Leonard Herman – Critics

Leonard Herman wrote Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames in 1994, the first serious historical account of the video game industry, establishing games history as a scholarly discipline.

Leonard Herman self-published Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Home Videogames in 1994 through his own Rolenta Press imprint, producing the first book-length historical account of the American home video game industry from its Pong-era origins through the NES recovery from the 1983 crash. The book was written without institutional support or academic affiliation, making it a genuine act of independent historical preservation at a moment when the industry's early history was at risk of being lost as participants moved on or primary sources disappeared. Herman drew on his own game collection, industry contacts, and printed sources to document companies, platforms, and figures that had been forgotten within a decade of their peak relevance. The book has been revised and expanded through multiple editions, each incorporating newly available sources, and remains the foundational text for American video game historians.

Notable Work:

Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Home Videogames (1994, Rolenta Press) — first comprehensive history of the American home game industry
Revised and expanded editions of Phoenix (1997, 2001) incorporating new primary sources and extending coverage through the 16-bit era
Contributions to academic game history symposia and publications throughout the 2000s
ABC of Video Games (2012) — a condensed entry-level game history for younger readers

Key Facts:

Phoenix was self-published when no commercial publisher would consider a history of an industry they considered ephemeral
The book's publication in 1994 coincided with the industry's emergence as a billion-dollar mainstream business — which validated Herman's historical instincts
Herman's methodology — primary source collection, interview-based research, physical artefact preservation — anticipated academic video game studies by a decade
Phoenix is cited in the bibliographies of virtually every subsequent English-language video game history book