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squigglydot's review
emotional
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming and Fatphobia
Minor: Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Violence, and Emotional abuse
helpfulsnowman's review against another edition
4.0
Michael Kimball is great. Let's just get that out of the way.
He uses a really strange device in this book. The book is broken up into really short sections, and then each section will say something about Galaga. Sometimes the section will say something, maybe about a piece of fan art or a Galaga mod, and then a couple sections later Kimball will say, "That thing I said a couple sections back? That's not real. But I just thought it would be cool."
A few reviewers found it annoying, but I have to say, it really brought me back to a different era of gaming.
Pre-Internet, gaming was hard and confusing as hell. And half of the things you heard about games was third-hand, at best. Your friend's cousin who lives in Canada discovered a secret password in Metroid. There's a kid who's three grades ahead in school, and his brother beat Mario Bros. 10 times in a row and got the REAL ending. Hidden levels, hidden characters, all that stuff was so interesting because it felt like you weren't supposed to know.
The thrill of walking on the ceiling in the first Mario castle, of finding the Warp Zone where text filled the screen. It was definitely a secret. There weren't other places where white text explained what the hell was going on. You found it, used it, and then you were part of this secret club.
Games were packed with that stuff, and as an adult I can see that on some level, you were supposed to find it. Nobody would bother to code a warp zone into a game that they hoped people would never find. Right?
I think what Kimball's book did is take me back to that place. A place that doesn't exist anymore. Where you would watch older guys at the arcade play games and say, "Wait...what the fuck? How did he do that?" Or you'd read a Mortal Kombat III strategy guide and desperately try to memorize the finishing moves before the store clerk reminded you of the game store's status as a library. Currently: Not A.
In some ways, I wonder if video game culture has really suffered in the current age. Now, games are so easy to get. And easy not to get, easy to check out pretty thoroughly before you buy. Which is good for the consumer, but goddamn does it take away some of the mystery. The excitement of picking up a cartridge at Blockbuster and hoping that Green Dog is going to provide you a great weekend of gaming. That's gone. The thing where you go to a friend's house and see Zelda for the first time and think, "Holy shit. I need to preserve this friendship so I can play this game for the rest of my life."
I also wonder if some of the disrespectful shit in the gaming world, if a good deal of that comes from the fact that you're saying something to someone you will never actually meet. It's so different to call someone "fag" in real life than it is on Xbox Live. Especially as a dummy 12 year-old. I was always a little scared of the older kids at the arcade, even though they never gave me reason to be. And girls in the arcade? I always thought that was great! I mean, I was too shy to ever approach a girl. If you think I was scared of the older boys, jesus, that was nothing compared to girl paralysis. But when we were all at the arcade together in real life, I felt like just entering the storefront, just crossing into that part of the mall was all the cred someone needed. If a girl came into the arcade, then she was as much a gamer as anyone. If a girl beat me at Mortal Kombat III and DID know the finishing moves, I was just happy to actually see a finishing move. If a girl wanted to play X-Men with me, that was fantastic. Unless she really wanted to be Colossus. Then we'd have a problem because Colossus was my guy.
At this point I feel like I'm just being Old Man Pete and complaining about the internet. It's not all bad. The access to so much is great, and I think the advent of the more homemade games, the garage band feel of the indie game scene is the best. In some ways the modern age has leveled things. Regular people can make games. It doesn't take a huge studio for someone to make something anymore.
But I miss the past. NEStalgia, as they say.
Just to add on a little something, there are a few video game rumors out there that I think are really fun:
Here's what's great: The Justin Bailey password may actually BE a fluke as opposed to a purposeful thing. A very weird fluke in Metroid's password system. http://metroid.wikia.com/wiki/Justin_Bailey
Here's a great bit of storytelling about a haunted Zelda cartridge: http://inuscreepystuff.blogspot.com/2010/09/majora.html
Polybius: the game that made people insane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_%28video_game%29
He uses a really strange device in this book. The book is broken up into really short sections, and then each section will say something about Galaga. Sometimes the section will say something, maybe about a piece of fan art or a Galaga mod, and then a couple sections later Kimball will say, "That thing I said a couple sections back? That's not real. But I just thought it would be cool."
A few reviewers found it annoying, but I have to say, it really brought me back to a different era of gaming.
