Chapter Guide

Twelve chapters. Every game playable. Every story true. Read in order or jump to any chapter.

The Traitorous Eight
Chapter Zero  ·  1947 – 1976
The Valley Before the Valley
The transistor. Eight engineers. A garage. A catalog. The origin story that makes everything else make sense.
Andy Capp's Tavern
Chapter 1  ·  1972
Pong
The coin box that jammed. The roller skating rink factory. The training exercise that became an industry.
Jobs and Wozniak
Chapter 2  ·  1976
Breakout
Jobs kept $5,000. He told Wozniak the bonus was $700. Wozniak found out years later. By then, they had already built Apple.
Tokyo arcade 1978
Chapter 3  ·  1978
Space Invaders
One man built his own computer. Japan ran out of 100-yen coins. The world had never seen anything like it.
McDonald's on the Moon
Chapter 4  ·  1979
Lunar Lander
Real physics. Real gravity. The first vector game. McDonald's on the Moon.
Asteroids vector screen
Chapter 5  ·  1979
Asteroids
Five buttons. No joystick. A 15-year-old played it for 58 hours and set a record that stood for 28 years.
Galaxian formation breaking
Chapter 6  ·  1979
Galaxian
The first true RGB color sprites. The hardware that shaped Nintendo. The missing link between Space Invaders and Galaga.
Pac-Man arcade crossover
Chapter 7  ·  1980
Pac-Man
He was staring at a pizza with one slice missing. He saw a mouth. The most recognized image in the history of entertainment.
Dona Bailey at Atari
Chapter 8  ·  1980
Centipede
She was the only woman in the room. The game on her screen would become one of the best-selling arcade games of all time.
Galaga dual fighter discovery
Chapter 9  ·  1981
Galaga
Namco didn't design the dual fighter strategy. Players found it. Let the beam take you. Come back with double firepower.
Pajitnov in Moscow 1984
Chapter 10  ·  1984
Tetris
A Soviet computer. A smuggled floppy disk. The Cold War thawed one deal at a time.
Macintosh introduction 1984
Special Chapter  ·  1976 – 1984
Pirates of Silicon Valley
The Xerox PARC visit. The IBM deal. The Macintosh introduction. The story behind the story — told with the clarity that distance allows.
11
2026
Chapter 11  ·  2026  ·  Our Chapter
The Library
Where everything comes full circle. A Windows 10 tower. A human and an AI. 350 miles from Sunnyvale. The loop closes.
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