Well, there's no doubt that the whole bonus chapter thing was a compromise. It's not like we asked for it, that's for sure. I think the book would have been better with the extra chapters, but it may also have been more expensive and simply not feasible at the time. It's hard to say. In a way, the chapters that are "bonus" have extra appeal, because they are generating splashes long after the book has receded. That's why I kind of like that some of the better ones are bonus--makes you think, heck, if that's a bonus chapter, the ones in the book must be fantastic!

My main thought on Pong and Spacewar being bonus chapters was mostly that they'd been to death by almost every other book, whereas we have chapters that I doubt you'll see anywhere else. I also see the influence of these games more as a spur to the industry in general rather than anything great about their actual gameplay. It's not like movie buffs today care about the earliest experiments with film or dime-operated peep shows. I think we even saw that in the history itself; as soon as you had games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man, hardly anyone cared about Pong anymore, and who would rather play Spacewar! than something like Defender or Elite?

In any case, nothing was easy and the whole affair bordered on fiasco, but in reality there was no perfect solution. At least this way, the chapters are published, freely available, and we did get paid for them! :)