A different book.

[paigeoliver]

Since Saint has already gone through all the rigors and such of authoring a book, I figured he might know a bit more about this.

I have long considered writing a DETAILED arcade history book covering, oh about 1000 titles. I was once a fairly prolific web author, and that actually wouldn't be THAT tough for me.

But, what I am concerned about is this.

Would I be able to (legally).

Include screenshots (from Mame or otherwise).
Include pictures of cabinets and or other assorted things?

Because the fact is that an arcade book with no pictures would not be nearly as interesting as a heavily photo-laden book.

[Dave_K.]

I think you would have no problem including public press releases/flyers from the 80s (that have pictures)....but I'm not sure about screen shots since the artwork/fonts are copyrighted.  I actually tried asking this of Midway when I was thinking of putting together a robotron fan site.  I never got an official response.

I believe there was a book recently released in the UK on the history of arcade games (very think with lots of photos)...you could buy it and see if they documented the copyrights appropriately for images/fonts.

[FLAPS]

If it helps here is a link to the book I think Dave K was talking about:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0762409371/qid=1081740911/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_11_1/202-1406597-6349432

As for the question I don't really know the answer 100% myself.  However I would assume that since you'd be selling it therefore making profit using images of something you didn't make it would be illegal to do without the companies permission. Though with the games being as old as they are I doubt it would be too hard to get permission from them.

[DougHillman]

While the more video game books the better, you're gonna have a hard time doing something better than this:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262524201/qid=1081882626/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-7580185-5635257?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[rchadd]

I agree - Supercade is truely great book.

[GGKoul]

Fixed link