Best products from r/truegaming

This question really piqued my curiosity, because it reminded me not to take the things I know for granted. Being born in the early 80s, and having been introduced to videogames by older siblings and my parents in that decade, and then being involved with videogames either in the industry or as an avid enthusiast, the obscure (and most times useless) history of the medium is something I've taken for granted.

Recently, as older millennials and younger Gen X'ers have reached maturity (or middle age), there have been a surge in books, documentaries, and other materials about videogames... As they're seminal in many of our lives and so now we're looking back and writing these nostalgic retrospectives. Many are trash, even some of the best are still trash, but I'd recommend a few of them... The following are either entertaining, informative, or some balance of both:

• Blake Harris' Console Wars Amazon, a book released in 2014 that details the rise and fall of Sega of America. I think the writing is rough, at least, it tries to Aaron Sorkinize too much of the history and comes off insufferably cheesy at times, enough so that I just had to put the book down and shake my head with douche shivers, but because Harris' has one on one interviews and access to Kalinske, the head of SoA at the time, you get a lot of first hand details that just aren't available anywhere else.
  
• David Kushner's Masters of Doom Amazon, written in 2004 was one of the first contemporary books to get into the details of the videogame industry. This was mostly an untapped medium when Kushner was writing the book, as writing about a videogame company was just not in fashion in 2002 or 2003. Like Console Wars, the conversations are fictionalized but most match up to the actual events detailed in the book. It follows the origins and rise of id software, one of the most influential western developers who more or less invented the first-person shooter (even if they weren't truly the first, they certainly popularized the genre and most of what we take for granted in the first-person genre, id pioneered and introduced). id's fingerprints are on thousands of modern games, and the two founders of the company -- John Carmack and John Romero -- are often considered father's of modern action games, they also have a tumultuous relationship with one another, at the time often likened to John Lenon and Paul McCartney, and so the story of id software is also the story of their personal relationship.
  
• Gaming Historian YouTube Channel (google it, it should come up). Many of these videos are dry and some border on clickbait, but the majority are well researched and provide a good nugget of history into videogames.
  
• The King of Kong Documentary. It's not completely factual and it takes artistic license to make a better story, but it's probably the best videogame-focused movie ever made, even despite those inaccuracies. Why you should watch it? It's a great introduction into competitive gaming in the 1980s and how videogames worked. There are other materials that have informed this movie and you can start with the movie and just google questions, and because the movie was so popular there's a lot of interesting research that goes into the mechanics of it.
  
• NoClip, a Youtube Channel. NoClip has only been around for a year or a little more, but they're well funded and produced videogame documentaries... Most focus on some new aspect of gaming, but still walk back into the influences of the developers, which aren't cheesy... they're well informed and well made. Particularly, the interview with the developers of CD Projekt and how being under the heel of communism influenced how they built games and ultimately what makes a game like The Witcher so compelling.
  
• SuperBunnyHop YouTube Channel. Guy who does breakdowns of videogames and his informative retrospectives are some of my favorites. He introduced the concept of, "But what do they eat?" to me, which goes into a wider theory about creating realistic or believable game worlds. If you're in any game world, walking around, and there are creatures living there, if the game subtly answers the simple question "But what do they eat?" it makes the game world so much more believable because it's an indication that the developers/designers have really put more thought into the believability of their world. Most great games answer this central question or punt on it in a convincing way.
  
• Joseph Anderson YouTube Channel. His video breakdowns of games are just so good. He's probably most recently gotten notoriety by being critical of Super Mario Odyssey, at least, critical enough to say "the game isn't perfect..." And after playing Odyssey and feeling kinda meh on it after a while, I watched his video and it just felt so apt for me. He also does great analysis of mostly recent games, but most of those are informed by previous games, and goes into the mechanics of balance, pacing, mechanics, and the simple systems that inform most good game.
  
• RetroGame Mechanics Explained YouTubeChannel. These are typically technical breakdowns of how concepts in retrogaming worked, and are usually pretty involved. Not always light watching but informative.
  
• Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube Channel. Breakdowns of videogame theories/concepts, largely.
  
  This is by no way supposed to be an exhaustive list, just a list of stuff that I enjoyed and others might too... Part of these videos/movies/books is video game theory, part is history, part is just sheer entertainment value, but I think anybody who is into videogames enough to talk on 'True Gaming,' would probably enjoy most of those.

Ah! Looks like I saw this post a little late but I'll throw in some additional suggestions as I am year into a PhD on a games related subject area (social dynamics of online games are of particular importance to my work).

I would start off by suggesting Johan Huzinga's Homo Ludens and Roger Cailois' Man, Play and Games which often underpin so much of the game studies field. Although many of the assertions made here are often extremely dated in new technological contexts they do provide an excellent reference point to more pure notions of play (as problematic as the concept may be).

Keeping it specific to your interest of social games and mention of T.L. Taylors Play Between Worlds I would recommend Mark Chen’s Leet Noobs; Celia Pearce’s Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds; the recent Routledge compilation Online Gaming in Context: The Social and Cultural Significance of Online Games and also Mia Consalvo’s Cheating: Gaining Advantages in Videogames. All of these books approach the topic of sociality in and around games in different ways but I would highly recommend them all.

I would also recommend T.L. Taylor’s latest book Raising the Stakes: E-sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming for an important study into the burgeoning cultural practices surrounding e-sports in the West. This is a subject matter that is really close to my own personal interests and current work so I might be a little biased, but much the same as Play Between Worlds, it’s a fantastically informed and important book to the field.

I could go on for a while though.. If you would like any more suggestions or have any similar material to share yourself please don’t hesitate to drop a message!

Not totally sure about requiring a massive budget. You would for the full realization of your dream, but there are many intermediate steps that can be turned into games. Have you played Pandemic? It could be something like that, where there are a ton of choices, but in a very manageable manner. It has a sophisticated yet elegant underlying ruleset that makes it workable.

It all depends on how you want the player to interact with the game. 3rd person action? Implausable. Top-down city sim? Mid-core budget. (Think Tropico). Text-based adventure? Inde game.

As I said, the text-based can evolve. Even if it was simply a choose-your-own-adventure style game, it would be entertaining. Remember the lense of a toy (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965). First, you create a toy. See if the toy is fun. If it is fun, then you can create a game using the toy.

Rules of Play and The Game Design Reader by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman are great reads about the craft and art of play. Here they are attempting to establish a critical vocabulary to handle games as pop culture. If you're serious about taking games as an art, they're very interesting reads. The Game Design Reader is my favorite.

Also, heard some great things about Janet Murray
s Hamlet on the Holodeck. This was written around the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as a time when Adventure Games were king. It's interesting to me essentially because this futurist look at video games as entertainment actually doesn't follow the progression in the last 20 years. That is, until recently with Quantic Dream and Telltale games. That said, I've become even more interested in looking at Mechanics as vocabulary (see the other front page thread about Mechanics that tell a story).

Hope these help.

Excerpt from "Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World" by Jane McGonigal.

The book can be found on Amazon.com here: Reality is Broken

Ms. McGonigal's TED Talk can be found here: Gaming can make a better world


> ".... But beyond a certain playing threshold - for most gamers, it seems to be somewhere around twenty hours a week - they start to wonder if they're missing out on real life.

> Technology journalist Clive Thompson has a name for this phenomenon: gamer regret. And he'll be the first to admit that he suffers from it as much as any other gamer. Thompson recalls checking his personal statistics one day - many games keep track of how many hours you've spent playing - and was shocked to see that he had clocked in thirty-six hours playing a single game in one week - as he described it, "a missing-time experience so vast one would normally require a UFO abduction to achieve it." He found himself vacillating between pride in what he's accomplished in the virtual game environment and wondering if all that hard work had really been worth it.

> As Thompson writes: "The dirty secret of gamers is that we werestle with this dilemma all the time. We're often gripped by ... a sudden, horrifying sense of emptiness when we muse on all the other things we could have done with our game time." He admits: "The elation I feel when I finish a game is always slightly tinged with a worrisome sense of hollowness. Wouldn't I have been better off doing something that was difficult and challenging and productive?"

