Book excerpt: THE CON50LE is a comprehensive yet conversational account of 50 years of home video gaming history, leaving no rarely sighted system unturned and providing a chronological account of the evolution of the biggest entertainment medium in the world. From the earliest consoles of the 1970s to the cutting-edge machines of the here and now, a line is drawn from one man’s eureka moment to the multi-billion-dollar global industry of today. All the well-known names and massive-selling consoles are here: the Nintendo Entertainment System, the SEGA Mega Drive, the Atari 2600, the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 2. But there’s plenty of room for hardware that many a gamer won’t have heard of before, from Japan-only releases and home computer conversions to ill-advised experiments with VHS and all manner of micro-console magic. Learn about the creators and their inspirations, the games that made the biggest consoles’ eternal reputations, and the failures and flops along the way. Even the consoles that came and went without notable commercial success left a mark, an imprint, on this compelling history – and THE CON50LE unravels it, explains it, one fascinating machine at a time.