The first documentary series on the history of video games produced by Netflix, High Score is now available. The opportunity to discover, through 6 episodes, the genesis of great classics like Doom, Street Fighter II or Space Invaders. But we especially remember striking portraits of players.
video">High Score Trailer
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6 episodes of around 40 minutes each: High Score is the perfect candidate for a quick and efficient “bingage”, especially since the whole thing fits perfectly and shows a sense of rhythm and impeccable storytelling.. Each episode thus has a main subject and it all covers the history of video games from the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, approximately. The first episode focuses, for example, on the greatness and decadence of Atari during the period 1976-1983, which inevitably ends in the famous “crash of the industry”. The opportunity to portray Howard Scott Warshaw, who programmed in 5 weeks ET on Atari 2600, often considered one of the worst games of all time. Then we move on to the arrival of Nintendo in force on the American market which, with the NES, will literally revive the industry from its ashes.
The documentary also allows itself some interesting pranks devoted to the origins of a specific genre: how Ken and Roberta Williams, as well as Richard Garriott, gave birth to adventure and role-playing games. How Japan Reclaimed American Arcades With Street Fighter II. For each game mentioned, or almost, the documentary has the good taste to involve its creator (s). The result is a prestigious casting : Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari), Tomohiro Nishikado (creator of Space Invaders. Above), Trip Hawkins (founder of Electronic Arts), John Romero (game designer of Doom) or Akira Nishitani (co-creator of Street Fighter II) are not stingy with anecdotes and memories. High Score thus manages to talk about video games in a language understandable by all., while giving enough crisp details to those who are already interested in the history of the medium.
The word is also given to people in the shadows
But where the Netflix documentary surprises is in its way of mixing big and small history, giving voice to people much less known. We thus discover several portraits of players who in the 80s participated in video game championships, who tell, with archival images to support, their memories of children. A great way to rediscover a perhaps more carefree time, when teens were encouraged by their parents to play Tetris 8 hours a day to prove they were the best. A small detour by the west coast of the United States also allows us to discover Gayblade (below), a dungeon-crawler where we fight homophobes. Created by Ryan Best, also interviewed, the game had, at the time, had some success within the gay community of San Francisco.
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High Score thus constantly navigates among the more or less known speakers, with admirable fluidity and consistency. The common thread of each episode remains perfectly clear and understandable, the staging is inventive and the archive images allow you to plunge back into those delicious years filled with garish colors and rough hairstyles. Some regrets all the same : some subjects remain a bit overflown, and we regret the total absence of speakers from Nintendo (which is hardly surprising given the culture of secrecy of the company). The end of the 6th episode also comes very quickly, with a certain taste of too little. Hopefully a season 2 is in the works, as there is so much to tell from the mid-90s.
High Score, a 6-part series on the history of video games, available on Netflix.
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