Nice! I missed that earlier. I like yours more than what they went with.
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NES Works and Gameboy Works by Jeremy Parish.
I haven’t really gotten to either yet, but I will soon. They both feel very nice and heavy, appropriately sized and very colorful. The real surprise is that, from a quick glance, there’s a lot more than just historical recaps on the games. These books go fairly in-depth, using the chronological order to really flesh out the history and put you in the time period of when these games released.
I also honestly ordered NES Vol 1 from fangamer, but they sent me gameboy works instead, by mistake. It took them only a few minutes to fix the error after I emailed them, so I’ll be ordering from them again in the future.
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I’ll second Master’s of Doom. Carmack and Romero have an interesting history and it was a great read.
If you are into Western RPGs, Dungeons and Desktops covers all the major CRPG releases from the late 70’s to the early 2000’s.
The author, Matt Barton, also has a great YouTube channel, with the focus mainly on CRPGs and the people behind the games.
Matt Chat
Did you receive any notice of it shipping? Haven’t had any word from them in months and made sure to check my pledge to see that I had my address and everything. Got worried when I received a normal email from them advertising buying it from their store.
Also how was it shipped? They are one of the book sellers that don’t have good packaging/edge protection on their shipping unless they changed something.
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The Parish books are great, and follow along with his video series. Yes, they are more than just info dumps. He puts each game in context and takes a critic’s eye to all of them. I’m honestly not too big on these kinds of books because they’re mainly just a prettier version of a Wikipedia entry but poorly written and with typos, but Parish is an exception. It’s original content and very polished and professional.
Check his videos if you like the books.
I received an email (entirely in french bizarrely) stating that it was in the process of being delivered to me. Then the following week it arrived.
How was it shipped? Not very well I’m afraid to say. Came in an Amazon box with scrunched up paper inside that acted like padding. And as a result, there were a few very light side dents on the Kickstarter exclusive slipcase (which didn’t bother me tbh. The N64 had them too.) but one of the bottom corner of the slipcase got damaged badly 
Seems like the bottom got crushed or something and as a result there was a tear. I’ve emailed them to voice my concern given I warned them about packaging back in September. We’ll see if anything comes out of that. Thankfully, the books themselves are all in good shape. It seems people on the comments section of the kickstarter had it worse. Their books are badly damaged from what I’ve seen.
Update: Got a response from them just now and they said they’ll send over a new slipcase 
I’ve been reading a bunch of the Hardcoregaming101 books. I’ve done the HG101 Presents: Castlevania The Unofficial Guide to Konami Shooters, and The Guide to SHoot-em-ups Vol 1. They’re overall good, interesting reads. My only issue is that I wish they would get a better editor. I swear almost every article is filled with spelling, grammar, or other weird errors. It’s not a huge deal, but it seems like a lot of it is just stuff that should have been caught by a proper editor. Right now I’m a chapter or two into The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers.
As much as I have been disappointed with their packaging I will say their customer service is great. I’ve gotten a few damaged things from them now but they have always been ready to replace it and without me having to ship things back/do more than provide pictures of the damage. Also was able to get one of the things I thought was out of print/stock by just emailing to see if they had extra.
They really really need to work on their shipping though.
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I agree. It seems they’re too “headstrong” to publish the books in the proper way with the proper processes. IMHO most self published books suffer the same issues.
I backed this on KS for an amount I’m too embarrassed to ever tell my wife. Still I couldn’t read them. Which is why I’m looking out for the forthcoming abridged, edited and designed reissue by ROM under the title “Japansoft”.
Aww that’s fantastic! Yeah, they seem to be eager to get on top of this issue but I honestly wished they nipped it in the bud and sorted their packaging/shipping situation earlier. Still, will be funding their NES one soon. I really like their stuff!
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It seems like most of their stuff is just their website articles shoved into book format. I don’t know why they’re so against just having an editor look over the stuff. It really hurts the overall experience, and leaves me basically saying ohh well I’m only going to pick this up on sale, or super cheap kindle versions.
That is interesting I may have to give this a solid look. There’s a reason I’m only a few chapters into it so far and that’s because it’s not a well edited easy read. I mean part of it is probably my own fault, and I should have done some research before buying it and realized it was just a collection of interviews.
I don’t know, I don’t mean to sound like I’m attacking it or the guy who wrote it but the format just doesn’t work for me. I know he did a kickstarter to get money to interview Japanese developers and write a book about that, but just publishing your interviews doesn’t feel like writing a book to me. Maybe I’m off base on this since so many people seem to love it and recommend it.
I know the author and I’ve told him as much, and he appreciates it but in this instance he had a very difficult time with the situation surrounding the translation of those interviews and just had to get the out.
He’s as eager as the rest of us to see how the new version does. There’s good in the content it just needs to be more accessible.
I’ve said it before, but I think edge protection should be a bare minimum when it comes to shipping books and my god damn thin boxed collector edition games.
The only reason why places like Bitmap and Read-Only Memory stand out is because of how bad most other places are. I struggle to buy anything from Amazon knowing it’s just going to be in a bubble mailer. Not that a box with no padding is much better when they do decide to splurge. That may even be an Amazon US issue since books I’ve had shipped from Amazon JP were tightly packed in a different kind of box/wrap around box that had extra cardboard well past the edges that takes the damage.
Anyway, feels like I went off on a tangent.
Edit: Scrolled up because this seemed so familiar and yeah, we talked about this exact thing when that kickstarter just started. How time flies.
Second Edit: Speak of the devil, directly from Amazon today;
Hey only one badly damaged corner.
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I got my slipcase replacement today and it was still packaged badly (Amazon box with scrap paper wrapping inside) but at least the slipcase wasn’t damaged this time round. So top marks from them for swiftly rectifying the problem and sending a replacement but…come on with the packaging! hahahahaha.
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Can’t wait for that one
Great!
Shame they have made the design worse.
