Retrogamer’s Videogames Hardware Handbook

Today i got my hands on Retrogamers bookazine “Videogames Hardware Handbook” which is a very nice collection of reviews from consoles released between 1977 to 1999.

The Retrogamer magazine started to advertise this bookazine for a couple of issues ago, the only problem was that there where that they didn’t explain what was in the bookazine! Retrogamer had a BIG ad in every issue but NO info on what the readers would get. The online Imagine shop where you order the bookazine only mentions “256 pages of history’s greatest videogame hardware.” Hey, Image publishing and Retrogamer, do you want people do buy your stuff or what? Give us some more info next time!

Well as i now have the bookazine in my hands im gonna help you out. So first of, yes this is a huge book of 256 pages jam-packed with reviews, history, photos and screenshots of old consoles and the games that defined the consoles. Every console consists of a review/history review followed by my favorite “Perfect 10 games” section that lists the 10 best games for the console in question. Good for people who maybe needs game recommendations for a console they just have gotten there hands on.

Its good to know that all the reviews in Videogames Hardware Handbook are actually old reviews from previous issues of Retrogamer. So if you already have all retrogamer issues there is really no point of buing this bookazine, unless you want all the reviews in one place.

So lets get to the content of the Videogames Hardware Handbook. As i think the “Perfect top 10” important i gonna mark all the consoles with a little star ” * ” before the consoles name to indicate if the perfect top 10 is included or not.

1977-79

* Atari 2600

1980-89

* Intellivision
* Game & Watch
* Sinclair ZX81
* BBC Micro
* ZX Spectrum
* Dragon 32
* Commodore 64
* Vectrex
* MSX
* Famicom
* Amstrad CPC 464
– Commodore Amiga
* Atari ST
* Nintendo Entertainment System
* Sega Master System
* PC Engine
– Sega Mega Drive
* Konix Multi System
* Nintendo GameBoy
* Atari Lynx

1990-99

* Sega Game Gear
* SNES
* Philips CD-i
* Sega Mega-CD
* 3DO
* Atari Jaguar
* Sega Saturn
– NEC PC-FX
* Nintendo 64
– Nintendo Virtual Boy
* Game Boy Color
* Sega Dreamcast
* Neo Geo Pocket
* Bandai Wonder Swan

So is this book worth purchasing? Yes, yes it is. Its a very nice collection of reviews and really well written and composed with images and screenshots. The bookazine only costs 11euro and can be be ordered from the Imagine Publishing shop. I know they have been out of stock before so if they are that now, i hope they will reprint it. http://www.imagineshop.co.uk/item_show.php?itemID=1382

Volume 2 has also been released, check out my review of it here: https://subretro.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/retrogamers-videogames-hardware-handbook-vol-2/