Database design and query help

[Eskil Kvalnes]

Hello,

Currently, I have four tables (Items, UpdatePrice, UpdateStatus and
UpdateRelease). All the Update tables are linked to Items.ItemID via
Update(Price|Status|Release)ItemKey. Personally, I don't feel that
this is the best database design I could have, but I can't seem to
come up with one that'll work for me. I need to be able to add updates
to all three cases and still have access to a history of updates.

The problem(s) with this design is that I - in my opinion - get a very
slow result. Items consists of 500+ rows at the moment and the same
goes for the three Update tables. Those will obviously grow much
quicker. Another problem is that I can't seem to sort on the Items
table, while sorting on either of the Update tables seems for work.

This is my query for gathering all the data I need from all four tables:

SELECT * FROM Items t1
		JOIN(SELECT * FROM UpdatePrice      ORDER BY
UpdatePrice.UpdatePriceID           DESC) AS t2 ON t1.ItemID =
t2.UpdatePriceItemKey
		JOIN(SELECT * FROM UpdateStatus    ORDER BY
UpdateStatus.UpdateStatusID       DESC) AS t3 ON t1.ItemID =
t3.UpdateStatusItemKey
		JOIN(SELECT * FROM UpdateRelease ORDER BY
UpdateRelease.UpdateReleaseID DESC) AS t4 ON t1.ItemID =
t4.UpdateReleaseItemKey
			WHERE t1.ItemIsGame = 1
				GROUP BY t1.ItemID

and then SORT BY t1.ItemTitle (doesn't work) or SORT BY
t2.UpdatePriceNew (does work).

http://grab.by/BWW - Screenshot of the query in case formatting is
lost in translation!

Basically, my questions are:
1) Is this a poor database design? If yes, how would you do it?
2) Is this a bloated query which can be perfected to work as intended
(mine doesn't) and perhaps faster?

Sincerely,
Eskil Kvalnes
eskil.kvalnes@stripped