Pre-Internet, gaming was hard and confusing as hell. And half of the things you heard about games was third-hand, at best. Your friend's cousin who lives in Canada discovered a secret password in Metroid. There's a kid who's three grades ahead in school, and his brother beat Mario Bros. 10 times in a row and got the REAL ending. Hidden levels, hidden characters, all that stuff was so interesting because it felt like you weren't supposed to know.
The thrill of walking on the ceiling in the first Mario castle, of finding the Warp Zone where text filled the screen. It was definitely a secret. There weren't other places where white text explained what the hell was going on. You found it, used it, and then you were part of this secret club.
Games were packed with that stuff, and as an adult I can see that on some level, you were supposed to find it. Nobody would bother to code a warp zone into a game that they hoped people would never find. Right?
I think what Kimball's book did is take me back to that place. A place that doesn't exist anymore. Where you would watch older guys at the arcade play games and say, "Wait...what the fuck? How did he do that?" Or you'd read a Mortal Kombat III strategy guide and desperately try to memorize the finishing moves before the store clerk reminded you of the game store's status as a library. Currently: Not A.
In some ways, I wonder if video game culture has really suffered in the current age. Now, games are so easy to get. And easy not to get, easy to check out pretty thoroughly before you buy. Which is good for the consumer, but goddamn does it take away some of the mystery. The excitement of picking up a cartridge at Blockbuster and hoping that Green Dog is going to provide you a great weekend of gaming. That's gone. The thing where you go to a friend's house and see Zelda for the first time and think, "Holy shit. I need to preserve this friendship so I can play this game for the rest of my life."
I also wonder if some of the disrespectful shit in the gaming world, if a good deal of that comes from the fact that you're saying something to someone you will never actually meet. It's so different to call someone "fag" in real life than it is on Xbox Live. Especially as a dummy 12 year-old. I was always a little scared of the older kids at the arcade, even though they never gave me reason to be. And girls in the arcade? I always thought that was great! I mean, I was too shy to ever approach a girl. If you think I was scared of the older boys, jesus, that was nothing compared to girl paralysis. But when we were all at the arcade together in real life, I felt like just entering the storefront, just crossing into that part of the mall was all the cred someone needed. If a girl came into the arcade, then she was as much a gamer as anyone. If a girl beat me at Mortal Kombat III and DID know the finishing moves, I was just happy to actually see a finishing move. If a girl wanted to play X-Men with me, that was fantastic. Unless she really wanted to be Colossus. Then we'd have a problem because Colossus was my guy.
At this point I feel like I'm just being Old Man Pete and complaining about the internet. It's not all bad. The access to so much is great, and I think the advent of the more homemade games, the garage band feel of the indie game scene is the best. In some ways the modern age has leveled things. Regular people can make games. It doesn't take a huge studio for someone to make something anymore.
But I miss the past. NEStalgia, as they say.
Just to add on a little something, there are a few video game rumors out there that I think are really fun:
Here's what's great: The Justin Bailey password may actually BE a fluke as opposed to a purposeful thing. A very weird fluke in Metroid's password system. http://metroid.wikia.com/wiki/Justin_Bailey
Here's a great bit of storytelling about a haunted Zelda cartridge: http://inuscreepystuff.blogspot.com/2010/09/majora.html
Polybius: the game that made people insane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_%28video_game%29
gengelcox's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Unlike the previous three books in the Boss Fight series, I had played this game. Not as much as the author, but it was one of the arcade games that I could be somewhat decent at, much better than I was at its contemporary, Defender. Galaga was an update to Space Invaders, where the aliens swooped in to the screen from the sides and bottom rather than simply appearing at the top. You could zap them with your fighter as they did so, and part of the game was memorizing where they would enter so you could position your fighter in the best spot to clear them. The other innovation in Galaga was the ability to get double fighters—but only if you let the aliens capture your fighter. Woe to the player who lets their fighter get captured without having an extra in reserve!
I likely never got as good as Michael Kimball at Galaga because I wasn’t willing to put the time into memorizing the entry patterns, something players often did with these arcade games that were programmed to always be the same if you always did the same. I have a good memory, but rather than patterns, I preferred to fill it with lines from the plays I performed in or music trivia. I played arcade games because they helped me escape, for a quarter at a time, my troubles. I suppose it was better than drinking my troubles away, which is another use I could have put my quarters to. As Kimball describes, it was the same for him, but his troubles were magnitudes worse than mine, and perhaps that’s what fueled his ability to get the high scores on Galaga and other machines.
