The Golden Gaming Era in Garish Technicolour!, 26 Mar 2001

But over the following weeks I found myself irresistibly drawn back to this book. And the deeper that I delved into each of the sections, the more I discovered the sheer wealth of factual data within. Each of the major manufacturers of the era, Atari, Casio, Entex, Grandstand and Tomy receives its own section, and many/most games are shown accompanied by scans of original packaging and listed with data such as year, size and even battery requirements. However the extremely small font size set against garish pages make these details easy to overlook.

The culprit behind the visual madness is Büro Destruct. They have used enlarged game characters, icons and original colours to create a graphical grammar that transforms the book itself into an item of vintage allure.

The eight-page prologue is also hidden amongst the bold, and like myself, you may find yourself leaving this until last. But don't. It provides a summary of the development of games that helps to put all of the book's weird and wonderful spectacles into some kind of context.

David Gowing - UK Retro Calculators, Electronic Games, Robots, Mobile Phones, Watches & Jewellery

 Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)