Where to Read More

Where to Read More

If you get to the end of this book and find yourself wishing that it wasn't over, there's hundreds more pages of retro gaming goodness to pore through!

There are many other volumes of information out there about retro gaming, whether your interest lies in hacking, collecting, playing, or all three.

Most of these books will be found at finer booksellers, though some are best purchased directly from the publisher. In these cases, I'll give you the appropriate URL.

Supercade

Van Burnham's book, fully titled Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984 (published by MIT Press) is an absolutely massive coffee-table- size extravaganza of glossy color pages featuring screens and tongue-in-cheek descriptions of every major arcade game of the retro ageas well as quite a few not-so-major ones!

Sadly, the original hardcover printing of the book, which cost $49.95, weighed in at about a hundred pounds , and had to be lifted by a team of midgets (who were included with each copy), is well out of print. But you can still buy Supercade today, in paperback, for the more reasonable price of $29.95. It's well worth it for all the information, humor, and nostalgic artwork packed into this giant tome.

Arcade Fever

John Sellers' book Arcade Fever: The Fan's Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games , is published by Running Press and is sort of like Supercade on the Atkins diet. Though its concept is similarglossy color pictures and text concerning a wealth of classic arcade gamesthe execution differs in many ways. It's a lot lighter on the wallet and the arms, for example.

Also, whereas Supercade's focus was on the art design of the book and the pictures of the games, Arcade Fever is more concerned with the game reviews themselves , which are generally more detailed and filled with relevant historical data. There are also plenty of other types of features in the book, from interviews with industry luminaries like Atari founder Nolan Bushnell to sidebars featuring trivia and campy imagery from the retro days.

Digital Retro

Gordon Laing's Digital Retro: The Evolution and Design of the Personal Computer , is published by Sybex Inc. and does for classic computer hardware what Supercade did for classic arcade games: it combines a history of the early personal computer industry with large, detailed photographs of every piece of classic PC hardware you could think of.

What this book doesn't offer are images of the computer programs or games that ran on the systems, so this is a book for hardware enthusiasts only. The photographs are exceptional, however. It's the next best thing to owning a collection of the machines. (Or better, if you don't have a lot of closet space).

Videogames: In The Beginning

Though much has been written in video game history books about Ralph Baerthe inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey system [Hack #2] and thus the father of video gameswhy not get your information right from the source? Baer has set down the story of his inventions in Videogames: In the Beginning , published by Rolenta Press.

But stories aren't all this book offers. Over the years , Baer has been meticulous about saving his primary source documents, from the original notebook sketches he made of his "brown box" gaming apparatus to fascinating legal documents from the many lawsuits he filed against companies who lifted his patented brainstorms. This is a must-have addition to any video game historian 's library. Speaking of which, it's best to order this book directly from publisher Leonard Herman (http://www.rolentapress.com).

Digital Press Collector's Guide

If you browse through the collectibles section of your local bookstore, you'll probably find a few different price guides that purport to let you know the value of your game collection. But the Digital Press Collector's Guide is the original and best retro game collectors' guide, published by classic gaming fanzine Digital Press.

What makes the Digital Press Collector's Guide so appealing is that it is written entirely by true lovers of retro games, writers who have lived and breathed Atari et al. since they were the cutting edge of technology. The editors of this book are the men on the front lines of classic game fandom, organizing the Classic Gaming Expo [Hack #1] and maintaining and updating the best database of classic game release information in the world.

Even if you're not particularly into collecting, this guide is a must-have resource for its exhaustive lists of software, hardware, and accessories for every major classic system from the Odyssey to the TurboGrafx-16. And you can flip through the guide to read personal reflections on the systems as well as collectors' stories of big finds and moments of glory . Though you can find the guide on Amazon, it's best to order it directly from the Digital Press web site (http://www.digitpress.com).

If you're still not satisfied, poke around on Amazon.com and see if you can find other books that strike your fancy. And if you fail at that, perhaps you should consider writing a retro gaming book of your own. There are still so many stories waiting to be told.