The book has been around a while, but still worth picking up...
Posted by boyo on Feb 4, 2011 23:59 (Feb 4, 2011 23:59)
Coffee table books on retro gaming are becoming commonplace, with stores such as Amazon and the like stocking more and more titles by the day it would seem. One of the latest additions to the increasing inventory of bedtime retro reading comes in the form of ‘The Encyclopedia Of Game Machines’, written by Winnie Forster, published by GAMEplan, and costing £17.95 plus postage.
This 224 page book attempts to catalogue every computer and console ever released, covering the launch of well over 400 machines in the last 33 or so years, in full colour, with appropriate technological and historical information included where applicable.
What sets this book apart from anything that has come before it is the fact that it sets out to be a worldwide encyclopaedia as apposed to only covering US, European or Japanese machines, something of a first in this books genre.
So, with the promise of being something special, does ‘The Encyclopedia Of Game Machines’ live up to its boasts and claims?
Initially I was pleasantly surprised. The book itself looks and feels like a quality product, the paper stock used doesn’t feel cheap and nasty and it is generally pleasing on the eye. The type used is easy to read, and as you would expect, is constant throughout. The pictures however are what this book is all about with some 200 extra images having been included in this 1.5 edition of the book which really make it something other than a directory of computers and consoles. It also helps that the images used are of decent quality and have been worked into the layout extremely well too.
After an explanation of the page layout and an introduction to game storage media (which includes both technical data and pictures illustrating virtually every type of media ever used) the book then proceeds to categorise the computers and consoles it documents by the authors created ‘eras’. There are five different eras each containing machines that were prominent to that particular time in gaming history, and each era has a preceding editorial which goes some way to describing the nature of the scene, as well as highlighting some of the important events and games of the period.
The pages devoted to the machines themselves are well written, and are more editorial than technical, with pictures and sales data complimenting the brief history of the machine itself. Computers and consoles covered in this book range from the Magnavox Odyssey with its 16 games (released in the USA in 1972), through to the BBC Micro (released in the UK in 1982), right through to the SNK Neo Geo (released in Japan in 1990), and ending with the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP (both released in Japan in 2004), with many known and some not so well know machines covered in some degree of detail, in between.
If the front part of the book is for those of us who want to reminisce on the machines we had as children, or want to get some more information on a possible future purchase to add to the collection, then the appendix at the back of this book will be heaven for all the ‘geeks’ out there. Contained within the final 17 pages are extended technical details of all the machines that are mentioned within the preceding pages. Where available, the author has included such information as CPU clock speed, ram and rom details, graphic and sound details and pretty much anything else that is important to that particular machine. These details are presented in a table so that you can easily compare one machine to another, so like we said a section for the geeks!
So, does the book live up to its claim of being ‘The Encyclopedia of Game Machines’? Well, after a few hours of reading and the time to take it all in, I can honestly say that it does a good job of it, although I would have to agree with the author in his preface, that it is far from complete or perfect. As a written collection of information relating to computers and consoles it makes interesting reading, however it leaves me with the feeling of wanting more. The lack of pages devoted to each machine means that there is very little information relating to its history, games and achievements, which is something I would have expected to see in an encyclopaedia. Which brings me on nicely to the next part of this review, that being the errors within it. Admittedly, a book of this size cannot be expected to get every word and picture 100 percent correct, especially with the diversity of material it is trying to cover, however the biggest error of all must be the misspelling of the word encyclopaedia on the front cover and throughout the book (it’s missing an ‘a’ after the ‘p’) and can only be put down to poor editing. As time progresses however other errors will rear their head, and on the GamePlan website there is already a page devoted to updates and errata with some 20 or so entries already documented.
Overall it is a good addition to the book collection, but the combined price tag along with the feeling that it is not ‘complete’ enough might disappoint some people at the end of the day.
I own this book, bought it back when it first appeared. In my opinion, it's not that great a read, but does have some nice photos.
It lacks any level of interesting detail and is written in a very functional manner - imagine a Haynes manual for Skoda drivers written by Germans and you're half way there.
It tends to languish towards the back of the bookshelf with all the other misfits, like "The A-Z of Cult TV" and the "Street Hawk Annual 1980" - all of which were full of promise yet somehow failed to deliver. At least it's not lonely...
Interesting to hear that it's r@@@@rrrrree!!! these days and tends to sell for inflated sums of cash. Maybe it's time I set it free to frolic with it's long lost kith and kin...
Aug 29, 2011 12:32:51 (
263 days ago
)