> This internal conflict plays out in discussion forums all over the Web. The twin questions "How much time do you spend playing games?" and "How much time is too much?" are ubiquitous in the gaming community . . .

> ... What's needed is for games to go beyond flow and fiero, which make us happy in the moment, to provide a more lasting kind of emotional reward. We need games that make us happier even when we're not playing. Only then will we find the right balance between playing our favorite games and making the most of our real lives.

> Fortunately, that's exactly what's happening in the computer and video game market today. Games are increasingly teaching us the four secrets of how to make our own happiness - and they're giving us the power to make it anytime, anywhere."


I'm still working my way through the book, but this seemed like a relevant excerpt to this discussion, esp. as to why this type of discussion is common on this subreddit.

Edit As an aside; the way I maintain interest in games is by playing a lot of online multiplayer stuff, mostly Team Fortress 2. As the situation is always changing and evolving it's easier to stay in the flow, and as I'm constantly running into players better them myself (difficult to overcome obstacles) the fiero stays pretty satisfying too.

It's been on my mind again, so I'm happy to see it here on Truegaming. But there's this video that might help out a bit or at least be a bit entertaininly-interesting.

It might be awhile until we are at the point where we can have entire schools based around this kind of discussion. But hopefully someday. There's plenty of interesting books outthere that have already been suggested here. There's some books based around game design like Raph Koster's "A Theory of Fun". There're YouTubers like aforementioned MrBTongue and Satchbag that fondly talks about games or themes in games and how it affects them and those around them. Then there's /r/truegaming that talks about these things as well, albeit a bit more fanatically.

But sadly I got nothing to fit exactly your category that you want to see, though I'd love to see it myself. Perhaps a start for finding some stories of interesting user interactions in MMOs can start with Eve Online. Check out The Mittani. Although I haven't read it in a long while I do remember its launch when I still flew with Goonswarm/Goonwaffe and the cool pilots and writers of the site. Some great stories and unintentionally interesting insight into the mindset of players interacting in an MMO space.

I just wanted to point out that scathing reviews can truly hurt a game's success AND its resale value, preventing a game from being profitable in the future. I think the best examples all come from Amazon.com, because Amazon actually uses a voting system for reviews.

Metacritic doesn't tell the whole story, and here are some examples.

• Look at Bioshock 2 for PC. The top two reviews are one star; resale value is SHIT. Metacritic: 88.
  
  
• Spore. Top reviews are overwhelmingly 1-star. Metacritic: 84
  
  
• Assassin's Creed 2: Top reviews are all 1-star, huge problems with DRM and phoning home. Resale value of the game is shit. Metacritic: 86.
  
  As a counter-point, why does it matter if some games you hate are incredibly successful? I never liked Modern Warfare, CoD, whatever... first person shooters on consoles aren't for me. But their success doesn't hurt me at all. I say, just be happy that big games like that are winning over the masses to appreciate gaming.

Finally home and having a chance to reply. I pulled five books off of my shelf that I would recommend, but there are doubtless more that you should read.

Raph Koster's Theory of Fun for Game Design

Janet H. Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game

Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media

They wrote a Third Person as well, I just haven't gotten the chance to read it yet. You might be able to find PDF copies online somewhere, but if you have the money, you should try to support the writer's by buying. Show them that people are interested in critical discourse about games.

Next week I think I'm going to order a few new texts (after payday), and I'd be happy to let you know what I think once i have them in hand.

Maybe not a direct study on the medium, but The Ultimate History of Video Games is a very good book with a ton of good content and does address the abstract medium to some degree. It's also just a super interesting book.

I believe OP only has the MGS HD collection so he only has MGS 2, 3 and Peace Walker. OP if you're reading this and have a PS3 i highly recommend the MGS legacy Collection.

It has all the games you could possibly need, including the MSX games but they're not required for a playthrough, but just as UsoInSpace said, best play it in release order: 1->2->3->4 and then peace walker since it's the latest one.

