All Your Base Are Belong to Us cover art

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

By: Harold Goldberg
Narrated by: Eric Martin
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £18.99

Buy Now for £18.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most-beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy - and passion - behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon.

Over the last 50 years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entertainment. But as the gaming industry grows in numerous directions, and everyone talks about the advance of the moment, few explore and seek to understand the forces behind this profound evolution. How did we get from Space Invaders to Grand Theft Auto? How exactly did gaming become a $50 billion industry and a dominant pop culture form? What are the stories, the people, the innovations, and the fascinations behind this incredible growth?

Through extensive interviews with gaming's greatest innovators, both its icons and those unfairly forgotten by history, All Your Base Are Belong to Us sets out to answer these questions, exposing the creativity, odd theories - and passion - behind the 21st century's fastest-growing medium.

Go inside the creation of:

  • Grand Theft Auto
  • World of Warcraft
  • Bioshock
  • King's Quest
  • Bejeweled
  • Madden Football
  • Super Mario Brothers
  • Myst
  • Pong
  • Donkey Kong
  • Crash Bandicoot
  • The 7th Guest
  • Tetris
  • Shadow Complex
  • Everquest
  • The Sims
  • And many more!

©2011 Harold Goldberg (P)2015 Harold Goldberg
20th Century Social Sciences United States Video Game
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Doom Guy cover art
The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 1 cover art
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels cover art
Press Reset cover art
Once upon Atari cover art
Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings cover art
Masters of Doom cover art
Replay cover art
Disrupting the Game cover art
The Dream Architects cover art
Control Freak cover art
Electronic Dreams cover art
Gamedev cover art
Sid Meier's Memoir! cover art
When Computing Got Personal cover art
A History of Video Games in 64 Objects cover art

What listeners say about All Your Base Are Belong to Us

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    36
  • 4 Stars
    23
  • 3 Stars
    11
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    28
  • 4 Stars
    27
  • 3 Stars
    9
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    32
  • 4 Stars
    21
  • 3 Stars
    11
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A brilliant industry biography

A great achievement in the relatively new subgenre of video games history. The stories of the founding fathers and mothers of the industry are well written and human.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing but….

Great retelling of key events in videogames creation and history. Covers events in depth and with insight from the people involved and the narration with the main narrator is excellent.

However, the authors inclusion of an introduction and an outro that sounds as if it was recorded on a cheap phone from inside a bathroom stall really lets the overall audio book quality down. Just have the narrator read it or leave it out because the content of the book is excellent.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

great bits and pieces, but rotten similes

I enjoyed this, but the writer's devotion to the word "nerds" felt at odds with the topic and target audience.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Ok but with some annoyances

Ok as others have commented I'd consider "nerd" to be a derogatory term and it's overuse was unnecessary it was only near the end when these talented people are referred to as game makers. Also some of the facts / views had inaccuracies or the balance of some of the chapter content was I felt wrong. The narration was also a problem with such a slow delivery that at times I felt compelled to speed up the playback. Finally I thought the way the author cut off the narrator on the last chapter was a wtf moment with the words fumbling and sounding like they were recorded in a small bathroom. I did expect more from this book but hey

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Worth a listen

Interesting book, well read. A little disjointed as the chapters would start at different points in time. There is a lot of subject matter that could have also been included that wasn't such as the origins of the fps but overall the book was a nice length.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

For any gamer that what's a good understanding of how it all began...

The content is clear, thorough and funny.
At the start I thought the book was going to be hard going, but it really wasn't. It was very interesting and funny at times too.

Deserves a second read too.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

An interesting history that i was part of.

If you have been a hard core gamer, or even just dabbled in consoles or pc gaming, this is aa book which will have you saying "oh my god, that game was my life..."

It is slow to begin with but it turns into a tour de force which covers alll the landmark games, formats/consoles, the creators and companies that changed gaming, for better or worse. All the stories are engaging, telling how lives were changed through the products and how the genre continues to be relevant as muh as both music and film. Narration is good but nothing particularly special.

The four stars for the performace is only relative in comparison to my favourite fiction audio books read by the likes Frank Muller or Stephen Fry so it could be a 5 star review. It is a great insight into the industry and I highly recommend it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great

cover most of gaming history, but ignore most indie games that will be great to cover.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great but..

What’s with the weird low recording quality at the beginning and end? Sounds like he recorded it on his laptop mic

Otherwise, brilliant!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!