Last week I was sent two new videogame books for review. Now, we're not spoiled for choice in this genre - once you've bought David Sheff's Game Over, Leonard Herman's Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames, Jaro Gielens' Electronic Plastic and Van Burnham's Supercade you've pretty much built yourself the ultimate library of videogame literature. You could also throw in More Than A Game by Barry Atkins and/or Stephen Poole's Trigger Happy if you're of an academic bent, but then you're getting into shadier territory.
So two new books at once is something of a flood, and certainly worth a look...
The first is Game On (Headline, GBP 14.99), provocatively sub-titled 'The 50 Greatest Videogames of All Time'. It's essentially an extended magazine feature, with each entry seeking to place its game in historical context as well as providing a lengthy retrospective review. Two ex-Edge writers, Ste Curran and Dave McCarthy, are involved, together with ex-journalist-cum-PR chap Simon Bryon - and the writing is duly spiky, confident and engaging. This trio also runs one of the videogame industry's best blogs, Triforce.com, although little of that site's sheer cheek and downbeat cynicism makes it into the text - understandably, perhaps, given the subject matter.
The design, apart from the excellent cover, is a little dated and even slapdash in places - the text deserves something cooler and more refined. Edge re-thought by Taschen, perhaps. It's fun to argue with, though (no Doom! No Paradroid!), and will tell you a few things about classic games that you didn't know. The trivia about Ico's cover art (a homage to surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico) was new to me, for example, although it probably oughtn't be. The book also sets out to make you want to play these games again - and certainly succeeds in this area.
The bizarre Video Games Guide (Boxtree Publishing, GBP16.00) is an attempt at a Halliwell or TimeOut -style guide... but for games. The press release claims it's the 'first ever comprehensive guide to computer and video games, from the earliest arcade classics right up to the present-day hits', but the 'comprehensive' label quickly turns out to be a fanciful.
This is, in fact, an idiosyncratic and highly subjective romp through videogame history, which happily takes in dozens of forgotten C64 and Spectrum titles, but neglects Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Lumines and all but one of the Final Fantasy series - among many others. Author Matt Fox also has a tendency to slip into autobiographical revery and happily admits to key games he's never played. The Battlefield 2 entry, for example, quickly makes clear that the writer never played the game's massively important and influential predecessor, Battlefield 1942. Riiiight.
Comprehensive? Maybe when referring to Matt Fox's game collection, but for everyone else, the quintessential videogame reference guide is yet to be written.
