For many years, as many great books as I’ve read on the subject of the video game industry, I’ve always felt that a book intrinsically misses huge swaths of the video game experience. There’s sight and sound and suspense and much more that you just don’t get to see unless you’re playing - or watching someone else play. You’d think that the many TV documentaries on the same subject would remedy this, but they often don’t. (They often don’t even get the facts right - when I see a documentary reducing Ralph Baer to a footnote to the grand story of how Nolan Bushnell created the video game industry, I cringe…and then change the channel.)

So I decided to apply a little bit of my TV and technical know-how to this problem, and the result is a compromise which straddles the audiovisual experience of video games and the thousands of words I’ve already written on the subject. I'm in the process of gradually adding new versions of each page which replace static snapshots or simple animated GIFs with a Shockwave Flash movie of the game in question actually being played. What you’re seeing and hearing is the actual game’s output, recorded to digital videotape, converted into a humongous AVI file, and then converted into a more compact (usually ~5 megs) Flash video file. Some resolution is lost, but the experience of seeing the game in motion and seeing how it works is gained. If you see a "See This Game In Action" button, or a glowing eye next to a game's title on a master list, click that to activate the "movie" version of that review where you can see and hear the game in motion.

Wherever possible, you’re seeing the output of the original hardware. When you see an Intellivision or Odyssey2 or ColecoVision game in action, you’re seeing it coming from the original machine, running through my custom-built A/V rig allowing me to record even RF-based systems to digital video - you’re not seeing it run on an emulator.

Also, in the true spirit of classic adventure games, there are a few hidden treasures to be found by clicking on the movie while it’s running. Sometimes it might be a chance to see an unusually interesting attract mode. Sometimes it might be something even cooler than that. These “Easter Eggs” aren’t everywhere, but they will crop up from time to time if you’re paying attention...just keep an eye on your mouse pointer.

Go give it a try, and I think you’ll agree that this is the neatest thing to hit this site since screenshots were invented. More mini-movies of games in action are being added as fast as I can record and process them (and play them, which certainly makes things fun!), so check back often for new videos.