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Looking for a good coffee table book
fixedpigs:
--- Quote from: Smack on August 05, 2007, 12:42:33 pm ---I just bring my laptop in with me when I go to the crapper... ;)
--- End quote ---
remind me to never come over to your house...
a coffee table does _not_ equal a crapper...!
Organic Jerk:
I was actually considering buying Arcade Fever but a really horrible review of the book turned me off.. I bought Supercade and was very pleased..
I think I might pick up that Encyclopedia as well..
http://www.amazon.com/ARCADE-FEVER-Guide-Golden-Video/dp/0762409371/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0188747-5660159?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186340613&sr=8-1
--- Quote ---John Sellers' Arcade Fever finds its focus early on--and unfortunately, that focus is not classic coin-ops--it seems to be the author himself. It's one man's egotistical "memoircade," offering little to arcade fans who are not named John Sellers.
There are several things going wrong at once. Sellers, an ex-game show writer and the author of a book on pop-culture, sprinkles snippets about bad television and junk food liberally throughout--so liberally that you almost forget that the point here is video games. The reader cares about Crazy Climber, not Cookie Crisp--and since no meaningful connection between the two is ever drawn, the entire book ends up feeling forced, an excercise in "look at what I remember that you do not" false cleverness. It's not that he has chosen bad games to spotlight--he's got the best of the best, including obvious biggies like Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man through to underappreciated gems like Time Pilot and Rally-X--he simply doesn't seem to be able to discuss them on their own merits. Yet when Sellers does discuss the games, it's in the past tense, as if none of these games exist any more (clearly, they do--he used pictures of the Videotopia collection). Plus, it's simply not very interesting to hear the author describe what playing these 50 games was like (on Dig Dug: "To get maximum pointage, you had to dig a deep tunnel underneath a rock and wait for multiple bad guys to come to papa"). It would be far more enjoyable to seek them out yourself and experience them first hand--and if the book has any positive effect, perhaps this is it.
The book is repeatedly disrupted by a juvenile and distracting ribald sense of humor (introducing Asteroids: "If Pong was heavy petting and Space Invaders was getting to third base...") that feels out of place. Yes, Dragon's Lair's Princess Daphne was hot. Yes, the joystick is phallic. Get over it. There are too many pages of forced, corny jokes and pointless sidebars, such as Ms. Pac-Man's fashion critique (in lieu of the real and very interesting story of how the game went from illicit bootleg to official sequel), unfunny fake game-to-movie adaptations, and an odd, ongoing vendetta against/fetish for the obscure game Pooyan. Good interviews with Nolan Bushnell, Eugene Jarvis, preservationist Keith Feinstein, and "Pac-Man Fever" creators Buckner & Garcia are nearly swallowed up by the pointless asides.
Unfortunately, there's not much evidence of research here, merely memories. Things are described (rare game television commercials, hard-to-find sequels, bonus stages) that should have and could have been illustrated. Some facts are wrong and others are simply clouded by poor design--screenshots of sequels are mixed in with those of the original game without noting which is which. The blame for that, along with sloppy cropping of screenshots, photo pages that are clearly filler, and the lackluster, whatever-came-with-Windows font selection for game titles (why not run the original logos for all the games?) is shared with designer Corinda Cook. However, Steve Belkowitz's numerous photos of arcade machines are clear and vivid and save an otherwise ugly layout.
Arcade Fever could have been an excellent blend of history and nostalgia; instead, it reads like the work of a frustrated stand-up comedian--self-indulgent, and ultimately, a waste for arcade fans. John Sellers is not a video game historian--he's merely an observer, and therefore can offer no more insight or detail than you or I.
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1cal:
I love Arcade Fever! It's well written, funny and with an appealing layout.
Although I'm a Brit and didn't get all of the US pop culture references, I got enough of them to get a feel for what else was happening when the game came out.
I can't believe the book is criticised for being juvenile, surely it's about remembering the great times we had in our youth as well as playing the games themselves. I think the reviewer had a rather po-faced attitude to arcade games.
The only criticism I have is the binding as some of the pages have come loose, and needed taping up, after much thumbing through.
vidmouse:
The binding on Supercade was worse... probably b/c it's heavier (more pages, thicker, bigger paper). I cheapened out and got the PB version. Still, am happy w/ it.
OJ- the Arcade Fever book isn't as bad as all that. I found the stories in it pretty good and the humor made me laugh in some cases. It didn't feel like the author was all over himself but that he did like to hear himself talk. Lucky thing is, most of what he had to say was accurate and funny.
The page layout is WAYYYY better than Supercade too. Supercade seems more comprehensive, covers things like home consoles (Atari, Odyessey, etc) in more detail.
I think I might still end up getting the Encyclopedia's and probably some pinball books too eventually, will post some reviews of all of this when I'm done reading.
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