Retro Gaming Hacks

Where to Read More

If you get to the end of this book and find yourself wishing that it wasn’t over, there’s hundreds more pages of retro gaming goodness to pore through!

There are many other volumes of information out there about retro gaming, whether your interest lies in hacking, collecting, playing, or all three.

Most of these books will be found at finer booksellers, though some are best purchased directly from the publisher. In these cases, I’ll give you the appropriate URL.

Supercade

Van Burnham’s book, fully titled Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984 (published by MIT Press) is an absolutely massive coffee-table-size extravaganza of glossy color pages featuring screens and tongue-in-cheek descriptions of every major arcade game of the retro age—as well as quite a few not-so-major ones!

Sadly, the original hardcover printing of the book, which cost $49.95, weighed in at about a hundred pounds, and had to be lifted by a team of midgets (who were included with each copy), is well out of print. But you can still buy Supercade today, in paperback, for the more reasonable price of $29.95. It’s well worth it for all the information, humor, and nostalgic artwork packed into this giant tome.

Arcade Fever

John Sellers’ book Arcade Fever: The Fan’s Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games, is published by Running Press and is sort of like Supercade on the Atkins diet. Though its concept is similar—glossy color pictures and text concerning a wealth of classic arcade games—the ...