The book opens with various stories of how people have come to play video games and what draws them to the games, and some effects that it has on them. Next comes a look at the history of video games and how they are built, from early university computers, to arcade games. In the third section the author gives an example of how knowing the right moves and learning how to play can make players last a lot longer and get higher scores, this section then goes on to each of the 26 games the book covers. The games section has quotes from players and then tells how they discovered certain patterns, then what things a player should look for, addressing the reader as well as telling the story of other players describing the scenes in the game. Each game has at least one illustration of the games playing area. The last section of the book looks at home video games and the future of arcade games, (at that time) with such things as video disks, 3D television, and more speech in games.