The documentary series ‘High Score’, which has just been released on Netflix, is called, despite its seemingly harmless character, to cause controversy. Its virtues and problems are so obvious and undeniable that every viewer will have to assess what to expect from a documentary about games video, especially on its origins. And yet, even the most surly and accommodating critics of fanboys are unlikely to succumb to “High Score” which, to say the least, has taken to scouring considerably.
The main and most obvious of his problems, from which all the others arise, is that in six episodes of less than 50 minutes each, it’s impossible to cover the entire history of the video game. Its episodes are slightly thematic, sometimes dealing with historical moments (the pioneers, the Nintendo tsunami in the early eighties, the Nintendo-Sega war), sometimes with technical problems (3D), sometimes with genres ( role-playing, fighting games). It is only by reading the subject of each one, the less seasoned player – and it is not necessary to be an expert of the medium -, will detect the gaps.
Driving games, strategy games or classic video adventures, video games from countries other than the United States or Japan, the industry does not courant dominant, the arcade classics before ‘Street Fighter II’, the dozens of successful consoles that are not the usual two or three, the portable game that has been around since the days of Game & Watch… we agree that phenomena Recent events such as the outbreak ofInternet for online games (something is underlined when talking about “DOOM”) or phenomena such as “Minecraft” or “Fortnite” can be excluded from the scope of the series if you want to talk only about games classics (although it shouldn’t be if it’s meant to talk about games that opened up new avenues for the medium), but the series doesn’t even mention the first Playstation. Nor, of course, any console that came later.
AND it’s only on the surface: if we dive into each of the episodes, the untreated spaces are noisy. In the chapter on fighting games, they talk about “Street Fighter II” and “Mortal Kombat”, yes, but not their successors or the origins of the genre. And in the RPG, only the first steps of the ‘Ultima’ saga are explained, how pioneer Roberta Williams created her first game and a few notes on ‘Final Fantasy’. Just because each chapter leaves essential names without mentioning them, it’s not that each of the episodes is a handful of brief empty shots that prevent the viewer from taking an incomplete, but simply global, view of the subject. .
‘High Score’: the good part
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So where are the positive points of this new documentary series? Precisely in his position almost declared against completism. “High Score” simply wants to throw at the viewer a handful of portraits, of disjointed moments in the long history of video games., to illustrate the great variety of characters, genres and moments that populate it. In this sense, without seeking utility beyond “(most of) these people are very important to theenvironment“, The production is running.
And it works because, with the exception of a few creators or players who have no interest beyond marketing folklore, most talking busts have things to say and they do it with grace. It is true that the series insists time and again on talking about the champions of video game tournaments of the 80s and 90s, in stories not very interesting – except that of Rebecca Heineman, the first champion of a national video game competition. in 1981, and, significantly, co-founder of the legendary Interplay studio, but there are real pioneers among the guests, and it is appreciated that they share where they got their ideas or with what techniques they did it.
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At the fetish level, “High Score” offers freebies to fans of retro culture in virtually every episode: mainly, an endless number of documents directly brought back from the past, strange recordings for television and little-seen commercials with moving images of some little-known video games. Some of these documents are shown by its own authors, such as original alien designs from ‘Space Invaders’ by Tomohiro Nishikado, planning from ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ by Naoto Ohshima or John Romero’s demon sketches for “DOOM”.
The documentary’s approach is sometimes too complacent with the stories told by its protagonists, too generous with their own mythologies. When the creator of ‘Street Fighter II’ talks about his game as the first video game that allowed for a confrontation between two players, or Romero says that ‘Wolfenstein 3D’ was the first true three-dimensional game, no one is in. responsible for qualifying his remarks, even as a comment below. It’s logic: many of these designers (especially North Americans) are also professional salespeople and tend to overdo it. But a documentary shouldn’t nod and be silent.
“High Score” is an unpretentious gift for those interested, more than the history or the secret sources of the medium, its aesthetics and its anecdotes. He knows that the material he deals with can be polished effortlessly, as evidenced by the animated interludes or the show’s tongue-in-cheek start, with nothing less than the story of the disastrous “AND the alien” for Atari. ‘High Score’ takes advantage of his tricks, but he often falls into his own traps, leaving too many proper names out of his stories (obvious example: John Carmack and Ed Boon, respectively 50% of ‘Doom’ and ‘Mortal Kombat’, They are mentioned in passing, and all the attention goes to John Romero and John Tobias… why? Because they were closer?).
Although the feeling of missed opportunity persists at the end of each chapter, it is fair to recognize the efforts of “High Score”. For example, it tells the fascinating and moving story of Jerry Lawson, African American who designed the Fairchild Channel F and, with it, literally invented the cartridge game, that is, machines running different video games. A real revolution, beyond winning a “Sonic” tournament of the 90s, and rarely told in detail. It’s those moments, when it’s focused on them, that make ‘High Score’ total victory (or, say, with the birth of ‘Ms. Pac-Man’ as a ‘Pac-Man’ hack or the ‘history of the long-missing activist RPG’ GayBlade ‘). But sadly, six episodes later, there is still too much to say.
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