NOTE TO EDITOR:          

This release has been routed to you courtesy of WWW.ICWhen.com. To order your copy of “The First Quarter: A 25-year History of Video Games”, please visit: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970475500/icwhencom.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 (cover and author images upon request)

 NEW BOOK REVEALS INSIDERS LOOK INTO THE

 HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES

    NOVEMBER 14-MSNBC and Access Magazine video game columnist Steven L. Kent

announced today the release of "The First Quarter: A 25-year History of Video

Games", his long-awaited book featuring stories about the birth, near death,

and metamorphosis of the video game industry.

    Kent, who is has written about video games for such divers publications

as American Heritage and The Japan Times, invested over seven years to

interview industry executives and game designers for this 476-page book.

    "The way I have constructed this book, it is almost half quotes and half

narrative," says Kent.  "Anybody can write a history of video games, and it

may be accurate or it may be full of holes.  My goal was to let readers learn

this history through the eyes of the people who lived it."

    Kent conducted over 500 interviews with such people as Steven "Slug"

Russell, designer of the first interactive computer game; Ralph Baer,

designer of the Magnavox Odyssey; Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck

E. Cheese; Al Alcorn, Atari's first engineer and builder of Pong; Ed Logg,

creator of Asteroids, Centipede, and Gauntlet; Tom Kalinske, former chairman

of Sega of America; and Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts and 3DO.

    Granted unprecedented access throughout the industry, Kent logged more

than 20 hours of interviews with Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa, chairman

and president of Nintendo of America.  Ray Kassar, the chairman of Atari

during its 1982 collapse, granted Kent his first interview since leaving

Atari in 1983, and Namco chairman Masaya Nakamura met with Kent twice.

    Having worked as a mediating voice with Senator Joseph Lieberman on his

annual Video Game Report Card, Kent was able to conduct candid interviews

with both Lieberman and Senator Sam Brownback about their hearings on video 

game violence.

     The result of all of these interviews is a high-speed, sprawling study

of how video games emerged from unimportant novelty entertainment status to

become one of the driving forces shaping the information age.  With so many

first-hand perspectives, "The First Quarter" sometimes becomes a forum for

multiple designers and executives giving conflicting memories of how events

occurred.  Nolan Bushnell, Al Alcorn, Steve Wozniac, and Masaya Nakamura, for

instance, all had different stories  about the history of Breakout, and all

four versions are included in the book.

    "The First Quarter" also includes in-depth studies of the five most

influential court cases in the history of video games, complete with excerpts

from court documents and interviews with lawyers.

    "Toward the end of the project, my biggest problem was trying to decide

what stories to leave out.  I had great stories about games like Aladdin,

Crash Bandicoot, and Yoshi's Island; but I needed to draw the line.  The book

was getting too big.  Two days after I handed the book in for layout,

Nintendo announced that its new console would be named Gamecube, not Dolphin,

and drawing that line became a really painful task."

    Kent's book, which will be available exclusively through Amazon.com and

Select gaming outlets, retails for $21.95.

    For more information, contact Steven Kent at stevenkent@... .

     The address for links to the Amazon.com page featuring the book is:

 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970475500/o/qid=969303972/sr=8-2/ref

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