Back in February, TidalWave Productions quietly dropped Orbit: Power Up — The History of Video Games, a 22-page biography comic that runs from Ralph Baer soldering the Brown Box in his basement to Halo reshaping what a launch title could be. At the time it read like a nice little primer. Five months later, it reads like it knew something we didn’t
Because 2026 turned into an absurd year for gaming anniversaries. Zelda, Metroid, Dragon Quest, Kid Icarus,andCastlevaniaall hit 40. Sonic the Hedgehog hit 35. Pokémon and Persona hit 30. The GameCube generation — Animal Crossing, Luigi’s Mansion, Pikmin — is turning 25. If you’ve spent any part of this year doom-scrolling nostalgia threads, Orbit: Power Up was basically the trailer for the year gaming just had
Writer Michael Frizell and artist Roe Mêsquita aren’t reinventing the biography-comic format here — TidalWave’s Orbit line has always worked in efficient, cinematic strokes rather than exhaustive detail. What they’re doing is picking the right beats: Baer’s basement experiments, Tetris slipping out from behind the Iron Curtain, Final FantasyandTomb Raider proving games could carry emotional weight, Halo proving they could carry a console. It’s a highlight reel, not a textbook, and it knows it.
Is it essential reading? Not if you already own three shelves of gaming history books. But as a fast, well-paced primer to hand someone who wants the shape of the story without the homework — or as a surprisingly well-timed artifact of a year that turned out to be gaming’s biggest group birthday party — it earns its spot
Orbit: Power Up — The History of Video Games is available digitally and in print
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