Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

From the looks of things, I was all ready for SUPERCADE to be one of the best video game books ever -- but upon receiving my copy from Amazon, I was utterly disappointed. The "text" is nothing but rehashed capsulized material from other sources that have already covered the topic in far more detail, while the pictures are mainly screen captures from PC emulators (available online with several clicks on your mouse), often out of focus at that. There's no "voice" in Burnham's words -- in fact, the whole book feels like it was assembled on her PC, copying and pasting from other's works. Like someone else wrote, the binding is poor and likely won't be durable enough for repeated use.

Bottom line? WAY too expensive, and not nearly in-depth OR colorful enough for arcade fans. Any reader would be better off checking out the terrific GAME OVER (which is about Nintendo's history but also has extensive material on Atari and the origins of the video game medium), John Sellers' ARCADE FEVER, and Leonard Herman's PHOENIX for more entertaining and satisfying reading. There just isn't anything here really worth the purchase, for casual readers OR video game addicts.

I was extremely disappointed with this book. The content of this books consists entirely of video game screen shots taken from PC based emulators and small snippets of information taken from other, better books. There are no notable insights in this book, and the writing is weak and uninspired. There are many notable exceptions in the content of this book, including one of many collectors favorite games, Atari Quantum.
The book holds up fairly well (relatively) on the raster games, but on the true XY games, the emulator screen shots do no justice to the beauty of the real thing. Do not excpect any history lessons on arcade games in general either, there are other, better books for that.
If you want to learn a little about the games you play on your emulator, this may be the book for you, but if you are looking for info on the history of video arcade games, you will not find it here.

Great for a trip down memory lane, but certainly not a "scholarly" approach to the videogame era. Still searching for a book that takes the most academic approach to this medium, but this one is certainly appealing if a bit irreverent in terms of its overall presentation.

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.

For anyone interested in early videogame history, this is a nice coffee table book to have lying around. It's filled with interesting information and game trivia. Nothing deep, but there are other books for that ("Understanding Video Games" is one that comes to mind). However, what really kills this book is that, unless you plan to have it sitting sexily on some book shelf, it WILL fall apart. The pages and cover are of excellent quality, but the binding appears to be double-sided tape. Open the book up at the middle, and there goes your spine.

This book is ESSENTIAL reading and a must have for anyone who collects Arcade video machines, or just interested in their history, and a pretty complete synopsis of all the major games put out by each of the major manufacturers, from the 70's all the way to just a few years ago. The book is very well laid out, packed with TONS of history of both the games evolution and of the manufacturers, interviews with the designers, and TONS of pictures. Get the book for the pics if nothing else! Do yourself a favor and pick this up, you won't be disappointed! This really IS a Must have for arcade video collectors. Well worth the money, Highly recommended! (You should ALSO get the Encylopedia of Video Arcade Games, I like that one a little better if you HAVE to choose, but try to get them BOTH if possible!).

Jeff Scott
Orlando, FL

I've never seen anything quite like this before. From cover to cover it's BIG, glossy, fascinating, well written and most of all, BRILLIANT !
The pictures are huge and the way it's laid out is great.
If you've played Classic arcade games in the 80's or now, you simply must buy this book.

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.

If you have any love of video games beyond your couch, this book will make a great addition to your library. If you have a superiority complex and need to out-snob your friends about the history of Pong and where the name Donkey Kong comes from- buy this book now. Also recommended- Arcade Fever, I am 8-Bit, Everything Bad is Good for You.