Read Ready Player One three times in a row and your username is Hanshotfirst? Immediately followed.
I read it for the first time last week. Started on Sunday and finished on Monday. It felt like playing a video game and though I was born in 1977, I got most of the references. My first gaming system was the 2600. I watched pretty much everything mentioned.
How fun would that be to go through War Games and Holy Grail to test ourselves with our knowledge of the movies?! My top pick would be the original Star Wars trilogy though above all.
Anyhow, I share your same concerns, but it gives me hope that Cline wrote the screenplay too, and that he was originally a screenplay writer before becoming a novelist with RPO.
Fingers crossed.