High Score (TV series)

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High Score
Documentary
Created byFrance Costrel
Directed by
  • William Acks, Sam LaCroix, France Costrel, Melissa Wood
Narrated byCharles Martinet
Theme music composerPower Glove[1]
Country of originUnited States
No. of seasons1
No. of episodes6
Production
Executive producers
  • William Acks
  • Sam LaCroix
  • France Costrel
  • Melissa Wood
  • Courtney Coupe
Running time37-47 minutes
Production companyGreat Big Story
Original release
NetworkNetflix
ReleaseAugust 19, 2020 (2020-08-19)

High Score

docuseries created by France Costrel. It features stories and interviews with the developers and creators of early video games
. The series first premiered on August 19, 2020.

Episodes

High Score features interviews and segments around the creation and development of video games in the 1980s and 1990s.[3] These are intermixed with animated segments rendered in a pixel art-style similar to video games of this period.[4] The show's intro sequence is also animated in the pixel style and includes numerous references to past video games, with its theme song by the Australian band Power Glove.[5] The series is narrated by Charles Martinet, who is the voice actor for Mario.[3]

No.TitleDirected byOriginal air date
1"Boom & Bust"William Acks
France Costrel
Sam Lacroix		August 19, 2020 (2020-08-19)
Covers
game cartridge for the Fairchild Channel F; and Howard Scott Warshaw, the developer of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
.
2"Comeback Kid"William Acks
France Costrel
Sam Lacroix		August 19, 2020 (2020-08-19)
Covers the introduction of
Nintendo of America marketing director that helped to market the NES and Nintendo Power; Jeff Hansen, the winner of the Nintendo World Championship; Shaun Bloom, one of the Game Play Counselors; and John Kirby, the lawyer who represented Nintendo in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.
The episode is dedicated to Kirby who had died in 2019.
3"Role Players"William Acks
France Costrel
Sam Lacroix		August 19, 2020 (2020-08-19)
Covers the creation of
console RPGs like the Final Fantasy series. Featured interviews include Roberta and Ken Williams, creators of Mystery House; Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series; Yoshitaka Amano, artist for Final Fantasy; and Ryan Best, the developer of the LGBT-themed RPG GayBlade
.
4"This is War"William Acks
France Costrel
Sam Lacroix		August 19, 2020 (2020-08-19)
Covers the "
console wars" of Sega's aggressive push to outsell Nintendo in the United States via the Sega Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog and John Madden Football. Featured interviews include Tom Kalinske, CEO of Sega of America; Hirokazu Yasuhara, gameplay designer of Sonic; Naoto Ohshima, character artist for Sonic; Chris Tang, winner of the 1994 Sega World Championships; Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts; Joe Ybarra, producer of John Madden Football; and Gordon Bellamy, developer for the Madden NFL
series to help introduce black athletes into the John Madden Football series.
5"Fight!"William Acks
France Costrel
Sam Lacroix		August 19, 2020 (2020-08-19)
Covers the creation of
Street Fighter II Turbo
Championship in Japan, and current owner of Nakano Sagat eSports team; and Jim Riley, creator of Night Trap.
6"Level Up"William Acks
France Costrel
Sam Lacroix		August 19, 2020 (2020-08-19)
Covers the transition from
Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard, who helped to create Star Fox; and a final retrospective by Nolan Bushnell on the development of Pong from Spacewar!

Production

Creator France Costrel said that she was inspired to create the documentary as, growing up in France but having American friends, "[video games] are a universal language".[5] She had worked as the showrunner for "8-Bit Legacy", a video game documentary for Great Big Story, but recognized it only covered a portion of the history of the industry. She developed a pitch for Netflix, getting help from her colleagues from the show Dark Net and Melissa Wood.[6] Costrel had wanted to shift focus away from the games themselves as most video game documentaries, and instead to the developers behind the games and players to give insights into the creativity on video game development.[6] Costrel decided not to try to tell a full history of video games but limit it to overarching and cohesive stories of certain periods in the industry.[6] Costrel and Wood said it made sense to start at the onset of arcade and console games to bookend one side of their story, and opted to end with the transition into 3D computer graphics as it "make a natural ending, a new kind of stepping stone in the history of gaming".[7]