Mesh networks are good, but yeah nothing beats getting a house properly wired.

I live in an old farmhouse, so I definitely get wiring complications. If you can't run it under a carpet/rug/baseboard/etc then the best solution I've found is to use cable channels like this: https://www.amazon.com/One-Cord-Channel-Cable-Concealer-Management/dp/B07D8WVJWF and just stick them to the wall/ceiling...

That said, I currently have a projector that has all the wiring held to the wall/ceiling via 3M hooks, so I'm not exactly the most stylistic when it comes to design.

This question is covered extensively and IMHO accurately in the first half of Jane McGonigal's book "Reality is Broken". In short, games are not simply a 'better' version of books and movies. They are a 'better' version of real life. Comparing games to books/films/music is comparing apples to oranges.

Games are engineered to provide reliable and reasonable reward for the player's effort in ways that real life does not provide, and in ways other mediums do not even attempt to provide. Succeeding at a goal in a game and getting the corresponding reward has absolutely no corollary in books or film (no agency). In real life, we often work hard for no payoff, and that is a negative feedback loop. Games are (pretty much by definition) constructed as as a positive feedback loop where smart choices and hard work lead to success. They feed that deep-seated need in us as human beings. Books and movies can entertain (passively, statically), but they are a completely different animal than games, which respond to the (active, dynamic) hard work of the player and reward them (actively, dynamically) when they have accomplished their goal.

[Edit: Competing in a sport is a game exactly as much as a video game or a game of chess. They are all artificial scenarios where you are presented with challenges and the agency to overcome those challenges.]

Go buy this:

http://www.amazon.com/Metal-Gear-Solid-Collection-Playstation-3/dp/B00CTKHXFO

And get ready for some awesome gaming. Highly advise in playing the order the games were released due era of gaming each iteration came from. This helps you appreciate the games a bit more as they change control wise.

I produce a talk show about gaming culture from a retrospective, analytical focus that covers different subcultures, collections, and play history each episode. (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpnBpHVI5tHdXvlSVlVqO6ggUWCrU4ICQ). There's a lot of reminiscing about game culture before today's current state and I made it to fill the missing hole you're asking for. I definitely want to see more content that treats gaming culture with a broader respect instead of hyper-topical news stories and marketing that will be completely irrelevant within weeks. All my interviews are meant to be evergreen. If you're interested, check out the Heather or Rocco episode.

Outside my own work, the only great Games Literature I've read is Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307474313?keywords=Extra%20Lives&qid=1449403420&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

The Legacy Collection comes out next month (July 9th). I'd wait and get that if I was you.

It includes Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid 2: HD Edition, Metal Gear Solid 3: HD Edition, Metal Gear Solid 4 Trophy Edition and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD Edition.

And you should play all of them in order. Maybe skip the first 2 if you're not big on retro games.

Edit: Just noticed it doesn't come with the first MGS. You can pick that up on PSN like you planned and play it while you're waiting for the Legacy Collection to come out.

Edit 2: Actually, it comes with a voucher for MGS1. So it's up to you if you want to wait or not.

There was an awesome game named Watch Out Willi that was part of a variety pack CD or sorts. It was called Fun Pack 3, and somehow, I was able to find it on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000E49O5O/?coliid=I3RV1X8WRXR1D9&colid=RKZSIHILWZG0&psc=0


I can't really explain the game, so here's a link to some of the game play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNpdionTAL0

Besides the obvious standards, there's quite a bit out there. Reality is Broken is quickly becoming my go-to book for introducing people to talking about video games. If you're less focused specifically on video games, then Hamlet on the Holodeck is basically required reading for any discussions about interactive narrative and Pervasive Games: Theory and Design gives a great introduction to pervasive games, which are definitely different from video games, but there's a fair amount of overlap in good design principles there.

It was the Genesis which allowed that though. If you exclude the Japanese market, where Sega was downright abysmal in the 16-bit generation, the sales numbers of the Genesis vs the SNES were actually fairly competitive. And up until the mid 1990s, Sega even overtook Nintendo in terms of sales figures at certain points.

