Konami's secret games console, the origin of Game Arts and Quintet, unusual events at Telenet, stories on Falcom, politics behind Enix's game programming contests, a tour of the Love-de-Lic and WARP offices (with layout sketches). Every interviewee is asked about unreleased titles. Foreword by GAMESIDE magazine's editor-in-chief, Yusaku Yamamoto. INTERVIEWEES INCLUDE: Hitoshi YONEDA / Tatsuo NOMURA / Katsutoshi EGUCHI / Toru HIDAKA / Roy OZAKI / Kouichi YOTSUI / Masaaki KUKINO / Yoshitaka Murayama / Harry Inaba / Ryukushi07 / Kotaro UCHIKOSHI / ZUN / Yoshiro KIMURA / Kouji YOKOTA / Jun Nagashima / Yuzo KOSHIRO / Masamoto MORITA / Akira TAKIGUCHI / Masakuni MITSUHASHI / Kohei IKEDA / Hiroshi SUZUKI / Tomonori SUGIYAMA / Yutaka ISOKAWA / Yasuhito SAITO / Takaki KOBAYASHI / Keite ABE / Keiji INAFUNE / Makoto GOTO

    Welcome to the hell house! Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: Castlevania includes 158 pages with full reviews of over thirty Castlevania titles - starting from the 1986 Nintendo original up to the 2014 Lords of Shadow 2 - plus reviews of clone games, soundtracks, books, trivia, and more!

    The veteran game journalist takes you inside the curious experience of life and work in video games -- through the lens of one week spent at the incredible Game Developers Conference.Available in epub, mobi (kindle compatible), microsoft word, and pdf formats.

    Two opposing cultures. One multi-billion-dollar video-game empire. Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire - Book 1 invites readers to discover the origin of Blizzard North, a studio built by gamers, for gamers, and Blizzard Entertainment, a convergence of designers driven to rule their industry. Composed from exhaustive research and hundreds of personal interviews, the Stay Awhile and Listen series divulges the fated meeting that brought the two Blizzards together, the clashes that tore them apart, and their transformation from grassroots democracy to corporate empire. At the center of it all—Diablo, a hack-and-slash adventure through the darkest recesses of Hell that changed online gaming forever.

    For eighteen years, Doug Walsh was one of the most prolific authors of officially licensed video game strategy guides. And now he's ready to talk. One part memoir and one part industry tell-all, The Walkthrough takes players on an entertaining march through gaming’s recent history, from the dawn of the PlayStation to the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Switch. Follow along as Walsh retraces his career and reveals how the books were made, what it was like writing guides to some of the industry’s most celebrated — and derided — titles, and why the biggest publishers of guidebooks are no longer around. Walsh devotes entire chapters to many of gaming’s most popular franchises, including Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Gears of War, and Diablo, among others. From inauspicious beginnings with Daikatana to authoring the books for the entire Bioshock trilogy, with plenty of highs, lows, and Warp Pipes along the way, Walsh delivers a rare treat to twenty-first century gamers. The Walkthrough is sure to satisfy the curiosity of anyone who grew up with the works of BradyGames and Prima Games sprawled across their laps. With over one hundred books to his credit, and countless weeks spent at many of the most famous studios in North America, he is uniquely qualified to give an insider’s perspective of a little-known niche within the multi-billion-dollar industry.

    Reviews of new games and profiles of game designers now regularly appear in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and sales figures for games are reported alongside those of books, music, and movies. They are increasingly used for purposes other than entertainment, yet debates about videogames still fork along one of two paths: accusations of debasement through violence and isolation or defensive paeans to their potential as serious cultural works. In How to Do Things with Videogames, Ian Bogost contends that such generalizations obscure the limitless possibilities offered by the medium’s ability to create complex simulated realities.Bogost, a leading scholar of videogames and an award-winning game designer, explores the many ways computer games are used today: documenting important historical and cultural events; educating both children and adults; promoting commercial products; and serving as platforms for art, pornography, exercise, relaxation, pranks, and politics. Examining these applications in a series of short, inviting, and provocative essays, he argues that together they make the medium broader, richer, and more relevant to a wider audience.Bogost concludes that as videogames become ever more enmeshed with contemporary life, the idea of gamers as social identities will become obsolete, giving rise to gaming by the masses. But until games are understood to have valid applications across the cultural spectrum, their true potential will remain unrealized. How to Do Things with Videogames offers a fresh starting point to more fully consider games’ progress today and promise for the future.