This book is ripe with nostalgia for a certain time period when the arcade (at the mall or a freestanding shop) was king, roughly the early 80s. Before Atari, Mattel, Nintendo, and Playstation came along and we all started playing games on our TV screens. I occasionally miss the arcade, with each machine dedicated to just one game, especially those with unique controls, like the double joystick mechanism of Crazy Climber or the trackball of Marble Madness. I’m in Japan at the moment and, like previous visits, I always take the time to look into one of the arcades here to see machines that don’t make it to the US: lots of rhythm games, from the Taito drum to one that has ten pads around a circular screen to one that looks as if you’re playing the piano. They have their shoot-‘em-ups, too, but the ones that really intrigue me are the fantasy wargames that use a combination of playing cards with RFID chips in them and a touchpen. I would love to try these games, but my Japanese is not enough for the complexity involved. In Denver, I took my nephew out to a retro arcade: you pay an entry fee and can play all those old 80s machines until you tire or the place closes. It’s not the same, but then, I have very few things troubling me these days.
avedon_arcade's review against another edition
1.0
Terribly fragmented with no real structure. The authors use of lies as some form of humor did not execute well.
drewsof's review against another edition
3.0
Again, it's a question of your interest level. If you're into classic games, this is ideal. If you're into stories about how [insert artistic thing here] shaped the life of a young person, this is also ideal. Kimball does a really great job at elevating what could've been a boring, dry fact-based thing about the game into a deeply personal look at life, at youth, and at love - of others and of an object. Your mileage will vary, but the fact is: this book does what it sets out to do and more. And for that, it is a success full-stop.
More at TNBBC: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/drew-reviews-galaga.html
and at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/09/30/galaga/
More at TNBBC: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/drew-reviews-galaga.html
and at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/09/30/galaga/
sheldonleecompton's review
5.0
- Review originally appeared at Small Press Book Review
Points to be Scored, Games to be Won
Galaga is Michael Kimball’s love letter to the game of the same name, his textbook, his instructor’s manual, his encyclopedia and fan fiction, and is so much more than any of these things. The book covers every nuance of the game, references in pop culture, merchandising, and just about any other thing related to Galaga. Tattoo anyone? He’s got those to talk about, too. No worries. And that’s fine and good, but there’s something Kimball displays with this book – courage and love and survival. How’s that for a magic trick?
Released July 1 from Boss Fight Books, Galaga is a work structured into 255 “stages”. Not chapters. Stages. That’s right, you heard me. Why? Simple. The game itself, the muse as it were, is made up of the same number of stages. Kimball knows this, and hundreds of other things about Galaga, having discovered the game in the arcade at the height of the boom and too long before the bust, when kids were stacking quarters for next in line and Madonna was just painting herself into a pop goddess. Kimball was there, best friend in tow for some of it, living truly free in his own little patch of 1980s paradise.
Galaga can work on several levels. Readers can enjoy the areas of the book that deal exclusively with the game itself, or they can read the autobiographical stages, a more human layer, and enjoy it at that level, as well.
The stages are mostly brief and strongly built, and rotate from sections devoted to game play and advice and the cultural significance of the game, to sections about anything other than video games. These sections that break away from talk of the game are a testament to Kimball’s bravery as a writer. In these sections, he opens his chest to show the arteries across his heart, those swelled with hope and those crushed from pain. He offers it all.
And that offering begins with this: “I always wanted to be playing some kind of game. The terrible stuff happened when I wasn’t playing games.”
Before Kimball actually pulls us along with him into the complex world of the game of Galaga, we’re given those two sentences. When I read them, I literally caught myself holding my breath. It was unexpected, that’s all. Unexpected in the best possible way, in the way that lights up the heart while the brain is already firing away. All systems go. But this was a book about a video game, right? Well, yes. But then there were these two sentences.
Then, just like that, we’re back to Galaga, and maybe there was just this momentary mention of a troubled childhood to frame Kimball’s knowledge and interest in the game. Nope. A short while later, Kimball shares, “To understand how much Galaga (and other video games) meant to me, you have to understand the difficulty of my adolescence.”
By the time I came across the second reference, read it, and moved on, I found myself enjoying the facts and figures about Galaga, but on the look for more from Kimball’s troubled youth. Soon, though, I felt relaxed again. And then, another stage with tension and abusive fathers and brothers and the need for escape and a place to feel safe. And…wait.