But one thing to take into consideration is that compared to either Sony or Microsoft of the PS3/360 era, Sega was at a massive disadvantage starting out. During the mid 1980s through early 1990s, it was Nintendo or nothing. Nobody owned a Master System or even Genesis when it was released. Nintendo was becoming synonymous with video games. At one point, according to the book Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation, Nintendo accounted for 10% of Walmart's profits. Think about that for a second. That a company had such power, that they could impose their will on Walmart of where to place their items, and how much to sell their items for.

For Sega to come back and be even nearly as competitive as they were was nothing short of amazing. And they solved it the exact way as you stated the PS3 & 360 of doing, of creating demographics. Nintendo, or even video games in general, were for kids. Sure, arcades in the 70s and early 80s had teenagers in them, but you played your video games, and you moved on with your life. Sega targeted those children becoming teenagers, who grew up with video games, but now kept with video games. I'm part of that generation. I don't know many people, even just half a decade older than me, who play video games, but I know tons of people younger than me who do. That's not to say none do, rather, it's just far more uncommon.

And when I was in high school, more people I knew owned Genesis's than SNES's. It's sort of like the PSX vs N64. In terms of sales figures, the N64 was a massive disappointment and could be considered a failure. If you look at reddit threads though, the N64 is talked about with great reverence though while the PSX has moved into obscurity. In my opinion, a huge part is because things like the Genesis and PSX targeted the older generations who already grew up with video games. It wasn't their first love, thus didn't create many lasting memories or leave a huge impression on people. So, we forget about the true impact it actually did have.

You're asking me for links yet you didn't provide any. Ok though.

>Dark souls 3

>STEAM 59.99 USD

>http://store.steampowered.com/app/374320/

>AMAZON 28.99 USD

>https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Souls-III-PlayStation-4-Standard/dp/B00Z9LUFHS/ref=sr_1_2?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1493075618&sr=1-2&keywords=dark+souls+3

> Dark Souls 2

>STEAM 39.99 USD

>http://store.steampowered.com/app/236430/

>AMAZON 19 used 24 new

>https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00Q03M3HY/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

>Watch Dogs 2

>STEAM 59.99USD

>http://store.steampowered.com/app/447040/

>AMAZON 30 used 50 new

>https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B01GKF7T9S/ref=sr_1_1_olp?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1493075787&sr=1-1&keywords=watch+dogs+2


I can go on and on but I'm bored now and I'm pretty sure no amount of proof will change your mind. I mean you're actually trying to argue something you know nothing about. Since your rebuttal to that was a lol and a downvote, it's pretty obvious you aren't interested in actually learning anything. You're just attempting to stroke your own ego.

>PS; "CAD prices arent diferent" LOL.

As for your cad argument, it's irrelevant. We're talking about generalities here. The gaming market in canada is obviously diddly squat compared to the USA, and since we're talking about generalities here, saying lol lol cad cad cad doesn't actually mean anything at all.

And the price differentials are the same. Prices are obviously different, but the actual savings of console vs PC are the same in the end.

These are leaning towards the design and development side, but I would recommend The Art of Game Design and Designing Virtual Worlds. The former is a reference of patterns and questions for game design (including board and tabletop games), while the latter is focused on the design of MMOs and MUDs but the concepts can apply to other things like your typical shooter multiplayer.

This book has some pretty great insights into the topic. I would recommend reading it to anyone, regardless of how the view gaming.

The article in that link's also by Tom Bissell, whose book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, is an excellent (if sometimes pretentious) book that definitely talks about games the way truegaming thinks about them. At the very least, it'll help us defend our hobby from the General Population.

(It also includes the CliffyB piece as a chapter somewhere in there.)

if your interested in an over-all history of video games The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent is a good read with a focus on arcade and early console games while Tristan Donovan's Replay: The History of Video Games has more of a focus on the development of pc games.

Have you pondered looking into keyboard devices similar to a Nostromo?

Most of them seem to be intended for left hand use, but some, such as this one from Delux seem as they may work well for a WASD cluster that you can use with your right hand.

