As a long time arcade/video game fan, I could not resist a book dedicated to covering 50 years of video game console history. "The Console" by Mike Diver was a delightful trip down memory lane that also taught me about the games, consoles, and related history that I had missed over the years. I have fond memories of using 3 of the first 6 consoles introduced in Diver's book. I experienced the Magnavox Odyssey for my first (and only) time at a cool Uncle's home in the early 70's and was simultaneously amazed (live video game on the living room TV!) and disappointed (Where's the sound? Why do we have to place a different plastic overlay on the TV screen for each game? Why are there so few games, and why do you have to replace a cartridge each time? :-) Still, it was a blast. Likewise I spent many enjoyable and competitive hours (years?) playing games with friends on Atari and Intellivision while growing up. Diver's book covers all major consoles and a variety of minor between 1970 and 2023. Literally, every home video game console I have owned or played is described along with history and a recap of the key games for each. The many pictures and graphics both bring back memories and are informative, though it might have been nice to have captions to avoid confusion about new (to the reader) hardware. Game screen shots might have been nice, but this is OK since the focus is on the consoles rather than the games.

I absolutely recommend this to others who have a fond place in their heart for home video games. Once published, I hope to add a copy of this book to my collection.

I am very appreciative to Mike Diver and Pen and Sword Books for kindly granting me an opportunity to review this excellent work.

Back in the 1970s, when I was at school, I was lucky enough to be given a Binatone TV game (as they were called then). It was a vibrant orange and black, and was the height of technology at the time. I loved it and still play XBox Series S games today. This book provides a brief history of consoles over the years between the first console, right up to the PS5 and Evercade, in pretty much chronological order.

The book is solely dedicated to home consoles - apart from the occasional passing mention, there is no discussion of home computers or even handheld machines, so look elsewhere if you're a Spectrum, C64 or Gameboy fan.

Although the book is well researched, the format relies too much on presenting each console chronologically making it difficult to follow careers and names through the lifetime of a company.

Each featured console is given a potted history and in most cases there is a list of must-play games (usually 5, sometimes 1). The games are not reviewed as such although a brief description is given.

Interviews and comments from the industry players are all rehashed - mostly from old websites - there is no new content here. However, everything is in context.

The book ends very abruptly.

There is something rather comforting in realising that I am as old as the TV Video Game Console. The first, according to Mike Diver's meticulously researched book, was the Magnavox Odyssey, which beat me by a few months in the USA (1972), but I beat its 1974 European release. The Console starts there and ends with a retrogaming console the Evercade VS - which is not a bad place to end with a machine that is largely about nostalgia in itself. Along the way, the book takes its waves of Japanese and US companies battling for supremacy, and in its own story you can see pretty much how capitalism works, lots of contenders whittling themselves down to three big players and few oddities. This is a snapshot history of Nintendo, the PlayStation and Xbox, and the rise and fall of Atari and Sega, while also throwing in a few fun cul-de-sacs like the Vectrex and even a decent history of user interface and controller design.

The book is set up chronologically with a photo of the console and a brief facts box before Diver tells us a bit of context about the company, the machine, and how it did in its market. The profiles of the consoles fit nicely in the world of existing gaming journalism, trying to pitch between readers who will be bringing their own knowledge to the book, but trying to broaden that picture. It knows that most people will flick to the pages with the consoles they have owned on it, and Diver is broadly positive about most machines, only occasionally pointing out technical flaws if they damaged the chances of the machine. He's a little more honest about the market and marketing, the Wii U gets a bit of a bashing for example, but then the Switch and Wii get effusive praise; basically, the Nintendo story here is the only way this stays interesting if you were to read it as a narrative.

This is more than just a coffee table book, though it is very attractive and easy to dip in and out of. The write-ups vary from one page to five depending on how important/interesting the machines are, and each comes with a few of the must-play games for the consoles - in itself an interesting history of gaming. The only thing missing for me was something resembling a screenshot to illustrate how graphic capabilities have changed and that would certainly have started to get boring over the last fifteen years so I understand why it isn't there. A must-have for avid console gamers, it is also pretty interesting for the rest of us and on the side doesn't do a bad job at telling a slice of artistic history of the world.

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.

Thank you NetGalley and Pen & Sword for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

It was really interesting to learn about consoles that are familiar to me as well as some consoles that I've never heard of. It was great to be able to see the progression through the systems up to the technology that we see today. There were some formatting issues with both the text and pictures. There was some jumping around between timelines in each section which did get confusing at times as well. However, it was still a fun read.