Game Reference Books

[Ack]

Hey guys, I've got a term paper I have to write, and I was thinking about discussing the history of censorship in games, starting with Death Race and coming all the way to Manhunt 2 for the Wii. My question is, does anybody know of some good reference books about video games? I've picked up a few from my school library, but I'm probably gonna need to find some more as most of what they have was released around...2000? Or in some cases, even earlier.

Here are the books I picked up in the meantime:
Game On
Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children
Supercades
Ultimate History of Video Games

I'm also attempting to find the senate hearings on Mortal Kombat and Night Trap(plus if anybody knows where I can find a copy of what Captain Kangaroo said about Night Trap, I'd like to see it). I really appreciate any and all help I can get.

[Dave Auto]

I've read Game Over and Ultimate History, and they're both excellent. Ultimate History in particular recounts in more detail the major censorship controversies (like the Night Trap and Mortal Kombat hearings) and is probably going to be your most valuable print source (isn't there a great quote from Captain Kangaroo in Ultimate History? I can't remember). If you need more useful information on more recent controversies, you're not going to find much in print. Here's an online article from a fairly reputable source:
http://www.mcvuk.com/interviews/329/Gam ... ersies-110

If you just need more print sources to fill out your "Works Cited" page, try High Score:
http://www.amazon.com/High-Score-Illust ... d_sim_b_11
It's not the most informative book, but it is a lovely and thorough visual history, with page after glossy page of screenshots from gaming's history. The latest edition is from 2004, which is probably as up-to-date as you're going to get.

Great topic for a paper, best of luck.

[dsheinem]

In less than five minutes I found -

Clip of Senate Hearings from 1994:



from 1993:



check out some of the "related" clips too...


Audio interview with head of ESA:

http://www.pluggd.tv/audio/channels/c_s ... sodes/b0zy

Video interview with him:

rtsp://video1.c-span.org/project/de/com071506_lowenstein.rm (ugh - real player - didn't check the link)

Also check the newspapers (e.g. via Lexis-Nexus) from the time these were going on. You might also look into scholarship on the issue from journals (e.g. via EBSCOHost).

good luck.

[racketboy]

Very interesting!
I so want to start indexing gaming history/reference stuff around the net.
Kinda like old-school Yahoo style

[Ack]

Thanks for the material guys. I hadn't even though about footage on Youtube! I've also done some scrounging on Wikipedia. While it's not a good source, it does link to various newspapers that have older articles put up on the internet. I seriously appreciate all the help.

I suppose it's time I call Dennis McCauley at Gamepolitics...again...