Book Review: The Con50le

The Con50le is a comprehensive yet conversational account of 50 years of home video gaming history, leaving no rarely sighted system unturned and providing a chronological account of the evolution of the biggest entertainment medium in the world.

From the earliest consoles of the 1970s to the cutting-edge machines of the here and now, a line is drawn from one man’s eureka moment to the multi-billion-dollar global industry of today. All the well-known names and massive-selling consoles are here: the Nintendo Entertainment System, the SEGA Mega Drive, the Atari 2600, the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 2.

But there’s plenty of room for hardware that many a gamer won’t have heard of before, from Japan-only releases and home computer conversions to ill-advised experiments with VHS and all manner of micro-console magic. Learn about the creators and their inspirations, the games that made the biggest consoles’ eternal reputations, and the failures and flops along the way. Even the consoles that came and went without notable commercial success left a mark, an imprint, on this compelling history – and The Con50le unravels it, explains it, one fascinating machine at a time.

This look at 50 years of home video gaming by Mike Diver will be published on February 28, 2024. Pen and Sword provided an early galley for review.

I was the perfect age when the home video game era began. We got an Atari 2600 when I was starting high school. From there, so many other systems came into our homes over the decades - both for myself and my son. Thus, this book instantly appealed to me.

Diver does a great job going back to the very beginning as well as bringing up systems that might not have had as a big of an impact worldwide. I definitely learned a lot of things about the industry and the evolution of the technology. He does a good job with the details, making sure not to bury the reader in the quicksand of technical jargon.

And while this is a book dedicated to the hardware, I did appreciate the additional mentions of key software/games for many of the systems.