In General Gaming

What good books about our video game hobby do you recommend (or not recommend)?

My list of must reads is this (so far):

Game Over, by David Sheff
Joystick Nation, by J.C. Herz
Trigger Happy, by Steven Poole
The Ultimate History of Video Games, by Steve L. Kent
Super Cade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age, 1971-1984, by Ralph Baer
Gameplan, by Winnie Forster (German)
Arcade Fever: The Fan's Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games, by John Sellers

Have you read one of those or can you contribute another book to the list?

Wow! Actually, I have never read any books on video games (besides the occasional walkthrough!). I'll have to check the library for some of these! As for books in general, I'd have to recommend the Elric Saga. It begins with the book Elric of Melnibone' and is written by Michael Moorcock (no, that's not a fake name ).

I definitely want to pick up some great video-gaming non-fiction. Rag on them all you want, but I like the Resident Evil books. Also, when I was a kid, I loved those "Worlds of POWer" novelizations. I think that's what they were called. I had the novelization of Metal Gear and Blaster Master. I'd like to find those now and see how awful they were!

EDIT: Hahahaha! I decided to go look for those novelizations, so I was going through some boxes of old books of mine in the basement. Guess what I found....an NES!! I ran upstairs to try it out, and it works! There's like....nail polish or something spilled on the top, but it runs great. Hahaha, I'm so excited.

There's a very interesting manga (comic) about Super Mario in Japan. It's called "Super Mario kun". Unfortunately I only have no. 8 and 20.
The manga is drawn by Yukio Sawada and still going on. No 32 will be out this Friday.

Look here:

Ha! Yeah, I read the Metal Gear one years ago! I totally forgot about those! I'm sure they were cheesy, though I can't remember for sure... wow.

I've heard good things about Game Over. My friend has it and I've been meaning to borrow it for a while now. I understand it's about the history of Nintendo in America and includes the various lawsuits that always make for an interesting read.

It's a very good book, you should definitely borrow and read it.

A new "Gameplan" is out. Unofrtunately for you it's in German.
It's about the history of joysticks.

You can look at the official site with the google translation:



The original page:

Uh, that looks and sounds very interesting.
Thanks for the hint.
They have it on amazon: