Retro Video Game/Video Game Books

[Anonymous No.4409590]

Hey /vr/, have any of you folks come across or read any really good video game related books?

Masters Of Doom is an obvious choice, and its really the only video game related book I've ever read. Are there any other noteworthy works worth checking out?

Either pertaining to a specific franchise, company or just games in general?

[Anonymous No.4409675]

>>4409590
>any really good video game related books
No. They really don't exist for the most part. At best you might get exactly what you posted. A sort of pseudo documentary but even then most gaming history books are unreliable at best. Gaming was considered a joke and childish for the longest time and no one would take it seriously and now that people have finally noticed how powerful of an industry what's left is people trying to pick through lots of opinions and undocumented history scattered to the winds - piecing together anecdotes and biases by some schmucks trying to make a quick buck off a niche.

There's not really much else you'll get for gaming books other than novels that try to be "video gamey" except they're written by novelists who think like novelists not people who think like gamers. So those end up basically being clumsily put together child geared fantasy-scifi hybrids.

At best cross reference some books, verify what you can and enjoy the historical context but otherwise you're better off just pretending books related to vidya don't exist.

[Anonymous No.4409704]

The Resident Evil books were a fun read.

[Anonymous No.4409725]

>>4409704
How many books do you read per month?

[Anonymous No.4409730]

>>4409725
Why does that matter?

[Anonymous No.4409741]

[Anonymous No.4409748]

"ready player one" is [...] book for those who love joust and pac-man and also have been huffing glue and eating paste for the last 25 years

[Anonymous No.4410987]

>>4409748
Its a super fanfiction wank, but a fun one

[Batowl No.4410992]

>>4409590
Japan has better books.

[Anonymous No.4410996]

>>4409741
get out of here stuart

[Anonymous No.4411007]

>>4410987
No. Cover-to-cover, it's just bad. Sad bad. Not fun bad.

[Anonymous No.4411029]

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/i-am-error
This one called I am Error is really good if you've ever wanted to know how an NES works. Even though the material is technical, it is written in an easy to digest conversational style so it's quite fun to read if you have a even little bit of knowledge about digital logic (or want to learn).
I waited years for a free PDF of this to show up, which you can easily find now.

This is part of the same series as "Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System."

[Anonymous No.4411525]

From here >>4411029
I think /vr/ would really like this book.

[Anonymous No.4411560]

Jordan Mechner's journals about developing Karateka and Prince of Persia are fun blasts from that era in computer gaming.

[Anonymous No.4411574]

>>4411560
Nice. I found the PoP one at archive.org.

[Anonymous No.4411854]

>>4409741

I paid for it so nobody else has to: https://my.mixtape.moe/wlqfbg.azw3

Kindle format only, no DRM. Use Calibre to read it.

[Anonymous No.4411889]

>buy this at a bookstore thinking it was going to be about the history of arcade games during the 70s
>instead get a guy rambling about GG and listing wikipedia as one of his major sources
I've never been more angry at myself for not reading a bit before buying a book in my life.

[Anonymous No.4414315]

What's the name of the one Nintendo book? The one where the author is convinced that Nintendo is evil and is destroying children?

[Anonymous No.4414427]

>>4411525
Honestly, that pic is just "vr crt thread.jpg"

[Anonymous No.4414486]

>>4409590
just post the mega of Masters of Doom and fuck off.

[Anonymous No.4414617]

Rise and Fall of Service Games is worth a read.

Anything by HG101/Kalata, I guess?

[Anonymous No.4414634]

>>4409590
Haven't read it, seems to have good reviews.

[Anonymous No.4414659]

>>4414315
Is it this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Over_(book)

The book itself doesn't have that tone at all. It's just the title.

[Anonymous No.4415312]

>>4414634
Ignore them, it's a fucking excruciating read. A fascinating story turned into a nonfiction Ready Player One.

[Anonymous No.4415375]

>>4409590
Read "Ready Player One" if you want something cringy as all hell that will make you hate the gamer identity more than you already might.
>>4409725
Quit being a pretentious prick. People can read fun and light novels if they want to. Not everything has to be high level philosophical bullshit.
>>4414427
Nobody looks at poor convergence as desirable though. Nobody in there even likes shadow masks, they shit on them constantly in favour of trinitron aperture grilles.

[Anonymous No.4415440]

Since no ones mentioned it,

'Its Behind You' - by Bob Pape
a free book covering the porting of R-Type to the ZX Spectrum. Its a damn good read.

http://bizzley.com/

[Anonymous No.4417851]

>>4414659
Maybe that was it, I dunno. I'll check it out if I can find a pdf.

[Anonymous No.4417893]

>>4417851

The PDF is on library genesis I got the 1999 version called Game Over Press Start to Continue, it's actually a good book.

[Anonymous No.4417894]

>>4411525
The last five lines of that page are cringeworthy, the author trying to defend the poor convergence of his TV.

[Anonymous No.4417912]

>>4411854

We need more of you in our lives, /vr/trooper. Speaking of which, pic related uploaded to anonfile for anyone who wants it. Most are from the UK retro magazine Retrogamer, but we also have good shit like Rise and Fall of Service Games and a bunch of game guide goodness (some not retro, but I can't help that).

[Anonymous No.4417913]

>>4411029

Any PDFs of that, frien?

[Anonymous No.4417916]

>>4414634
>>4415312

It's a Rise and Fall of Service games that doesn't even try to treat its subject with objectivity or basic research standards. Bastardized by Seth Rogan, of course.

[Anonymous No.4417917]

>>4414634
>>4415312
This is a great book! I listened on audiobook, which may have helped though. But as someone who grew up during this era I remember all the advertising and events, a bit dramaticized, but a fun look on the inside.

[Anonymous No.4417918]

>>4414486

How 'bout you guzzle semen?

[Anonymous No.4417919]

>>4417917

Would you like an actual good treatment of that period? I'm >>4417912 and I've read both.

[Anonymous No.4417941]

>>4417919
Awesome, I'll check it out, thanks!

[Anonymous No.4417953]

>>4417941

I can give you a PDF of the book, guy. All you have to do is ask. Is there some reason you don't?

[Anonymous No.4419250]

>>4417916
I heard that book was shit

[Anonymous No.4419507]

>>4419250

Which?

[Anonymous No.4419527]

Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works

[Anonymous No.4419547]

>>4419527

Oh, that looks slick, /vr/trooper! What's it about? A comprehensive overview of the MegaDrive game catalog?

[Anonymous No.4419550]

>>4419547
copy paste since I'm feeling lazy

"Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works is the ultimate retrospective of the console, featuring development and concept illustrations for Sega’s best-loved game franchises, original developer interviews and previously unseen hardware production plans. Much of the visual material – drawn from the Sega of Japan archives – has never been released before.

Alongside the illustrated history is ‘Arcade Perfect’, a written history of the console and its legacy by Guardian Games Editor Keith Stuart, which features the voices of Sega executives and industry luminaries – including the company’s founder David Rosen, its president Hayao Nakayama, Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske and many more. The book opens with a foreword by legendary developer David Perry, on the console that catalysed his career.

Concluding the book are 28 specially-conducted interviews with original Sega developers and team members, including Naoto Ohshima (Sonic The Hedgehog), Yu Suzuki (Space Harrier), Greg Johnson & Mark Voorsanger (ToeJam & Earl), Makoto Uchida (Golden Axe) and Yuji Naka (Sonic The Hedgehog)."

It's really a labor of love and high quality I'm glad I bought it when it first came out.

[Anonymous No.4419553]

>>4419550

Does this labor of love have a PDF version? It sounds fantastic.

[Anonymous No.4419558]

>>4419553
Not that I know of. Was a kickstarter originally and only sold through their own store now.

[Anonymous No.4419562]

>>4419553

Ah. A pity. Still, I hope they do well with it.

[Anonymous No.4419612]

>>4419550
Thanks for the heads-up on this, it totally flew under the radar for me.

One book I really enjoyed was The Art of Atari; anyone else checked that out?

[Anonymous No.4421435]

>>4417912
I'm interested.

[Anonymous No.4422336]

>>4417913
The published version is on library Genesis and the pre-publication thesis version (with color pictures) is on the university's website https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/405/

[Anonymous No.4422887]

>>4409590
There are hundreds upon hundreds of great video game essays out there, its just that most are in the form of YouTube videos.

[Anonymous No.4422893]

>>4409748
I like the themes in ready player one of nostalgia, fantasy, and collective cultural experiences replacing real life in relevance. The only problem is the tacked-on "why don't you just go outside???" ending and the fact that it mostly caters to 80's nostalgiafags rather than people who grew up more recently.

[Anonymous No.4423206]

One of the best character studies I've ever read.

[Anonymous No.4423216]

>>4409730
>>4415375
You didn't answer my question...

[Anonymous No.4423265]

>>4417912
Link?

[Anonymous No.4423285]

>>4423206
I'll never forget the chill that ran down my spine when I saw Mario put on that raccoon cap. I can still here the bloodcurdling, terrified screams when he took to the skies and bounced off those musical note blocks. I can only imagine how mortifying it was for the president, just in the middle of reading to innocent children, to look up at the TV and see Luigi effortlessly gliding through the water in a frog suit. It's been so long now, but those painful memories never get any weaker.

[Anonymous No.4423749]

>>4423206

Man this guy is psychotic

[Anonymous No.4424308]

>>4421435

Which ones? Or do you just want all of 'em in a ZIP/7Z?

[Anonymous No.4424318]

>>4423265

>>4424308

[Anonymous No.4424334]

>>4424308
Zip that shit

[Anonymous No.4424339]

>>4422336

>library Genesis

Bookmarked. Mad respect for the folks at SciHub.

[Anonymous No.4424349]

>>4424334

'kay. Zipping all titles extant to retro discussion. Some titles *will* be excluded under this criteria (I suppose they could be uploaded in a supplementary ZIP, if desired).

[Anonymous No.4424351]

>>4411029
Racing the Beam is fantastic, I've been meaning to read I Am Error.

[Anonymous No.4424395]

I wanted this but didn't back it because i didn't know it existed.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2099439603/playstation-anthology

[Anonymous No.4424401]

>>4411854
Can someone share the first one? Preferably in the same format, but others are okay too.

[Anonymous No.4424498]

>>4424351
I haven't read it because I never had much exposure to Atari, but my retro buddy just got a VCS, and it was pretty cool to see what it could do with two sprites, a ball, and some analog "beam racing" wizardry, so I think I'll check it out.

[Anonymous No.4424540]

>>4424498
Because the VCS is so simple, and the book so well written, it's actually super understandable, even if you don't know much about electronics. It's also a cool (albeit small, not the main topic of the book) peak into the history that other books have covered poorly.

[Anonymous No.4424768]

Here 'ya go, boyos. Tell me if you should require moar:

https://anonfile.com/p498f7d8b4/Archive.zip

[Anonymous No.4424786]

>>4424768
1.4GB?? I thought this was just books, how can it be that much?

[Anonymous No.4424797]

>>4424786

...Do you know how many are in that archive? Fourteen books are gonna take some space. If you had been a bit more specific, I could've been more selective.

[Anonymous No.4424802]

>>4424797
Fourteen books? Are you sure it's not 1400 or 14000?

[Anonymous No.4424817]

>>4424802

Fourteen high-quality books. Take it or leave it, but don't be "that guy".

[Anonymous No.4424827]

>>4424817
No disrespect intended. I was just genuinely unsure of what I was looking at. Is it these books? >>4417912

I guess they must be high quality scans of full-color guidebooks with complex layouts and stuff like that. Stuff that doesn't fit in a 1MB ebook like novels and text-heavy reference books do. I have about a GB of ebooks in my calibre library, and that's hundreds of books. But yeah, I can see how a high quality PDF where every page is an image could be over 100MB.

[Anonymous No.4424848]

>>4424827

That'd be it, and yes; every page had to be rendered as a PNG image. On some of those I can tell you why so, because I'm the one who "tidied them up" proper-like with metadata and everything (they're pretty easy to spot by metadata differences, too). But all the retrogamer ones are untouched by me since discovery via safari into the nethermost asscrack of huehueland internet where I found them. I could *guess* at their reasons for high filesize being the same as mine, but I sure couldn't tell ya for sure.

[Anonymous No.4425050]

Playing at the Next Level: A History of American Sega Games

Pretty interesting read.

[Anonymous No.4425339]

do you have fabien sanglard's wolf 3d game engine black book?

[Anonymous No.4426178]

Im still upset that over 20 years have passed and no one has even bothered to scan the duke3d level making handbook.

I know that its outdated and theres better user manuals on the net, but still i want to read it.

The only piece of it available is the companion cd that came with it.

[Anonymous No.4426225]

>>4424768
Which books are there?

[Anonymous No.4429343]

The greatest book ever made about videogames at least fro a detail standoint and being well written is a book called Game Over by David Sheff... its relatively unknown but is way better than the generic coffee table deal you get with videogame literature.....get into it, its amazing, its basically about nintendos rise to power but also covers other competitive angles and the nitty gritty business of it all.. its fascinating

[Anonymous No.4429352]

HERE IS FULL TEXT OF THE BOOK GAME OVER BY DVID SHEFF..

-https://archive.org/stream/Game_Over_1999_Cyberactive_Publishing/Game_Over_1999_Cyberactive_Publishing_djvu.txt

[Anonymous No.4429834]

>>4409590
In terms of non-fiction, I found Spelunky by Darek Yu to be interesting from a design perspective

And for fiction, YOU by Austin Grossman was a fun and introspective read, if a little pretentious. I'd still recommend it. The premise is essentially "What if, during the peak of id software, John Carmack just up and died, and everyone else had to try to fill those shoes?"

[Anonymous No.4430081]

>>4423285

This can't be real. I heard he compared Mario 3 to 9/11 at one point... but this can't be real. It isn't real is it......... I can't even...

[Anonymous No.4430280]

>>4430081
You clearly went there anon. For those of us who were the console wars alone were like our own personal Vietnam....

[Anonymous No.4430807]

If expanded universe novels count, I've got a pretty big collection of the Warcraft books.

The Last Guardian is pretty much the only /really/ good one, but Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal (in picture compiled in 'Chronicles of War') are guilty pleasures of mine. I love Warcraft 2.

[Anonymous No.4431665]

>>4426225

Apologies for the late reply (coming off of a three-day ban). All the retrogamer books are there, as well as the Versus Books Zelda guides, the Nintendo Power Pokemon guides, the fantastic Service Games- The Rise and Fall of Sega, and maybe even The Zelda Art book (after a week it's difficult to remember if I included that due to it covering non-retro Zelda's).

Anything not just mentioned was excluded due to not qualifying for retro status. These can be uploaded in a supplemental archive, if you so desire.

[Anonymous No.4431669]

>>4426178

Oh, man....I sympathize, Anon. I've always wanted a copy, and it pains me to know that not even a digital version survived.

[Anonymous No.4432217]

>>4431669
You make it sound like the guide doesn't exist at all anymore. I have a copy and could scan it if I wanted.

[Anonymous No.4432905]

>>4432217
Really?

Is it really possible?

[Anonymous No.4435374]

>>4409725
>>4423216
Go back to /lit/ and jack off to James Joyce's smutty letters, you fearful Jesuit.

[Anonymous No.4436023]

>>4409741
I preordered this thing on Unbound and still don't have a copy. Thanks, Stu.

[Anonymous No.4436148]

>>4414634
I enjoyed the audiobook

[Anonymous No.4436205]

Because these threads always fill up with mediocre books, I'm going to post a few better, lesser known books.

First up, Ralph Baer's book. A largely correctional-history of his work inventing the first console - the Magnavox Odyessey

[Anonymous No.4436212]

The ZX Spectrum ULA. Read this if you want to know how an 8-bit micro functions at the literal transistor level. Stunningly informative, if possibly difficult to read, book.

[Anonymous No.4436219]

Commodork - Very entertaining tale of a BBS pirate back in the day.

[Anonymous No.4436223]

It's Behind You! Free ebook about the porting of R-Type to home computers.

[Anonymous No.4436226]

10 PRINT - Free ebook that takes a one line BASIC program and expands it to 300 pages of analysis. Primarily an 'art' book (i.e. high brow), but entertaining none-the-less.

[Anonymous No.4436234]

The Digital Antiquarian (filfre.net) publishes the blog in ebook form. This is the single best computer history blog on the Internet. It may take you weeks to read the back log but it will be more valuable and more entertaining than all the books listed in this thread so far.

[Anonymous No.4436270]

>>4424401

https://my.mixtape.moe/yacrpx.zip

Included is a copy of the Amiga game he wrote when he was a teenager, as it's hard to find. I don't have WinUAE or an Amiga to test it on.

[Anonymous No.4436316]

People have already mentioned it, but David Sheff's Game Over is an essential history of early Nintendo. Ignore the abysmal LOL GAMES title, it's full of great stuff like the battle to be the first to publish a Tetris game in the West and the hardships Minoru Arakawa had to face to establish Nintendo of America.

I'd also recommend The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers books. The author may be the biggest sperg in the all of NEETdom (cringeworthy lawsuit and that he apparently laid out the books in fucking Microsoft Word of all things), but he's undeniably captured loads of amazing info from Japanese developers that have often never been seen in English before.

[Whitemage Sevenleaf !AnVbXjgZco No.4436621]

Does anyone have an ebook of ZZT by Anna Anthropy? :s

[Anonymous No.4436647]

>>4432905
>>4432217

guess not?

[Anonymous No.4436653]

>>4436270
is it just me or does this artstyle/ animation look EXACTLY like cboyardee?

[Anonymous No.4436979]

This one was really good (acknowledged spelling mistakes galore aside) but fuck, I shouldn't have bought the black & white version since it turned out to be quite image-heavy.

[Anonymous No.4436992]

>>4409590
Console Wars is a nice book detailing SEGA's rise to match Nintendo in the early 90's. Tom Kalinske was an ex-Mattel employee who got hunted down on his Hawaii vacation by SEGA to spearhead their launch of the Genesis. It covers everything up to E3 95, where his ex-marketing director (now Sony's) gives a presentation on pricing for the Playstation. He literally just says "Two ninety-nine" and walks off the stage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExaAYIKsDBI

The early part where Kalinske builds a team to grow the Genesis is great. The latter half where SEGA of Japan keeps making gimmicky shit is like reading about a junkie waiting to die. Going back through right now and it's still a page-turner early on.

[Anonymous No.4436997]

>>4436621
what are your favorite zzt games?

[Anonymous No.4437054]

>>4436979
Does anyone happen to have a pdf of that? Help a poor anon out

[Anonymous No.4438769]

>>4435374
Still no answer...

[Anonymous No.4438886]

>>4436979
i like how starfox2 is right on the front. a game that has been released and that everyone has played.

[Princess Sevenleaf !AnVbXjgZco No.4438983]

>>4436997
I actually like Town of ZZT a lot. Simple, charming, and does a good job of introducing a new player to all the game mechanics.

I also remember liking Kudzu and Winter a lot, though I barely remember anything about them. Lebensraum was fun, though frustrating, and I don't think I ever finished it. Chickenwire was fun, and the ZZTV series. And though not a ZZT game, I really loved Caves of Zeux (Megazeux). And Monster Zoo (Super ZZT) was fun too. Although, keep in mind that I was about 12-13 when I played all of these, so I can't promise they're actually still fun.

Also, everyone on /vr/ should play Village of ZZT. It's a recent game (2016 I think?) that runs in a browser, that makes an excellent homage to Town of ZZT.

[Anonymous No.4438990]

>>4438983
I actually like you a lot.

[Anonymous No.4440091]

>>4438886
It's still valid for Starfox on the Virtual Boy.

[Anonymous No.4442020]

>>4431665
>These can be uploaded in a supplemental archive, if you so desire.

Go right ahead mate.