I came across a book that was a history of early electronic handheld games yesterday. Most the games were from the mid 70's to early 80's, which was the heyday of my game playing days. Some of the classics were there, Mattel's Electronic Football, among others. Most were Japanese models that never made it to the States. The amount of games that were of Japanese origin were staggering and really places the context of Japan being the center of game design during this time period. For those of you interested in the history of the home console, check out ClassicGaming.com's Museum.

Also to go with Suzanne's posting on Tony Hawk and video game realism, I was up until 2 am with my brother-in-law playing the new Tony Hawk 3 for PS2. The game does not have a storyline per se, but it is more than just skating around and doing ollies. I am seeing a lot more games that have puzzle-like features to them. In Tony Hawk 3 you start by only having one level you can skate and must complete most of level's task before you can unlock the next level. The next level must be completed to open the one after that and so forth. The disadvantage to this design is that since many of the tasks are very challenging, hence it can take several hours to complete a level. If you have only a limited time in which to play, you can only sample a small segment of the game unless you have access to cheat codes that unlock the game.