Watch Video Games: The Movie For Free

Thanks for the memories!

Absolutely brilliant

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Video Games: The Movie(2014) Starring: Sean Austin, Wil Wheaton, Zach Braff, Alison Haislip, Donald Faison, Chloe Dykstra, Chris Hardwick, Clare Grant, Nolan Bushnell, Jim Brown Directed By:Jeremy Snead Review To watch a documentary you have to love or enjoy the topic. I am a gamer I love playing video games, I'm more for movies yes but I do enjoy a good game every once in a while. I own an XBOX 360 soon to be XBOX ONE and a Nintendo WII. But for some reason I did not find this documentary all that enjoyable. Narrated by Sean Astin and featuring in-depth interviews with the godfathers who started it all, the icons of game design, and the geek gurus who are leading us into the future, "Video Games: The Movie" is a celebration of gaming from Atari to Xbox and an eye- opening look at what lies ahead. The documentary should have been something special but it comes as an excuse to be an informative book of something you could have read online about the history about virtual technology and video games. I wasn't too big on the documentary for this, but it is great to see the images of the nostalgic games of the past and the great ones of the present. I did enjoy however the the talks about gaming of the future and where it's going, innovative talk like that always is something I like to hear. I don't review a lot of documentaries so I can't necessarily say if all the elements of a good documentary is present, but I give Video Games: The Movie a two out of five.

On the one hand, I love the film's concepts fine. Video games are an incredible medium (one that outshines even cinema) with such fascinating history behind them, and the evolution of the gaming business and community on screen is quite wonderful. It says something about what a great artform it is that it brings so many people from different walks of life together, and even goes so far as to create lasting friendships and marriages. We may not realize, but sometimes, those seemingly insignificant connections we have create all the difference in the world. However, that's the extant of the film's great qualities, and the overall film is not as interesting, or too engaging to the uninitiated. The film is built firmly on nostalgia and fond recognizability, especially during frequent and awkward montages, and something like that can't sustain an entire film. It wants to show us a comprehensive history of video gaming culture, but suffers from disjointed time jumps, and the fact that the film constantly throws interesting facts at us, yet seldom does it ever expand on them. It practically rushes through the crash of 1983 in maybe three minutes, and glosses over evolutions like the early rise of third-party developers and the indie gaming scene (Although, Indie Game: The Movie provides a much more expansive detailing of that very subject). There's so much potential in this film that it sadly never realizes. I realize there has to be a point where you have to make tough choices of what to show, but it really does just fall into an "Aren't video games great" showcase. If you're looking for a nostalgic kickback, you should enjoy yourself fine, but if you want a much more comprehensive rundown of video gaming history, you'd be better suited reading various books, or watching Machinima's "All Your History Are Belong To Us" series of YouTube videos.

If you knew nothing about video games before watching this, particularly the history of gaming, you'd arguably come out the end of this "movie" knowing even less.The film goes into stuff like the politics around gaming, the social aspects, how stories now make up a big part of the gaming experience... basically all stuff you already knew because it was completely obvious, or didn't want to know, because it's too boring.There is no in-depth information on any of the systems at all. It started out withe a brief history of the 2600 but pretty much every other machine is ignored, as are the games. The Sega Genesis was mentioned once and every one of their other consoles were completely left out. Hell, even Sonic the Hedgehog was completely absent!I was expecting an in depth history of gaming, not a bunch of AAA execs sitting around talking about how the industry has changed and celebrities talking about what gaming means to them.On top of that, when games were mentioned, they never showed the bloody things and the endless montages were totally useless, as again, you didn't know what games you were looking at bar ones you're already familiar with.It had promise. They had a really cool 3D time line... if only they'd used it better and gone in depth into the different systems, key games, designers.There was no mention of the "console wars". As I mentioned earlier, Sega was completely left out of the film, as were Commodore, in fact, home computers were completely ignored, bar PC gamers with a few nods to Doom and WoW. How can they completely leave out the era of bedroom coders? Where was the info on how Atari died with the Jaguar? Where were the early CD-based consoles? WHERE WERE THE GAMES?!?!?!I am a gamer and a game developer and I feel completely let down by this "documentary".

I don't consider myself a gamer. Of course I've played video games. Growing up, my siblings and I would play on our Nintendo 64, Play Station 2, and Game Boy Advance. I still play video games with my friends, but not consistently. I don't have the knowledge that some of my friends do about video games. I was interested in watching this film though, because I knew little about the video game industry and was curious. Jeremy Snead's "Video Games: The Movie" is a documentary about video games that is broken up into 4 clear sections: history, culture, creation, and future. Throughout these 4 sections, Sean Astin narrates and a collection of video gamers and creators tell us about video games, what they mean, how we use them, where they were, where they're going, and why so many people love them.The first half an hour or so bursts with energy and gives us an overview of the history of video games. The opening credit sequence is fun and is a tribute to video games. Although it feels rushed, has missing parts, and can be a little hard to keep up with, it keeps you engaged. The rest of the film jumps around and fills in the blanks throughout the other sections. I'm not sure why Snead did this. Why not give a complete telling of the history of video games from start to finish? "Video Games: The Movie" feels kind of broken up when it could have been more of a holistic documentary. It could have been stronger in storytelling, but it still works.Sean Astin has fun being a narrator and the people being interviewed have a deep passion for video games. Snead does a great job of capturing the love of video games and what they mean to our society. You may not always get the small details of who built what and why, but you get the essence of video games and why they have been so successful and ingrained in our culture. Snead's "Video Games: The Movie" has its speed bumps and may not capture all the gritty details about the video game world, but it's a good overview of video game history and culture that captures the love people have for video games. Going into this knowing little about the video game world, I feel like I know much more about them now. I want to go out and play some video games now.