Being born in 1980, I was a kid at the tail end of the golden age of gaming. Santa brought my brother and I a NES console one year, and a Game Boy the next. While I never really spent much time playing games in arcades, I did play console versions of Donkey Kong and indeed Pacman.

So I indulged in a bout of extreme nostalgia, watching documentaries about classic arcade gaming and the original Mega Games like Tetris.

1. Chasing Ghosts

This tells the tale of Twin Galaxies Arcade, who originated a scoreboard for players to submit their high scores of video games to. We also meet Billy Mitchell, the first person to complete a perfect game of Pacman. Watch it for free here.

2. The King of Kong

Another documentary starring Billy Mitchell, but this time he has a slightly villainous role. It sees a regular family man try to play a perfect game of Donkey Kong, and beat Billy's record.

Watch it free on YouTube.

3. Man vs Snake.

You'll end up really rooting for the guy in this documentary as he tries to reach the high score on an arcade game called Nibbler. Again Twin Galaxies and Billy Mitchell make appearances.

I saw this a while back on Netflix, but there's a free copy here.

4. Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters

Arguably the world's most played game, Tetris is the star of this documentary. It explores the highest score, the legendary kill screen of level 30, and gathers the best players for a tournament of kings.

Watch it free here.

5. Get Lamp: A Text Adventure Documentary

Now this is really old school. I remember playing text adventure games on the BBC computers in primary school. This documentary explores the history of the games and their creators.

Catch it here.

6. Atari: Game Over

There is an urban legend about Atari and the worst game ever made. This documentary tells that story. Atari rushed production of an ET game, to coincide with Christmas. The game was too difficult, boring and absolutely no fun to play. This led to the demise of Atari and the rumour of a huge landfill somewhere in the States where they buried millions of copies of unsold ET games. The film makers try to find the site, while explaining just what went wrong for Atari.

Watch on Netflix, or for free here.

7. Nintendo Quest

Ending on a happier note, Nintendo Quest sees two best friends try to buy all 678 NES games within 30 days, with no online purchases. The documentary also delves into the history of Nintendo and is a must watch for nostalgic folks of my generation.

Watch for free on YouTube.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I tweet a lot about what I'm watching. My favourite genres of tv shows are documentaries, or reality tv, so two absolute opposites. I love long, detailed, complicated documentaries, which I'll follow up with 45 minutes of watching Megan McKenna stick her bottom lip out like a spoilt child (I flipping love Megan McKenna).

I currently have Netflix again for a spell, as they are showing the new ninth season of 'RuPaul's Drag Race', airing the new episodes on Saturday mornings (it airs on Friday nights in the US), so I've rewatched 'Making a Murderer' and some other documentaries on there. I may well do a post about the best documentaries they have to offer, but my list today has films from them, some I've found hosted free online, and some you have to buy or rent from Amazon to catch.

I can't recall how I stumbled upon the 'failed movie making' genre, but I gathered a nice little selection of documentaries showcasing what can go wrong in Hollywood, from budget spirals to actor meltdowns to attacks of extreme narcissism which demolishes a fledgling career before it gets started.

1. 'The Death of Superman Lives. What Happened?'

This documentary is just so much fun. Tall tales that will make you laugh from Kevin Smith and Tim Burton about their failed superhero movie project. I don't like superhero movies, but loved every minute of this documentary.

Free in all it's glory here.

2. 'Lost in La Mancha.'

Whilst liking 'Brazil', I'm not a huge Terry Gilliam fan otherwise, but I enjoyed this look into his failings to bring 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote' to the screen. He and Johnny Depp battle weather, fighter jets & the lead not being able to sit down on a horse, amongst other set backs.

Watch it on YouTube

3. 'The Sweat Box.'

This is a really hard to find, never actually released documentary, that legend says Disney tried to get banned. After the success of 'The Lion King', Disney started to put together a feature length cartoon set in Peru, with a prince and the pauper style storyline. Sting was brought on board to do the music, and so his wife picked up and camera and started documenting the process in the footage we see as the film 'The Sweat Box'.

The movie begins as being called 'The Kingdom of the Sun', but 31 minutes in you start to see why Disney never wanted this behind the scenes film to see the light of day. Bosses screen the work so far and basically hate 90% of it. Characters, storylines and songs are scrapped. The chief writer looks like he's going to cry around 40 minutes.

The film ends up being what was released as 'The Emperor's New Groove', you know, the Disney film that's no-one's favourite.

Watch it for free here.

4. 'Lost Soul. The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr Moreau.'

In the late 90s, young, hip, indie director Richard Stanley wrote a script and was given the reigns of Dr Moreau to be his first big break in Hollywood. The concept art and ideas that are talked about in the first 20 minutes of this documentary about how it all went wrong, look really cool, and I would have loved to see the finished movie, had Stanley taken it that far.

Unfortunately things unravel as Stanley doesn't have the authority to stand up to bully lead actor Val Kilmer, and he breaks under the pressure of the studio's demands & the bad luck of poor weather on location.

Already a train wreck (but such a fun one to watch), the real fun starts when Marlon Brando arrives on set about two thirds into the documentary, and begins to mess with the stand in director by changing the script and suggesting ideas. I've never actually seen the finished 'Island of Dr. Moreau' that was released, but it's worth going into this documentary knowing the movie that was made has been named one of the worst films ever seen on screen.

Catch it on Netflix.

5. 'Overnight.'

'Overnight' is pure schadenfreude from beginning to end. Immensely unlikeable oik Troy Duffy is an ordinary guy, who happens to bump into movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who likes his Irish gangster script 'The Boondock Saints'. Harvey buys the script, bringing Duffy on to direct, but also says he will sign his band for albums, and buy a bar for he & Duffy to split and run. Troy's band is made up of his long suffering friends, and brother.

Troy Duffy goes on to completely alienate and infuriate all friends, family and well wishers over the next couple of years. His arrogance and actions will amaze you. He is king of the pr**ks. He wastes the opportunity of a lifetime for himself and his friends, by being stubborn, rude and at times repulsive.

You will enjoy finding out how many albums they sold at the end.

I couldn't find a free version, but it's worth renting and streaming on Amazon video, trust me.

So if you are loving this genre there are a few more documentaries I can suggest, some I have seen, some I haven't.

'Hearts of Darkness', a study of the perils of producing 'Apocalypse Now' is one of the most famous troubled making-of documentaries, watch it for free here. There's also 'Burden of Dreams' a documentary about the famous documentarian Werner Herzog.

If you want something more lighthearted, 'Doomed!' visits the lovingly pathetic 90s' Fantastic Four reboot attempt, which looks incredibly dated beside our new franchises of Superheroes of all descriptions.

I haven't seen 'Jodorowsky's Dune', but having neither read or watched the original Dune, it's not on my to view list, but it might be your kind of thing- free copy here.

Finally two films about the trials of aspiring filmmakers, 'American Movie' and 'Kingdom Come'. I haven't seen either of these, so if you do give them a spin, let me know what you think.