Netflix's High Score series does a good job of telling stories that historians simply don’t make time to mention. They bring up significant facts and interview fascinating personalities that shaped the video game industry in ways that should always be credited and commended. From Roberta and Ken Williams redefining a PC genre to the video game fight between Sega and Nintendo, High Score delivers over and over again. My only complaint? The series ends too quickly. There’s so much more to talk about in the industry and hopefully, Netflix brings back new episodes to deliver more content.
Netflix original series have been interesting over the years. As the streaming company has slowly become a household name, like Coke or Kleenex, they have brought some truly brilliant series and movies, as well as some real stinkers. Of course, one thing is certain and consistent with their methods, they take chances and bring content that would normally have a hard time being greenlit — and I might love that the most about the service. They don’t go with the typical blueprints, which is what most Hollywood studios use to create and sell movies. This method isn’t bad most of the time, as you can count on a safe bet with storytelling, but finding new innovative ways to tell stories, or just finding new stories to tell, is sometimes a chance worth taking, even if it fails. Anyway, I’m telling you this because they are bringing a new limited series to the world on August 20th with the video game history driven High Score, and it’s certainly a chance taken.
Outside of moonlighting for 20 years as a video game and movie reviewer, I also teach video game history (and other things) at the University of Kentucky. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing such personalities like Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell, Tom Kalinske, Pete Hines, and the calm/cool Trip Hawkins. Over the years, I have read countless video game history books such as Replay (Tristan Donovan), Super Mario (Jeffrey Ryan), and The Ultimate History of Video Games (Steven L. Kent). While they’re informative as hell and entertaining, they generally repeat or expand upon the same content between each other. The only book that has its own self-contained history is Rob Smith’s Rogue Leaders, a book dedicated to LucasArts’ history, and a book that is very hard to come by. I’ve dove into video game history headfirst and passed the knowledge to video game players year-in and year-out and I’ve always searched for information that I haven’t read before. With Netflix’s High Score, the video game history lesson takes a unique journey into pieces of history that most, including myself, haven’t come face-to-face with before.
Let’s dig into this now.
The six-episode series takes a journey down some familiar routes, such as the birth of Pac-Man, the downfall of the industry, and how the whole video game craze got started, failed, then restarted. These primers are stories that are familiar to most, but there are some sprinkled in tidbits that stand out, such as the birth of the cartridge, which started with the Fairchild Semiconductor, a fact most historians gloss over. While getting to Atari is a sweet delight in the historical journey, stopping and smelling the roses with Fairchild, specifically with the idea of cartridge swapping springing from Jerry Lawson, an African-American engineer, is something that needs light shown on it. Lawson is generally lost in the historical mix in most places, but this series makes sure he is properly credited with the idea of swappable cartridges, something that is so significant and how profound impact on the likes of Nintendo and Sega. And this is the starter for what’s to come in the rest of the series.
The series shines its light on the Nintendo’s upbringing in the second episode, even going as far as reminding us old gamers that Nintendo had an 800 number gaming help center, something that went the way of the dinosaur in the early 90s. The series also throws in the birth of Nintendo’s fame, which started in 1889 with playing cards and their rise to eventual video games. It does this shift through the eyes of one of its most famous composers, Hirokazu Tanaka, a creator that composed a lot of popular soundtracks (Metroid, Kid Icarus, Mother) early on for the Big N. There’s a lot to take in and the series makes sure you understand everything about Nintendo and how it worked from the inside out. It’s incredibly interesting, engaging, and angled differently than most history books.
High Score then shifts almost chronologically onto a different path, where Roberta and Ken Williams’ adventure games come to life. The Williams’ are a fascinating story that most hardcore gamers might be familiar with, but younger gamers need to know it. The series brings their story back to the surface and helps remind people of the Williams’ journey to push creative boundaries of the PC industry and redefine how graphical adventure games are made. Their creations brought challenging difficulty and a new sense of how an adventure game can unfold and work in the video game world.
The same episode also introduces Richard Garriott into the conversation, where his dabbling in D&D titles and eventually the creation of Ultima helped to direct the industry in the right direction when it came to online gaming and MMOs. The names above might be unfamiliar with gamers these days, but the series’ explanations and introductions to a new crowd, and in such an extensive way, make for a good history lesson in a 42-minute package.
The remaining episodes in the six-episode structure weave in and out of the industry, displaying unknown corners and shedding light on interesting aspects of what made it what it is today. You get to see the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog through a multi-step plan from Tom Kalinske to take down Nintendo. You also get to hear Trip Hawkins’ story of Madden NFL’s creation, the journey that Madden series went through to introduce African-American players to the field, which are full of unknown facts that, again, most history books tend to skip through. It’s amazing how much gets skipped in books, as they are generally more reliable than moving pictures.
One of the most interesting portions of the series is dedicated to the raise of the fighter in the 90s. The series does a great job of showing off the birth of Street Fighter and how its path paved the way for violent video games, such as Mortal Kombat. The 90s were a strange time for fighters, but certainly showed how well the genre could survive and how it was constantly innovated as the years, and tech, rolled on.
The series wraps with the emergence of 3D gaming and lots of good Doom information — possibly more than you thought you would ever get, all led by an interview with John Romero. I have to admit, Romero seems like a very cool dude, who rocks 90s fashion, including badass black fingernail paint, like no other. His personality and his memories help push the final episode along quite nicely. His contribution, along with his partners in crime at ID Software, definitely laid the path for the industry’s push into the 3D realm. This episode also features the birth of 3D for Nintendo with Starfox, a history I had never heard of before.
Overall, Netflix’s High Score series does a good job of telling stories that historians simply don’t make time to mention. They bring up significant facts and interview fascinating personalities that shaped the video game industry in ways that should always be credited and commended. From Roberta and Ken Williams redefining a PC genre to the video game fight between Sega and Nintendo, High Score delivers over and over again. My only complaint? The series ends too quickly. There’s so much more to talk about in the industry and hopefully, Netflix brings back new episodes to deliver more content.
