NETFLIX HIGH SCORE | Review | Netflix Documentary.
Netflix's latest upcoming video game docuseries High Score, is like a love letter for video game enthusiasts as it includes plenty of nostalgic video game factoids. The series will have you saying things like, "Oh I remember that!" or, "Oh no way, that's how they came up with that!" time and time again.
Narrated by Mario himself, Charles Martinet, High Score is a six-part docu-series premiering on Netflix next Wednesday, August 19th. The series serves as a historical lesson in many aspects and covers a multitude of topics and milestones that helped shape the video game industry to what it has become today.
It begins by discussing the days of the arcades in an episode titled Boom & Bust giving us an overview of how huge the arcades were back in the '80s something that if your an 80s kid like me, know that your children know absolutely nothing about. And how games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man were all the rise while in the home console business, Atari was starting to take things off until a familiar name came to the block who we all know and love, Nintendo.
As I mentioned, the series does a great job of discussing the history of the gaming landscape and how certain things came about. For example, Nintendo found themselves in some legal trouble back in the day with a little game called Donkey Kong. Universal had an issue with the word Kong in their name and sued Nintendo over it as they thought it sounded too similar to King Kong.
Nintendo then hired attorney John Kirby to defend them in course, where he won the case. Nintendo was extremely thrilled by the outcome of the case, so much that they paid tribute to John Kirby by using his namesake in future games that have been quite a hit if I do say so myself with a character who has become quite the legend within the industry.
. The series covers many challenges that companies had to overcome on the road to their success too. As I just mentioned, the road wasn't always clear for Nintendo. Aside from legal troubles, they also had issues of how to market their systems to a western audience which included rebranding the name from the Famicon to the Nintendo Entertainment System and the look and color of the console itself.
Marketing continued through the success of one of the most popular video game magazines of all-time, Nintendo Power, and how it came to be so great. Even gamers faced issues with Nintendo. Nintendo games were tough. Very tough. And gamers needed help to get through different areas of the game.
That's where the Nintendo Power Lane came into play to help players get through troubled spots. High Score discusses what it was like to have a job as a Nintendo gameplay counselor which is exactly what you would think it would be like: a dream job. The series covers RPGs and their impact on the industry with game influences from Final Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, and more.
But then it really gets into the good stuff and talks about the console wars between Nintendo and SEGA. SEGA actually had a list to take down Nintendo and while it sounded easy on a chalkboard, the task itself was very intimidating if you happened to work at SEGA at the time: The first task - Defeat Mario.
This was done by the creation of our favorite blue hedgehog, Sonic. Sonic had an attitude, he was edgy, sleek, and extremely fast. Mario was cute and loveable but a the time, not too much else. At the time, the edge went to Sonic. The second task - More Sports.
Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts partnered up with football legend John Madden and created a little game called Madden NFL. The game initially was intended to be 7 on 7 football, but Madden argued that it wasn't real football and pressed for 11 on 11.
It was the first football game that ever featured that concept and it caught SEGA's eye after the game was published on the Apple II. SEGA partnered with EA and well, the rest is history. The third task Cool For Teens - Sega advertised Sonic as the cool kid in the neighborhood, rebellious, cool, and occasionally makes mistakes.
Sound like your typical teenager at home? That's because it is. My personal final task: Make fun of Nintendo. The ad campaign with SEGA making fun of Nintendo is of legend and is something that isn't done as often to this day unless you're watching a political ad campaign. The series next gets into video game violence discussing games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat and how these fighting games helped spark a renaissance to video game arcades around the world and helped create huge events that we now know as eSports.
But once more, with some success comes certain controversy as these series of fighting games including a game called Night Trap forced the United States Congress to strike down and make the industry adopt a game rating system, the ESRB. The final chapter gets into 3D gaming with online multiplayer games which I knew had quite an impact in the industry, but not as big as I realized until after I watched this docuseries.
Seriously, we all owe John Romero of iD Software so much with what he brought to the table giving us a mode that we love so much, the Deathmatch. Without the creation of this in the first-person shooter landscape, online gaming would be a lot different and a lot of games probably wouldn't even exist for that matter.
High Score is a nostalgic roller coaster and I loved every thrill and moment of it. While I would have liked to see a little more coverage regarding some of the greatest video game series of all-time like The Legend Of Zelda, Minecraft, Metal Gear, and others it was still a nice breath of fresh air to enjoy a video game docuseries and sharpen up my history, get nostalgic, and even learn a few more new factoids that I didn't know about.
I give the series a solid 9 out of 10. Be sure to check it out when the series becomes available later this month on August 19th. I hope you guys enjoyed the video, be sure to subscribe if you haven't already as videos like this are covered quite often and click the bell to get automatically notified when a new one is published.
