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So I happen to still like books. I have a somewhat old mentality, likely gained from years of playing import games. It comes from playing something in a language you don’t know, with a user interface that’s often tough to discern, and with (as it was in my highschool, pre global reseller days) much less reliable methods of delivery. That is to say, often the harder something is to do, the more pleased I am with the return. Any old idiot can type something out and put it on the internet. But it takes a certain kind of idiot to write a book. One such idiot is Winnie Forster, a man who has a special thanks in an honest-to-god videogame. He is also part of the euro game journalist old guard, having edited and/or co-founded the deutschlander magazines PowerPlay, VideoGames and Man!ac.
Most recently – and this is what we discuss here - he has written an illustrated encyclopedia of game machines, in german, the language of his people. It was translated into english, the language of my people, by Rafael Dyll, and further localized by Dave McCarthy, who certainly has worked on a lot of sports games, and now appears to be settled in Rockstar London’s production department. The end result of the translation winds up being quite fine, if a bit charmingly german at times. The faults are more than forgivable – a missing pronoun here and there – the occasional leftover und rather than and - and you’ll find occasions where it’s evident a piece was written some two years before it was published (as is the case for the original german version), for instance when Forster explains that a 1987-birthed console still has fans lo these 15 years later, which would bring us to 2002, whilst the book was released in english in early 2005. But you won’t find anyone misspelling ‘their’ for ‘they’re’, so the book remains a good, rather breezy read.
As one might expect, the meat of the book is served up as delicious morsels of information about various consoles and computers, chainsaw hewn into ‘eras’ which are debatable but not altogether objectionable.
The main thing the book has in its favor, in my mind, is inherent to its almost-completeness. Sure there are some entries missing, but it does cover 500 machines (says 500 on the front, “over 400” on the back, so let’s say “nearly 500” and be safe). What I like is that you can show your friend who’s never heard of an FM Towns Marty, just what one is. There, page 135. No more fooling around on the internet, only to find a site that’s “well, not the best information, but it kind of gives you the gist of it. Also it did X and Y.” Include the X and the Y, damnable internet! This book, while it also doesn’t ever tell the full story – how could it? – has nice pictures, release date, the rough number of unique games released, and sales info for almost every console and gaming computer around. If you’re hardcore like that, it may not tell you anything new. But it’s still likely got tidbits you might’ve missed – it had some for me! Did you know that in spite of its paltry 22 games, the Virtual Boy moved 1 million units, while the Jaguar, which (and this is likely the only context in which you can say it) was a much better system, only sold 250,000? Did you know the Virtual Boy was originally envisioned in color? Interesting!
This book was written by a german, so there is a heavy bent towards gaming computers. This will be a good thing or a vaguely non-exciting thing, depending on your taste. For me, who didn’t grow up with these things, and didn’t have a computer of my own until 1999, it’s interesting to see where europe is coming from. They have a rich history of gaming PCs over there, and the book does a good job of outlining these – though of course this means 6 pages on the Amiga, versus five on the Famicom/NES. The other thing that could potentially irk the more console-minded among us is the constant comparisons to computer power, which are largely irrelevant. In the Mega Drive/Genesis portion, Forster says: “The console was technically similar to the successful Amiga and ST home computers, but graphically superior…”
But it’s not really annoying, just offputting for those of us who might see an Amiga game and say – hey – that looks almost as good as something you might see on the Genesis!
If that group doesn’t include you, come off your high euro-horse and sit down with the rest of us in the dirt and blood. We couldn’t even copy games, do you know what that was like? So what if you made us americans what we are, it’s our language now! We’ll take it and run, you can’t have it back! You made Australia, too, and see how that turned out?
Oh, but I do digress. One thing that the book does remarkably well is tone. The tone is consistent throughout, and number of pages aside, you’ll see the GP32 and the Wonderswan spoken of as true valued members of our video game community. It truly shows that this was written by a hardware fetishist who appreciates each console based on its unique merits. This could be one of the more positive results of the computer-love, methinks. You’d be hard-pressed to find the terms ‘odd’ or ‘quirky’ or ‘very Japanese’ in here, with replacements such as ‘potentially revolutionary, but ultimately unsuccessful.’ That’s much better, and much appreciated by those of us who actually like the Wonderswan and GP32.
Though the book is softbound, the pages are thick, and the photos and screens are all quite clear. The layout is very nice, and not in any way confusing. Information is easily accessible, and relevant games are placed by their related consoles. It reads chronologically, and while it condenses most of the early home pong variants (and the like) into the intro, the progression feels logical, and by and large most consoles are given good reasons for their deaths, and not without a tear shed.
In terms of errors, some won’t be apparent to most. For instance, the final Wonderswan title is mistakenly labeled Judgment Silverfish instead of Silversword, and the GP32 section misses the spanish launch, saying the console never reached the west. Perhaps the one that will give the fanboys the biggest trouble is that Forster says Dreamcast game development ended in 2004, when games were released in 2005, and some are still coming for 2006. It’s also a bit odd to give NEC’s PC-8001 a full page, while the 98 series is relegated to a back-of-book ‘others’-style area. There probably shouldn’t be a platform with over 2,000 games in that section.
Relatively minor gripes aside, this is a very nice book to have around. It helps you brush up on your history, without too many glaring omissions, and may even teach you a thing or two. As far as recommending it or not recommending it goes, I lean towards the former. It’s imperfect, but I doubt we’ll see better anytime soon, perhaps not even for lack of trying. Check out some excerpts, if you're curious. There are even more to the right in the images section, but they're dirty jpegs. Gross!
At $30, the book is not a bad price. In the process of writing this review, I continually glanced back to it for inspiration, and these ‘glances’ often wound up with two or three entries read before they were over. If hardware interests you - and if you like games, you should – you should get this. Hell, even if you’re like me, and try your damndest to love a medium that barely loves you back anymore, and rarely even calls, it’s good to have on the shelf. Just to know it’s there.
If brandon sheffield were a game machine he'd probably be a PC-98. Obscure, lots of H-games on it, made by NEC, totally obsolete...the full package.
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