I’m about 15 minutes into episode 1, and we already are seeing Space Invaders game design document. Now they’re interviewing someone who entered a video game contest in the 80s, and her living room looks like an RGB person’s dream home.
So far I think they’ve handled everything extremely well. Plus there’s humour and amazing pixel art segues. And they’ve been very gentle with the inherent race and gender issues in the stories told so far.
Right? I think they’ve done a great job so far at not being too perfunctory and still highly interesting even for people who are already into retro gaming.
I know some of the stories already, but it’s still cool to have interviews with the people involved for more clarity and entertainment value.
I finished this series a few weeks ago. I loved it so much I wish there were more episodes but apparently the manga it’s based on is finished too and there won’t be more
Every episode has so many featured games and references and the characters are lovely (Haruo’s Mum is the best )
That’s good to hear. The only thing I previously read about this was a piece over at Ars Technica where they pointed out some fundamental games and pieces weren’t covered much or at all (apparently the lack of coverage on Tetris is a rather notable one), but if it means there’s stuff that folk who are retro enthusiasts aren’t familiar with its a worthy tradeoff.
I think the only part of the series I didn’t like was Howard Warshaw expressing how he made “the worst game of all time” in E.T. and the game “that destroyed the videogame industry”. It is all a bit disingenuous for the sake of being sensational.
Overall this was a great trip down memory lane and I’m glad that Daisy Fuentes was covered adequately.
EDIT: Also “High Score Girl” was pretty damn good. Especially enjoyable to 90’s fighting game junkies like myself with it’s historical accuracy. And damn, it did make me cry at the end. Woof.
Just FYI - I just watched this anime over the last 2 weeks too. It’s awesome for the most part. It becomes super melodramatic and bizarre towards the end though. A bit too many over-analyzing moments and inner monologues for my tastes. But that’s anime for you.
The first season and the first half of season 2 are great though. And the final scene was a nice bittersweet ending.
The footage of all the games were amazing and felt very authentic. It’s a bit like the super smash bros of anime. I can’t imagine how the producers got so many publishers to agree to use THAT much footage of their games in the show. Sometimes just for a moment or two.
It probably made the localization process that much more difficult from a legal sense too.
It was a cool concept for a show and it felt very authentic. You could have told me that the main character was based on someone from retro game boards and I would have totally believed it haha