In researching their stories, Costrel said that most of the video game companies were open to working with them to showcase the case, while some of the creators had left the industry and were also ready to share their stories.[7] While Costrel estimated they had material for about twenty hours of content they had to whittle this to the six episodes and focused more on those stories that would be of interest across all types of game players, not just hardcore gamers.[7]

One of the games featured in the series was GayBlade by Ryan Best who had created it in the 1990s. As explained in the show, while moving from Hawaii to California, all his own copies of the game were lost, and could not find any other copies elsewhere, which he had explained to the producers during production. The producers had researched online for the game to find any copies to use for the show; near the end of post-production, they had been contacted by the Schwules Museum in Berlin, who was able to supply them with a copy of the game who then returned the copy to Best.[8] The game was added to the Internet Archive and playable there via emulation after its discovery.[9]

Costrel serves as director along with William Acks, Sam LaCroix, and Melissa Wood; all four along with Courtney Coupe also are the show's executive producers.[4]

Reception

The series was well received by journalists as a well-put-together overview of the early video game period.

Slash Film called the series "one of the most sleek and satisfying historical accounts of the early decades of video games, even if it’s not a definitive, comprehensive account of the ups and downs of the industry as a whole."[4] The Hollywood Reporter said "It's far from Netflix's best or most substantive doc — it's often rather superficial and full of gaping holes — but in terms of sheer bingeing ease, with six episodes, none running over 47 minutes, High Score is tough to top. It's light and fun and full of entertaining trivia, with a willingness to go just far enough off the beaten path that some of it will even be new for its core demo."[10]

Ars Technica compared the series favorably in light of its own series of "War Stories" documentaries as a solid look at this era of video games, but noted that High Score has some notable omissions, such as Tetris.[11]

crunch time in the video gaming industry.[13] The Verge praised the series for presenting underrepresented figures within video games like Heineman, Lawson, and Best but argued that the show presented them as those doing "boundary-pushing work", and failed to show the more realistic conditions of the video game industry of that timeframe and which remained a problem in current state of the video game industry.[14]

Rotten Tomatoes gives the series a 76% aggregate rating from 25 critics.[15]

Notes

  1. ^ GDLK in Brazilian and other similar markets[2]

References

  1. ^ Bennett, Tara (August 21, 2020). "NETFLIX'S DOCUSERIES, HIGH SCORE, LEVELS UP THE UNKNOWN HEROES BEHIND OUR FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES". Syfy. Archived from the original on September 23, 2021. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
  2. ^ "GDLK". Netflix. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  3. ^ a b c Petite, Steven (August 12, 2020). "High Score Review - The Most Impressive Video Game Documentary Yet". GameSpot. Archived from the original on September 11, 2020. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
  4. ^
    Slashfilm. Archived
    from the original on September 11, 2020. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
  5. ^ a b Griffin, David (August 5, 2020). "Netflix's High Score: Exclusive Opening Credits Reveal for Video Game Documentary". IGN. Archived from the original on September 11, 2020. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
  6. ^ a b c Berkowitz, Joe (August 19, 2020). "Netflix's High Score is as immersive and engaging as the video games that inspired it". Fast Company. Archived from the original on September 11, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  7. ^
    Venture Beat. Archived
    from the original on September 11, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  8. ^ Francisco, Eric (August 19, 2020). "Netflix's High Score Reveals the Forgotten Heroes of Video Games". Inverse. Archived from the original on September 11, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  9. ^ Bailey, Dustin (August 25, 2020). "GayBlade, the lost RPG from Netflix's High Score, is now downloadable on Archive.org". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on August 27, 2020. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  10. ^ Fienberg, Daniel (August 19, 2020). "High Score: TV Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on September 11, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  11. ^ Machkovech, Sam (August 12, 2020). "High Score review: Netflix's story of gaming's "golden age" is honestly solid". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on August 12, 2020. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
  12. ^ Barsanti, Sam (August 12, 2020). "Netflix's High Score can't settle on which history of video games it wants to tell". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on September 11, 2020. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
  13. ^ Frisch, Benjamin (August 18, 2020). "Netflix's New Doc Is Like The Last Dance for Gamers". Slate. Archived from the original on August 20, 2020. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  14. ^ Rivera, Joshua (August 25, 2020). "Netflix's High Score proves we need a better history of video games". The Verge. Archived from the original on August 25, 2020. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  15. ^ "High Score". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved December 14, 2021.

External links

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