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My Review of "High Score: Season 1"

A TV series that documents how certain video games came to be.

By Brian AnonymousPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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High Score: Season 1 is a pretty short TV series that talks about the origins of certain video games. Video games have been with us for decades so there's a lot to cover but since this season only has 6 episodes they were restricted in showing too much in each episode.

The first episode talked about early arcade games such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man. There's an air of innocence to this episode because it's the first episode and they're talking about some of the earliest video games out in arcades. Everything is new and this was a nice start to the series. They talk about the conception of the games and the limitations that programmers had to deal with back in those days.

It's really an interesting look into the world of video games that we don't normally see in a lot of documentaries. They go into some detail to tell the story but I'm sure they had to truncate much of the information that they had. Each episode still has to be entertaining to casual viewers right?

In order to appease the casual viewers they continued to crack jokes with cartoons to help illustrate the narrative that they're trying to deliver. It works remarkably well and the jokes are reminisce of the TV series Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks, and The Movies That Made Us. That's probably to be expected because all of these are Netflix exclusive TV documentaries. It follows the same sort of formula as these other similar TV series.

The second episode talks about the dominance of Nintendo in the gaming scene. I start worrying that they are only going to be exploring mainstream games and video game consoles. That's to be expected too because they want to appease the general crowd. I get it.

Then they go into role playing games which was a nice little twist. Role playing games are pretty big though. I liked that they had this episode because they explore the epistemology of role playing games. The gay role playing game that disappeared was an interesting diversion in the episode. I felt it was a little out of place and that it sort of deserved it's own episode though. Pressed for time they had to clump it into the role playing episode though.

They then get into the console wars and new players into the great console wars. I enjoyed this episode because I remembered this time and all of the references all too well. It was like I was blasted to the past and a rush of nostalgia hit me while watching this episode.

Fighting games were then discussed in the next episode. This could actually have been a whole series on its own but again pressed for time they did what they could. I was actually surprised they were able to fit all the information they had for Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat into one episode. Pretty nicely done while still entertaining.

Finally they get into the 3d graphics episode. I felt that this episode felt a little rushed. It seemed that there's so much that they're not telling us. Of course that's so much to cover so I don't blame them. I think they could possibly elaborate more about first person shooters and such. They could have had an episode on the Super FX chip by itself rather than add the ID Software information to the mix.

Each of these episodes were entertaining and definitely a walk down memory lane. In some ways it was a new insight into perspectives that I wasn't aware of. They have some old footage of the making of certain games that I didn't even knew existed. That was really cool to finally see some of that footage.

I hope season 2 comes out with a little more focus on their episodes. Having so much going on kind of decreases the amount of information you can give about the topic. I understand why they did this though. We just don't have the attention spans that we used to and you have to talk about two different stories at the same time to keep our attentions. Still it was a good effort in telling these stories.

Overall, I did enjoy seeing a lot of the old footage and nostalgia feeling while watching each episode. I'm interested in seeing what they have in store for season 2. There's so much information to explore that I hardly think that they'll be able to run out of episodes. I have to give this first season a 6.5 out of 10. It's very much enjoyable but I feel like this is a Coles notes of what actually happened in the scenes.

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About the Creator

Brian Anonymous

I have tons of opinions that change constantly. I watch a lot of movies and play video games. There are some articles on my struggles with languages and dance as well.

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