> Funny, I've never really seen anyone else say that.

Seriously?

Here are all the major outlet's reviews of Touch, since you seem to have been under a virtual rock that month :)

https://np.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5gn6le/oculus_touch_review_megathread/

>The only big difference is face buttons and a joystick instead of a touchpad

No. They are completely different ergonomic shape, the Touch controllers have a comfortable analog grip trigger, and capacitive sensors on all buttons, sticks & triggers for finger detection. They also have triple the battery life.

Read the reviews above, they cover it all.

>the official Deluxe Audio Strap for Vive apparently fixes basically everything

It improves things, but it's $100 on top of the already $800 price. That brings it to $900 (for comparison, you can get a 3 sensor room scale Rift setup for $459).

>since the Vive can ALSO do seated and standing stationary and 360 room scale

And so can the Rift, for nearly half the price!

>it's really not a reason for me to get a less complete package with the Rift

In what specific way is this package, $450 cheaper than the HTC Vive with DAS, "less complete" than the HTC Vive?

I had a little luck on this wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_balance

Namely, there is a reference in this article to this book, which sounds interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Virtual-Worlds-Richard-Bartle/dp/0131018167

I suggest you take a look through that book and check it's list of references for more publications like what you want. To study this stuff seriously, though, you are going to want to be up on your calculus and statistics.

If you're interested in this subject, I'd recommend checking out Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better, a great book detailing many of the ways that video games can convey benefits to people.

You have quite a bit of research to back you up. James Gee out of Wisconsin is one of the more outspoken advocates of what you just said. Learning takes place through video games, even if it's not the kind found on standardized tests. In fact, the sources are endless. On top of that, don't even be so quick to dismiss edutainment. Some 2004 research suggests that those trivial edutainment games still increase learning. It's probably because even though the content is dry, simply being a video game is enough to increase motivation and self-efficacy. Practically any well-designed video game has potential, with some especially interesting work happening right now with Portal.

Extra Lives by Tom Bissell is pretty good. I'd recommend checking it out.

You could always get something like this or a similar symmetrical gaming keypad to use for gaming. Then you could have WASD and all the hotkeys you need where your right hand comfortably sits, and use the mouse on your left.

Well, that's the thing, Spore was never advertised as a cutesy simple game. Sure, it has some cute elements in terms of the art, but the actual game was supposed to be multilayered and complex. That was the entire point and why they wanted to have those stages. Then they didn't at all deliver on that promise.

The result: http://www.amazon.com/Spore-PC-Mac/product-reviews/B000FKBCX4/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

How could it be improved? By, I don't know, making the actual game. Since there basically was no game in the end (the dumbed down thing we got wasn't what anyone expected Spore to be), I can only guess, or come up with my own ideas as to how such a game would function, but that has nothing to do with Spore at that point.

I think this is moving away from your core question, though.

In the context of Spore, I'd say simplicity and Spore's original goals were not compatible. For Spore to even remotely make sense, it would have to be fairly complex to combine all the stages well across the board. It'd need a fairly elaborate equation system to calculate various results, no less complex than the itemization and skill system one sees in many ARPG's.

Maybe this is a little too longform for you, but Masters of Doom is a great book about the rise of id Software.

If /truegaming were a seminar, Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens and Roger Callois' Man, Play and Games would be the first two books on the syllabus, though they well predate modern video games.

She might be interested in this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Video-Games-Pac-Man/dp/159962110X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381262117&sr=8-1&keywords=video+games+are+art

Or even this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1381262117&sr=8-6&keywords=video+games+are+art

Possibly even this:

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449363210/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381262296&sr=1-4&keywords=games+are+fun

I am a 65F gamer - let her know she's missing out if she ignores video games. Not only fun but uses the mind in ways older people tend to use rarely or stop using at times. The challenge of video games keeps the brain firing on all circuits. Puzzles, quests, challenge, etc., all combine to not only entertain but also to teach and to broaden thinking in general :)

Yep they're all there including Metal Gear 1 and 2 from the SNES