I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
#12 - Dragon Age: The World of Thedas, Volume 1 (Collector's Edition).
This is one of the nicer/pricier books in my collection and it is for one of my favorite series of the past ~10 years or so. The book, which is sort of like a guide/encyclopedia about the world Dragon Age takes place in, features lots of great art and a lot of interesting details that are more enjoyable to read in this form than in piecing together elements of codex and what not in the games themselves. This CE version comes in a hard clamshell box with some gold foil, embossed/debossed hardcover binding, some red cloth lining, a bookmark, gold leaf pages, and a nice piece of art in a standalone "diploma folder" type thing.
OLDER ENTRIES:
#1 - Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984 by Van Burnham (2001)
This was a book I was fortunate enough to first come across in a library when I was working on an essay, and quickly decided to pick up a copy to own because of its rich history and fascinating pictures. There are ~450 pages covering a lot of early hardware and software as well as the culture surrounding video games before the crash. There is an introductory essay by Ralph Baer himself, lots of very artful photographs of hardware, plenty of large format screenshots of games both popular and obscure, and some really compelling stories and historical information. The book is broken up into chronological order (by year) before covering the legacy of those early years towards the end of the book.
(apologies for the slight blur in some of these, I will try to improve as this thread goes!)
This book offers a very rich focus on an era that too often gets the short shrift in other historically-focused books with accompanying photos (e.g. 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die). Most of the "competition" which collects information about the history of games tends to focus the vast majority of their attention on the mid-1980s to the present. If you are at all interested in a good artbook/history combo book about video game's origins, this one is highly recommended.
(apologies for the slight blur in some of these, I will try to improve as this thread goes!)
This book offers a very rich focus on an era that too often gets the short shrift in other historically-focused books with accompanying photos (e.g. 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die). Most of the "competition" which collects information about the history of games tends to focus the vast majority of their attention on the mid-1980s to the present. If you are at all interested in a good artbook/history combo book about video game's origins, this one is highly recommended.
This is the first of several Bogost books I will likely feature in this thread, and by far the most unusual. This book is a combination essay, algorithim-generated poetry book, and collection of homebrew Atari VCS games. A strange mix, for sure, but one that flows quite naturally from Bogost's previous book Racing the Beam and his engagement with coding for that platform. As he explains on his website, this book is a kind of labor of love. You can get a much better understanding of the book (and order a digital copy) here.
This is one where I'd love to have the special edition...If anyone happens to be selling one, please let me know
#3 - SF25: The Art of Street Fighter published by UDON (2014)
This is ~450 pages of high quality art across the history of the Street Fighter franchise, organized by artist and featuring some interesting interviews with many of the most prominent ones. It's all here - marketing materials, concept art, sketches, throw away ideas, promotional materials, "tribute" art, etc. All the pages are heavy stock and feature very rich inks. I only wish it was available in hardcover.
#4 - DOOM Stuff
You might already know about the great write up about the early years and heyday of iD, Masters of Doom by David Kushner (2003). Here's my hardcover copy 
Less likely is that you are familiar with...the novels associated with the game. These were all authored by the same person and released between 1995-1996. I've not read any of them through (eventually I will!), but what I've read so far is equally hilariously bad and...not so bad
...here's more pics of both:
Less likely is that you are familiar with...the novels associated with the game. These were all authored by the same person and released between 1995-1996. I've not read any of them through (eventually I will!), but what I've read so far is equally hilariously bad and...not so bad
...here's more pics of both:
These are two books of art inspired by games from the earliest years of the medium. Many of the pieces that are featured in each book were also presented in a curated exhibit by the author. Most of the work presented is really interesting and creative, and probably deserving of a better treatment than these books give them (the paper quality is nice, but the books are softcover and relatively small for art books). There are some brief but nice contextualizing comments and short essays, though the draw here is undoubtedly the art and not the writing.
These books are basically nicely-imagined and realized primers on the world of Diablo, priming players for what they will play through in Diablo III and its expansion but written from the perspective of characters in the series and collected in a book that is meant to have an "ancient tome" feeling to it. The pencil and ink illustrations on hefty paper are a big draw here even if you don't care about the story surround the Diablo games, but there are also cool little additions like the embossed covers, the stylized page edges, or the included posters at the back of each book. If you do like reading about the world of Diablo, these are generally well written, accessible, and interesting accounts of various histories, characters, etc. that are alluded to in the games and elsewhere. These are still widely available, I'd guess, but I can see them being collector's items in the future.
I probably won't feature strategy guides in here too often, but given that some of these are kind of interesting I thought I'd post them. All of them have some interesting artwork relative to their respective games and they show an interesting progression in both the series and the last 15 years of producing strategy guides. Highlights of each would be the interview about essentially creating a genre at the back the first one, the detailed stat charts in the second, the cool art in the CE manual, and the sweet bookmark and embossed cover art that came with the gorgeous "Inferno Edition" of the Diablo III guide.
DIABLO GUIDE:
DIABLO II CE MANUAL:
DIABLO II GUIDE:
DIABLO III GUIDE:
#8 - Diablo Fiction
I've glanced through the comic - it is "ok" I suppose. The books look...interesting? I will probably crack open the archive at some point and give it a go, but I am just more fascinated that these exist - and that there are so many of them (including a few recent ones I don't have). I am curious, has anyone spent any time with any of them?
Wrapping up Diablo week are the artbooks that came packaged with the collector's versions Diablo III and its expansion. Blizzard makes nice quality artbooks - I don't know that these are amongst my favorites or anything, but they are pretty good quality and have a nice mix of large images and commentary. The coolest thing about these, though, is probably the AR app associated with the Reaper of Souls artbook that lets you do things like this.
Dark Horse makes really nice artbooks, and this is one of their more recent ones. Any artbook is only as good as the art in the game, of course, and in this case the art is quite captivating.
I was fortunate to pick this up at PAX East some years ago...This is far more than just a strategy guide, as the book offers lots of info on the making of the game, interviews with various people involved, comparisons between the Sega CD and PS1 versions of the game, and otherwise delivers all the care you'd expect from Working Designs to this book. It also gives you the walk through and a breakdown of various enemies, systems, stats, etc. as you'd expect. There's even some comics and stickers at the back!
