The Landmark series comprises six books about video games. The University of Michigan publishes these books. The series started in 2013, and new instalments have been infrequently published.
In theory, this is an excellent idea! Take a few games and write about their impact on culture or how they were influenced by the culture of the time. I think this could have been a good to excellent book series.
The books can be a little hit-and-miss for me. Most of them have been very interesting, and only one felt strange. For the most part, the authors do an excellent job of picking games and moments in video game history that had a significant impact on pop culture or were influenced by what was happening in the world at the time the games were made.
This series shines when the authors explain the cultural and societal impacts that video games have had. Not every book does this, but those are some of the best video game books I’ve read.
TLDR: I wouldn’t say I liked the Tempest book, and thought the others were okay.
Tempest
The first book I read in the series was Tempest by Judd Ruggill and Ken Mcallister. This is the book I didn’t like at all. They start with the idea that Tempest shouldn’t be forgotten; I countered this with was it forgotten. It’s a strange game to base a book on, and it was an odd entry in a series covering landmark games.
My major problem with the book is that the subject is Tempest. It just doesn’t make any sense for this. I would have chosen Missile Command. It speaks more to the early 80s and the Cold War. Missile Command speaks more to the fear of the period.
They go through the history of the sequels to Tempest. There isn’t much to say about them either. They are all fun to play, but there isn’t a story for Tempest as far as I know. It isn’t tied to a cultural event.
The authors do explain the game very well. I like their description of it and how they explain how the enemies move. That’s part of the problem, though. That only takes a few pages to explain. There isn’t much else to say about the game. Most of the book seems to try to justify their choice and brings up examples that apply to Missile Command.
It was a weird choice for this series, and I think they should have gone with Missile Command instead. Tempest doesn’t speak to what they were talking about. It all boils down to the fact that I don’t believe Tempest should have been included in this shortlist.
Silent Hill
Silent Hill was the second book I read from this series. This is a game series I believe belongs in a Landmark Video Game series. You can make the argument that Resident Evil was more important, but for me, I think either one could go here. Both helped to elevate the Survival Horror genre.
This covers the Silent Hill series up to Downpour. Most of the book is focused on how the games took a cinematic approach instead of being more action-based. Bernard uses this to talk about horror movies a bit.
I really liked this! For the most part, I feel like horror games would translate to movies better than some other games. This isn’t always true, and just because it feels like they would make good movies doesn’t mean they will. This is one of the parts that made this book feel more personal and less academic.
I also liked how he discusses how the fanbase is looking for deeper meaning in the games. This is an area I wish were expanded on, as long as Bernard didn’t look at some of the more bizarre theories. I wish the book had been centered around this and the movies. It would have been different, but I think it would have been better.
He does go over the games in the mainline series, but doesn’t spend too much time on them. Silent Hill: Origins, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 3, and Shattered Memories are covered as they’re connected. Silent Hill 2 gets an extensive section. Silent Hill 4 gets a brief mention.
After the games, he talks about the other media in the Silent Hill series. The movies and some of the books are talked about. This is a strange inclusion, mainly because there isn’t enough time spent on them. The book is just too short for me.
Myst and Riven
The third book I read was Myst and Riven. I like this one more than the other two. This, like the Silent Hill Book, feels like it belongs in a series like this. The only weird thing is how Mark doesn’t cover the entire series. We look at the first two. I’m not sure why, but it feels like there was a page limit.
It’s more personal, which might be why I enjoyed it more than the other two. It doesn’t stay that way for long, though. This is still an academic book and can be boring at times. I wish Mark had reflected more on the games instead of analyzing them.
One thing I appreciated was the history of the developer, Cyan. I didn’t know much about them before Myst, and he explains their history excellently. Hearing about the games that influenced the decisions in Myst was great. He also goes into the game’s atmosphere, and there are moments in the book where I felt he put me in the games.
It’s hard to explain how influential these games were. Myst helped to move point-and-click adventure games forward. It was also one of the games I remember being on CDs before it was commonplace. The visuals in the game were excellent for the time. Even though I wouldn’t say I like the game, I never really got into the series; they were still significant in the history of video games.
