As much as I enjoy playing retro games, I also enjoy watching videos about the hobby. There is a lot of great content to watch on YouTube especially from other collectors who vlog about their pick ups and growing collections. Away from YouTube vlog style videos though there are some great Retro Video Game Documentaries out there worth watching.
8 Video Game Documentaries You Need to Watch
So let’s jump into my favourite video game documentaries covering arcade games, 80’s video games, how the video game industry evolved over the years and more.
- King of Kong a Fistful of Quarters (2007)
- From Bedrooms to Billions (2014)
- Man Vs Snake (2015)
- The Bits of Yesterday (2018)
- Atari: Game Over (2014)
- Easy to Learn Hard to Master: The Fate of Atari (2017)
- Chasing Ghosts Beyond the Arcade (2007)
- Micro Men – A Drama not a Documentary (2009)
1. King of Kong a Fistful of Quarters (2007)
This is such a fascinating story and I watch this at least once a year. This documentary follows Steve Wiebe’s quest to beat the world’s high score on Donkey Kong with a strong focus on the North American Arcade scene and its many characters.
The biggest dynamic of the film though is the growing rivalry between Steve Wiebe (who is very much the good guy) and Billy Mitchell who comes across as the scheming bad guy who doesn’t want to let go of his record score but isn’t willing to play publicly to prove himself. You can’t help but root for Steve to be successful and if you haven’t seen this, I really think you should. A real story to become the best best video game champion of Donkey Kong.
More Retro Gaming Posts:
- Best CRT TVs for Retro Gaming
- My Retro Gaming Christmas Memories
- Why You Should Go To A Retro Gaming Expo
- The UK Retro Gaming Scene
- What is Considered Retro Gaming
- my 10 Top Arcade Games article here.
2. From Bedrooms to Billions (2014)
This 150-minute documentary tells the story of the British Video Games Industry right from the beginning where hobbyists, bedroom coders and eventually business men developed the industry into what it is today. There is host of British video game legends included from publishers and game developers to Journalists and this really drives the documentary along making it an essential watch.
If you weren’t part of the British video game scene in the 1980s then give this a watch as it tells a completely different story to what happened in North America. A great doc about gaming history for the home micro gamers who enjoyed the ZX Spectrum and C64 games in the 80’s.
3. Man Vs Snake (2015)
In 1984 Tim McVey became the first person to score over a billion points on a video game called Nibbler using just one quarter and playing for over 44 hours. This documentary follows on decades later when Tim chases the high score again following rumours of an Italian gamer beating his previous score. Like King of Kong but where as that was a battle between two players this documentary ends up as Tim McVey battling against himself as he struggles to achieve his goal of breaking the high score record on the Nibbler arcade video game. A fascinating watch.
4. The Bits of Yesterday (2018)
I only discovered this documentary recently (it wasn’t released until 2018), but it is an enjoyable watch. The focus is very much on the retro gaming hobby in the U.S.A with prominent collectors and YouTubers such as John Hancock and Pat the NES Punk featuring. I found it interesting to watch as there are a lot of similarities to the UK scene as well as some differences too. This video game documentary is really an overview of the whole North American scene and I very much enjoyed it.
5. Atari: Game Over (2014)
This documentary is all about the North American video game crash of 1983 with the main focus of the story being the landfill burial of thousands of copies of the Atari E.T video game in the New Mexico town of Alamogordo. It is interesting to see how old photograph’s are used to find the location where they think the video game is located and at only just over an hour long this is fairly quick and interesting watch.
Following the massive success of the movie everyone expected the best video game experience to follow. That didn’t exactly happen.
6. Easy to Learn Hard to Master: The Fate of Atari (2017)
This one is the story of Atari. How the company started, its successes, its failures and how it was the early pioneer of the video games industry. The film is the story of how Nolan Bushnell started Atari as well as being a classic boom and bust story. Featuring a host of industry legends including David Crane and Eugene Jarvis this film tells the story of Atari and it is enthralling.
7. Chasing Ghosts Beyond the Arcade (2007)
This is the story of how Walter Day formed the Twin Galaxies International Score Board for arcade games in the early 1980s. The film also looks at the world champions of the time who appeared alongside Walter Day in Life Magazine and early 80s arcade gaming in general catching up with the top players. Similar to King of Kong but with more of a focus on arcade gaming in general when it was at its peak in the States.
8. Micro Men – A Drama not a Documentary (2009)
This 2009 BBC TV movie is a dramatization of the rivalry between Sinclair and Acorn Computing and more specifically Clive Sinclair and his former assistant Chris Curry. This is a very entertaining movie with a great sense of humour and wonderfully captures Britain in the 1980s and the rise of the home micro computers that for the majority of Brits was their first taste of video games away from the arcade.
The Story is well told with Martin Freeman and Alexander Armstrong playing their parts very well. The sad thing about the story is what could have been had both companies focussed on the future of home computing rather than pet projects (the Sinclair C5) and looking to make a more economic version of the successful BBC Micro (Acorn). If only they had focussed on the 16bit future we were heading towards back then.
You can find Micro Men on YouTube.
If you get some time of an evening or weekend, then definitely give some of the above (or even all of them) a watch. Of course, you could be playing retro games but sometimes it is nice to kick back and watch stuff about retro gaming.
If you haven’t seen it yet my previous post is here.
Daz
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