The history of electronic games, as relatively short as it may be, can already be divided into several distinct personalities. To the game developer, this body of history represents a list of successes and failures compounded by the belief that if only he or she would have had as much polygonal power in 1987 as exists today, the failures would be fewer. To the game-consuming public, the history is a dull lesson that drops off just short of the second-to-last game system actually owned. The future, to game players, is possibly more important than the past. To the collector, the electronic games history is a bible to be revered and a reference to be digested and divulged at classic game conventions. To the academic, this history is a disorganized, infantile beast--full of discrepancies and confusion--that's waiting to be collected, sorted, observed, tamed, and pushed into the realm of true innovation.