Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984

Rating:
Summary: Visually lush, exhaustive, and ultimately...
Review: Another reviewer wrote "Supercade is a lot of hype, a lot of style, and no substance." and perhaps there's some very real truth to that. When you write a book on the history of something everyone in your target audience probably takes seriously, you're probably going to evoke a lot of emotion from your target audience.

This book is the most exhaustive history of video games I've ever read. It's lavishly detailed and rich in minutiae, and obviously written by someone with a passion for the games. The pictures are gorgeous, although often low-resolution and pixelated. Too often too, in this reviewer's humble opinion, the graphics are modified to distraction with excruciating close-ups and blur, among other effects. If you're familiar with Wired Magazine's design, you'll be instantly at home with this book. Van Burnham has also written for Wired, which came as no surprise to me when I discovered it after reading part of this book.

It's gorgeous, it's heavy, and it's clearly written to try and make video games a little more credible as an art form. It's not an "art book", and it's not the definitive history of games, but it's quite a lot of both, and well worth the price for this trip through the games that comprise what seems to be my entire life.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Photos, Informative Text
Review: I thought that I would end up just browsing through this book looking at the pictures. Instead, I found a great deal of information in the easy-to-read text. The introductory material is interesting. After that, many games are covered in chronological order. Boy, did it bring back memories. I recall encountering a lot of the same information at the time, lending some credibility to the material. Great history of arcade and home games during a formative decade of the genre. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Photoshoped Mame Screenshots and some extra
Review: I'm 33 and cut my teeth on Firetruck, Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Dkong. Having been involved with the Mame project for 6 years, which attempts to preserve arcade games through emulation, I'm always interested to read new books on this subject. Supercade caught my attention with its gaudy presentation and heft. It's a glossy collection of easily smudged pages with screenshots taken from Mame with rudimentary Photoshop filters applied along with some image skewing, and flyers and cabinets shots also from the collection/emulation community. Most of the screenshots are accompanied by short descriptions that could easily have come verbatim from Mame's history.dat file, originally compiled by Brian Deuel. One could also imagine the author going through Mame32's year folders one by one looking for tasty tidbits to present as one-offs or games not as mass produced as Pac-Man. Steven Kent's books do a better job burrowing into the stories behind these games and I enjoyed his writing style more than this author. All that said it does still have merit in that it nicely lumps all of this together in what could be described as a coffee table style art book. It may provide an accessible entry to the classic gaming genre for the newbie, but the hardcore will already have delved into other more mature offerings on the subject, including Mame itself which this book owes for much of its information.

Rating:
Summary: Tried the rest. This is the BEST coffee table book offered
Review: In recent years, I had bought the other similar historical reference books on the subject and saved this one for last because I took the bad reviews about the photo quality seriously. I work in printing/graphic design and I avoided buying the book until the price came down. After thumbing through it for only five minutes, I knew I'd found the best one. Yes, it may be true that many of the images could have lifted from MAME screen shots but here's my take on that. I was looking for the best VISUAL record of the era. That's what this about isn't it? Walking into an arcade today may have the same visual appeal with all the lights and noises, but since the late 80's, our expectations obviously changed. No one can milk a quarter for more than 3 minutes anymore. My memories of the old arcades are the unique characters, the first time that we were able to play with multiple players and all those other "firsts" that influenced what we see today. This "found art" really takes me back in time. The images may only be low rez screen shots, but for the most part they are clean and made more fun by being enlarged to the point where you can see all the pixels. I think the word from art school I'm trying to remember is MACRO. Where you zoom IN to a particular piece of the image and crop it to make it more interesting visually. These photos are big and bleed beyond the edge of the page. It's funny now to how those huge pixels made us spend so much in the 80's in our era or super slick realism in current games. While THE FIRST QUARTER and THE ULTIMATE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES may be a "good read" for historical facts and funny stories, they lacked imagery. The book ARCADE FEVER is another strong visual book for it's sharp photography of actual game cabinets and more traditional screen shots. Supercade is an artsy (but not cheesy) way of showing the era. I was also happy to see arcade games featured that came along years after 1984. This book goes the extra mile visually.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful. Stunning.
Review: Not much to say-- it's really awesome, the interviews are great and the screen art is fantastic. The book ends at the bust of the industry but you'll love the glory years.

Rating:
Summary: Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age '71-'84
Review: The video industry took the world by storm on the 70s and 80s.
In many ways- it still does. Children of all ages are fascinated with the legendary Pac-Man, Ape Escape, bubble boble, Snowbounding, Wings of Fury and a host of other action games.
This book chronicles the development of the video culture into
a virtual frenzy. It is perfect for video enthusiasts everywhere.

Rating:
Summary: A great coffee table book on video games
Review: Van Burnham has put together a pretty impressive and lively book about the history of the Bronze and Golden Ages of video games. The book is very colorful, with lots (and I mean LOTS) of borrowed pictures and MAME screenshots, each with a story or small blurb about the particular subject at hand. Burnham covers both arcade and home console video games in this piece.

Some neat extras include interviews with designers/programmers, a story by a Starcade game show contestent, and a fairly complete timeline. Burnham has done her research, filling the book with detailed historical record of the first video game (Spacewar!), the first interactive CRT game (Willy's Tennis For Two), and the MIT railroad club, among others. There are a few problems, however.

The layout of the pictures is a filled with lots of unnecessary filtering (i.e. the "old and grey" Commodore PET... we had color photography in the 1970s too!) and blurring, and can get garish at times. You could even say artsy-fartsy or pretentious. There are also some minor historical errors. Tapper is a Bally Midway creation (the book calls it "Atari's Tapper"). Activisions's Alan Miller didn't design Atari's arcade Football; Dave Stubbins, Steve Bristow, and Mike Albaugh did. I also think that Burnham, in her game blurbs and descriptions, tended to be a little less colorful; preferring to copy verbatim from her research. This gives the impression that quantity took precidence over quality. The reader could get the impression that the author got a bit lazy towards the end of compiling this book, in the process of cramming in as many games as possible.

Other than these minor gripes, this book is a solid "period piece" that belongs on any classic gaming fan's coffee table.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful...Captures the authentic feel of the golden days
Review: Van Burnham's book is a true piece of art - it doesn't try to exhaustively present historical data, or be all-inclusive. It offers to take the reader for a ride through the star system that some call the Golden Age of Video Games. She gives us visual glimpses of some of the brightest stars, with just enough narrative to give depth to the experience.

This book is the real thing - it comes from the heart, which is rare these days especially among classic videogame junkies. It manages to convey the sense of awe and wonder that one may have felt when standing in a darkened arcade room in 1980.

A rare gem, and a classic in its own right. Long live Van Burnham!

Rating:
Summary: Good - but some glaring errors
Review: Van Burnham, I've been on this planet eight days longer than you, and although we seem to be living parallel lives, I couldn't have done a better job on authoring such an incredibly rich history of the videogame. You relived my youth in the pages of this book, and dug up fascinating techie historial info I was always curious about. This book is a beautiful addition and complement to my classic arcade. It is well written, smartly laid-out, and ties together colourful modern publishing techniques wonderfully with its historial content. Thank-you.

Rating:
Summary: Supercade SuperNostalgia
Review: Whatever they say about poor snapshot graphics, this is definitively a great book.
The shape, the colours, the weight itself..and obviously all what is written inside, is pure golden age videogames history.
The most famous (and not so famous) arcades are reviewed, with lot of infos about.
Absolutely recommended for arcade fans, I loved so much reading this book. The nice thing about it is that you will read it again and again and again.
A whole era completely in your hand. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. A must have. A piece of modern history.