Thursday, January 3, 2013

100 Greatest Games

Hi Everyone,

In addition to working on the next volume in my Classic Home Video Games series, I've been working even more on a new book for Schiffer Books covering the greatest console video games released from 1977-1987 (exact title TBD).

The book will include, obviously, games for the Atari 2600, on up through some of the early titles for the NES. Numerous titles for the Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Odyssey2, Sega Master System, and Atari 7800 will also be included, along with various dark horse entries.

The book will include pricing, publishing history, extensive gameplay details, my opinions on the games, quotes from other sources (magazines, books, and websites), full color photography (including screenshots), and more. Each entry will be 800-1300 words in length.

The book will also contain 100 honorable mentions listed in the back. Breaking down the book to 200 titles has been a blast, but some painful decisions have been made regarding titles I enjoy, but that just don't make the cut. The bottom line is how much fun the game is today, but I'm also taking into account historical importance, graphics, sounds, and the like.

I'm about 70% finished with the rough draft, but there are still some titles to be added (i.e. more painful decisions about which games to leave out).

The manuscript is due in August, and the book should be out by early 2014. Yeah, this is a ways off, but I'm excited about the project and am glad another publisher is interested in classic gaming.

The Classic Home Video Games series is a reference tool like Leonard Maltin's movie books, but this new book for Schiffer will be a lavish coffee table book with lengthy entries and all the trimmings.

As always, thanks for reading!

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