Product Description

At last, the video game equivalent of the film guide is here! Six years in the making, The Video Games Guide is a lovingly compiled A to Z bible of the good, the bad and the obscure from over forty years of video gaming. Packed with engaging and insightful reviews, choice nuggets of trivia and displaying a true passion and knowledge of its subject, the guide also includes full-colour screenshots of every five-star rated game. This colour section shows a ‘visual timeline’ of video games, allowing fans to track the wondrous progress of game graphics from 1962’s Spacewar right through to the present day.

Cross-referenced appendices detail the best-known game designers, a full year-by-year listing of consoles and computers, a chronological list of all the games included in the guide and information about major gaming awards, making The Video Games Guide a truly essential reference book for the gaming fan and industry professional alike.

From Pong to PlayStation 3, it is both an archive and a celebration of all the games that have enthralled, challenged and entertained us through the years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233599 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

BBC Radio 1
'brilliant - really good book'

About the Author

Matt Fox lives in Canterbury. A passionate gamer for the last twenty years, he runs his own business, 'Spacefund', providing specialist science education for primary school children across the UK.

Customer Reviews

Excellent video games guide
Does what it says on the tin ! A brilliant guide to some of the best games from the last 40 years, from Pong to the PSX3.

Has a lot of Speccy/C64 reviews so you'll recognise a lot of the games if you are a UK based retro gamer.

Has a lot of colour pictures in the middle, pity there isnt a screenshot next to each game but that doesnt ruin the book. Excellent read and one of the best retro books i've bought the last year.

Preserving the heritage of video gaming
For many years its felt like video games have been classed as disposable entertainment. Not any more - at last it seems that the industry is starting to preserve its rich heritage. Thanks to a whole wave of retro compilations, Xbox Live Arcade, and now The Video Games Guide I feel the tipping point has been reached.
The Video Games Guide is actually not a product of the industry it comes from a gamer, Matt Fox, who has dedicated himself to reviewing and rating pretty much every game ever released. Every review also lists the year of release and the publisher, and at the back of the book are a number of detailed appendices. One of the appendices lists all the famous games designers and what games they worked on and you may find it fascinating to see the career paths of these often-unsung men and women. All the games that get the maximum five star rating have a screenshot in the centre of the book and this is also interesting as you get to follow how graphics have improved from the earliest game in 1962 to the latest hits of 2006.
I think video-gaming has been waiting for a definitive book like this and as Tim and Chris Stamper, the founders of Rare software house say in the introduction `not before time'.

At last a video games equivalent of a film guide is here!!!!
Matt Fox must has been a gamer for nearly 30 years and must play games nearly 24/7 as this book covers over a thousand games easily. The amount of time it must have taken one person to do such a book based on video games is mind blowing. The first game he reviews is called Spacewars which came out in 1962 and, could only be played on a machine called the DEC PDP-1. Nine years later in 1971 Atari did a remake called Computer Space which was a lot more availabe to the mass market. Some of the more recent games he covers are World Of Warcraft, Shadow Of The Clossus and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to name, but just a small few which brings us right up to 2006. What I really enjoyed is that I have owned the following systems a Spectrum, NES, SNES, N64, PS2 and two PC's. With all the machines that I have owned, I have had at least one 5 star game. Mr Fox is a tough reviewer so that really pleased me as there is only just over one hundred games he gives five stars. It even inspired me to by these two PS2 games Rez and Ico. Also when I brought myself a new PC two years ago my old one was at least ten years old. I got myself Half Life 2 as well because I loved the first Half Life game which was also the first game I got for my first PC. All in all this is is a great book on video games and any true gamer real enjoy the read.