Gaming has been a topic of fascination for many years, both for the media and the public. Loved by those involved in it, questioned by people outside of it, it is a subculture that has decades of detailed history and many stories to tell. Nowadays, it is ingrained as a part of our modern pop culture, but as with every industry, it had to start off somewhere. High Score, one of Netflix’s latest documentaries, glosses over certain events which helped develop the industry that we are familiar with today, giving the viewer a taste of gaming’s past.
High Score focuses on the Golden Age of video games, a period ranging from the last years of the seventies to the nineties. There are six episodes which have a runtime from forty to forty-five minutes each, with each episode following a different sub-genre of gaming, whether it be focused on the development of RPG games or the craze of fighting games and the rise of e-sport events.
The documentary is a very mixed bag. The interviews are fascinating self-contained stories which add to the grandeur gaming industry as a whole. Watching the interviews with the developers who worked on different pivotal projects throughout the years makes for a fascinating retrospect and these moments are where the show is at its strongest. Personally, the story about how Nintendo’s character Kirby was a way of thanking a lawyer who won a vital case on their behalf was pretty cool. Also, introducing the series talking about video games in a wonderful light then changing the topic to E.T. for the Atari, one of the gaming industry’s biggest disasters, is a pretty funny way to hook viewers into the series.
However, the narration by Charles Martinet can come off as rather cheesy at times, though this is more to do with the script he was working with rather than a reflection of his ability. Even the actual filming of the episodes is not exempt from the cheese at times – like Tomohiro Nishikado talking about how H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds was a huge inspiration for his game Space Invaders while we’re treated to visuals of robots invading a city. It just comes off as a bit on the nose and feels a bit disconnected from the topic being discussed.
It also diverts away from the development side of things, and occasionally focuses on how the public received these games. Mostly, this comes in the form of gaming tournaments and talking about how the competitors beat them. This can also feel a little bit rinse-and-repeat at times, but is an interesting way of fleshing out the episodes and painting a picture of what the times were like back then for gamers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4jopG1wX88
Another one of the weaker aspects of High Score is episode five, which focuses on the development of games like Mortal Kombat and the political debate of violent video games. Anyone who is familiar with the gaming industry knows that this has been a widely debated topic for years, and the way this episode introduces this topic – “warning: this episode talks about violent video games” is a very unusual line to open up an episode on considering the demographic of the documentary. It’s a small aspect to focus on, but it just didn’t really fit with the tone.
The rest of the episode is great – Akira Nishitani seems charismatic and humorous when talking about Street Fighter 2, and Jim Riley explaining that Night Trap being torn apart in Congress was the best publicity the game ever had was a particular highlight – but the narration acts as a big contrast to this, with the cheesy voice-over counteracting otherwise serious discussion of politics and law.
The episodes also only really scratch the surface of the topics they want to talk about. None of the episodes take that deep a dive into a particular area, and by the time the viewer gets invested in a particular topic, things quickly jump back to the other topic of discussion. It can make it feel a bit unfocused and the episodes could have done well to have extra running time to develop certain conversation points.
However, with all that being said, High Score should be saluted for what it tries to do. There have been documentaries about video games and what they entail, like The King of Kong. However, they’ve always been a very niche topic in comparison to other television documentaries. With Netflix being one of the most popular video streaming platforms, High Score builds upon the scale of video game documentaries. It absolutely has its flaws and could have been a lot better if some more time went into developing it, especially if the episodes dove deeper into their points of interest.
But what the audience gets isn’t a bad viewing experience by any stretch of the imagination. The visuals are bright and popping, even if they can come off as cheesy at points. The narration has the same issue as well, but when the episode focuses on the developers talking about something that they were so passionate about, the show really shines through.
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