The pattern of being relaxed and then tense, at least for this reader, began to mirror what the young Kimball must have felt – relaxed and safe when in the safety of the arcade and then tense while at home, a place where he could be attacked at any second without warning.
The book continues in this way, and successfully so. The autobiographical moments do not render the moments detailing the game of Galaga uninteresting. It just isn’t possible for that to happen given Kimball’s obvious savant-like knowledge of the game. And if there were any question about this last statement, moments like this consistently put that notion to rest: “Somebody who goes by Kaden Dragon made a little Galaga scene of M&Ms, which is great even if the colors aren’t exactly right.”
I’ve never said this is a review, but the ending of this fine book is amazing. The duel means by which Kimball presents both the game of Galaga and his life in connection could not be more expertly faded out to its natural conclusion.
Trust me, you’ll get your quarter’s worth.
Points to be Scored, Games to be Won
Galaga is Michael Kimball’s love letter to the game of the same name, his textbook, his instructor’s manual, his encyclopedia and fan fiction, and is so much more than any of these things. The book covers every nuance of the game, references in pop culture, merchandising, and just about any other thing related to Galaga. Tattoo anyone? He’s got those to talk about, too. No worries. And that’s fine and good, but there’s something Kimball displays with this book – courage and love and survival. How’s that for a magic trick?
Released July 1 from Boss Fight Books, Galaga is a work structured into 255 “stages”. Not chapters. Stages. That’s right, you heard me. Why? Simple. The game itself, the muse as it were, is made up of the same number of stages. Kimball knows this, and hundreds of other things about Galaga, having discovered the game in the arcade at the height of the boom and too long before the bust, when kids were stacking quarters for next in line and Madonna was just painting herself into a pop goddess. Kimball was there, best friend in tow for some of it, living truly free in his own little patch of 1980s paradise.
Galaga can work on several levels. Readers can enjoy the areas of the book that deal exclusively with the game itself, or they can read the autobiographical stages, a more human layer, and enjoy it at that level, as well.
The stages are mostly brief and strongly built, and rotate from sections devoted to game play and advice and the cultural significance of the game, to sections about anything other than video games. These sections that break away from talk of the game are a testament to Kimball’s bravery as a writer. In these sections, he opens his chest to show the arteries across his heart, those swelled with hope and those crushed from pain. He offers it all.
And that offering begins with this: “I always wanted to be playing some kind of game. The terrible stuff happened when I wasn’t playing games.”
Before Kimball actually pulls us along with him into the complex world of the game of Galaga, we’re given those two sentences. When I read them, I literally caught myself holding my breath. It was unexpected, that’s all. Unexpected in the best possible way, in the way that lights up the heart while the brain is already firing away. All systems go. But this was a book about a video game, right? Well, yes. But then there were these two sentences.
Then, just like that, we’re back to Galaga, and maybe there was just this momentary mention of a troubled childhood to frame Kimball’s knowledge and interest in the game. Nope. A short while later, Kimball shares, “To understand how much Galaga (and other video games) meant to me, you have to understand the difficulty of my adolescence.”
By the time I came across the second reference, read it, and moved on, I found myself enjoying the facts and figures about Galaga, but on the look for more from Kimball’s troubled youth. Soon, though, I felt relaxed again. And then, another stage with tension and abusive fathers and brothers and the need for escape and a place to feel safe. And…wait.
The pattern of being relaxed and then tense, at least for this reader, began to mirror what the young Kimball must have felt – relaxed and safe when in the safety of the arcade and then tense while at home, a place where he could be attacked at any second without warning.
The book continues in this way, and successfully so. The autobiographical moments do not render the moments detailing the game of Galaga uninteresting. It just isn’t possible for that to happen given Kimball’s obvious savant-like knowledge of the game. And if there were any question about this last statement, moments like this consistently put that notion to rest: “Somebody who goes by Kaden Dragon made a little Galaga scene of M&Ms, which is great even if the colors aren’t exactly right.”
I’ve never said this is a review, but the ending of this fine book is amazing. The duel means by which Kimball presents both the game of Galaga and his life in connection could not be more expertly faded out to its natural conclusion.
Trust me, you’ll get your quarter’s worth.
carrotchimera's review
1.0
This book is all over the place. I like the 256 “chapters” being the 256 stages in the game, but the flow of the book kept being interrupted because of that. Trivia was spliced in constantly, making it a big mess. I would’ve enjoyed it more if it had been all one big story with all the nasty bits in one go. I like the emotional aspect and what the game means to the author though.