the companies that make them. I’m by no means a gamer & had a wonderful two hours of learning (the prose is wildly approachable with expertise, whimsy & soul, while additionally beautifully edited).

Spanning the 70’s till now, featuring Nintendo, Sega, LucasArts (did you know a bunch of Lucas’ vets created “The Walking Dead”?), etc. — this colorful tome will teach you all about video games, this isn’t just for the gamer nerds (though the “fun facts” & interviews with experts won’t alienate anyone).

Bright colors & brighter futures (there’s more than just this book to gaming!), make this a wonderful gift for just about anyone. Kudos to everyone involved on creating a truly insightful & entertaining book to read!

This book was a really interesting history and informational guide on important video games. I enjoyed reading about all of them a lot. I will say it's interesting which games the author picked for what, it did take me a while into the book to realize he wasn't talking about games that had actually been given a Game of the Year award, and sometimes chooses a game other than the winner that year.