I liked this book more than Tempest and Silent Hill. I understand why they are written like academic papers, but it doesn’t work for me. This one did a better job of hooking me initially, but it was still a little boring at times.
Doom
The whole series isn’t covered here, as the book was written before Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. Regardless of that, you can tell how Dan feels about the games. At least I got that impression from reading this. This book seems to have more personality than the other books in the series.
Dan goes through the history of the first-person shooter genre. We also get the history of id Software. I like this part as it shows how id was pushing the technology at the time. We also hear more about Tom Hall’s Doom Bible and how it influenced the game.
The exciting part is when Dan goes over the level design of Doom and its episodes. I should mention that Doom was released in episodes and through a shareware model. You got the first episode for free and had to pay for the other episodes. I’m sure most fans of Doom know this already, but I wanted to put it in here.
It was fascinating to read about the different ideas of the level designers. They had other ideas on what they wanted from their levels. John Romero was more about Multiplayer, and Sandy Peterson was more about tension and terror. Romero’s levels were all about fast action, and Peterson’s were about building up to a scare and a firefight. The level design talk was my favorite part of the book, and my least favorite part was the breakdown of the weapons and monsters. This didn’t matter to me at all.
I do like the reflection on the legacy of Doom. It had a significant impact on the FPS genre. While the Quake games probably had more impact due to their engines, Doom made the genre much more popular. In the 90s, Doom helped to make the genre mainstream.
While I like this take on the history of Doom, I feel the story of id Software and their games has been told better in other books. Most of the story about the early days of id was told by the time this book was released. I understand why it was included in the book, but I just feel like it is covered better by other authors.
StarCraft
This book focuses on the Esports scene in South Korea and how StarCraft was able to help start an industry. It wasn’t the first game to be used for something like this, but it hugely impacted turning video games into a sport. StarCraft has also lasted for a long time in the competitive scene.
Video game competitions aren’t anything new, and I doubt that anyone has done a comprehensive history on them. What Simon Dor does with this book is explain the game’s impact on South Korean culture and how Blizzard mismanaged the sequel’s release in that country. That part of the book was very interesting.
A brief history of strategy games is given. It takes a backseat to the history of StarCraft’s competitive scene in South Korea. I had fun learning about this part of video game history. As someone who doesn’t follow Esports, it is always interesting to learn about it.
Mortal Kombat
David Church does a spectacular job of explaining the influence of Mortal Kombat. He also dives into the origins of the series and the movies that inspired it. I learned a lot from this book.
I got very interested when he covered the Congressional Hearings about Video Game Violence. He brings up several things I hadn’t thought about before. No one made a stink about these games (Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers) until they entered the home. Also, the footage was heavily edited, and no other opinions were allowed into the hearing.
David’s take on the hearing was one that I hadn’t heard before. Most of the time, people focus on Nintendo and Sega’s verbal sparring and the creation of the ESRB. No one mentions how staged it was, only to allow one perspective to be presented.
This quickly became my favorite book in the series. That might change if more are published, but as it stands, this is my favorite one. David tells the story of Mortal Kombat and the moral panic of the early 1990s very well.
Wrap Up
This series of books has gotten much better with the additions of the Starcraft and Mortal Kombat Books. They changed the direction of the series and made it about moments in time and how video games impacted society. It was interesting to see these perspectives on video games.
I’m glad this series is still going! In the last ten to twenty years, Video Games have only been looked at for their cultural significance. Other authors do a better job of talking about them, though. These started off as being a little too academic, but the books put out recently were much better.
They did a better job of using the video games to talk about culture and society. Games that had a bigger impact on video game history than the previous ones. It will be interesting to see if this series keeps going and what games they choose to focus on.
I keep finding more books I didn’t know existed. When I first started reviewing books on video games, I didn’t know how many there were. I’m glad more books have been written on the subject in the last 5-10 years.
These books do an excellent job of showing different ways you can tell the history of a video game. You don’t have to focus on the whole story. It can be refreshing to have deep dives into one topic or look at how those games impacted pop culture and society. It is something that can get lost as some people think there is only one way, or a “right way” to tell history.
If you liked this post, please check out my reviews of the Game of Death and StarCraft books.