    As suddenly as they gained popularity, they were made obsolete by the next big thing - a newfangled system called the Internet. Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie takes its readers on an exciting journey through the BBS era. Through the author's personal tales and adventures, readers will discover more about these amazing times and what it was like to grow up online. With tales of copyfests, BBS parties and random acts of online debauchery, those who were there will find themselves reminiscing, while those who weren't will enjoy learning about life ""before the 'net."" You know, back when we used to modem uphill, both ways in the snow.

    A huge step beyond the text-oriented games that preceded it, the genre took the world by storm, and proved immensely popular with computers over the next decade. A combination of storytelling and puzzle solving, they provided the ability to explore a world and experience a narrative without the need for twitchy reflexes demanded of arcade games. This nearly comprehensive book includes reviews for over 250 games from the golden age of the graphic adventure genre, running from 1984 to roughly 2000, focusing on promiminent publishers such as: -LucasArts (Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Sam & Max, Grim Fandango) -Sierra On-Line (King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Gabriel Knight) -Legend (Spellcasting, Eric the Unready, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon) -And several other popular and not-so-popular series and games (Zork, Myst, Broken Sword, The Longest Journey, Simon the Sorcerer, The Last Express, and dozens of others) -Also includes interviews with several adventure game developers, including Al Lowe (creator of Leisure Suit Larry), Corey Cole (creator of Quest for Glory), Bob Bates (founder of Legend Entertainment) and Josh Mandel (writer and designer for Sierra).

    Book that tell an extraordinary story about game design. Learn about terryfying presentation of International Gamers Nominee Pret-a-Porter. Learn how much time was needed to design Golden Geek Best Card Game nominee 51st State. Learn how kids helped designind Dice Tower nominee Robinson Crusoe...Read stories behind scenes. Learn about designing one of the most popular boardgames. You find them all in this one book.

    The first in a four volume series, this book has more interesting tidbits than a hundred pop up videos. Learn about the colorful history of TSR and the wave of D&D inspired games (and gaming companies) to follow, and dip your toes into wargaming trivia. Whether you’re a long-time gamer who greets each mention of a ’70s title with “I remember that!” or a new-to-the-hobby sort who wants to know how we got here in the first place, Shannon Appelcline’s meticulously researched history won’t disappoint.

    It is essential reading for designer, critic, and straight-up rank 'n' file gamer alike." --Robin D. Laws, creator of HeroQuest and Feng Shui Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball think a lot about games. At their commentary website, Gameplaywright.net, they think out loud about what it means to play games, make games, sell games, and love games. They are gamers. Here, with fellow game designers and notable game players, they think out loud on paper in the first Gameplaywright book. Things We Think About Games collects dozens on dozens of bite-sized thoughts about games. From the absurd to the magnificent, the demonstrable to the dogmatic, this collection spans both the breadth of games--board, card, roleplaying and more--and the depth of gaming, offering insights about collecting, playing, critiquing, designing, and publishing.

    It has three questions at its heart: where did Dark Souls come from, what makes it so special, and why are we all so obsessed with it? YOU DIED is a must-read for anyone who’s ever braved the wilds of Lordran, for five hours or 500. Includes exclusive new interview material with the game’s director Hidetaka Miyazaki

    Author Mike Selinker (Betrayal at House on the Hill) has invited some of the world's most talented and experienced game designers to share their secrets on game conception, design, development, and presentation. In these pages, you'll learn about storyboarding, balancing, prototyping, and playtesting from the best in the business.

    Their essays cover the spectrum of the hobby market, from role-playing games to collectible card games, miniatures games to wargames to board games, with titles both familiar and esoteric. Writers include such legendary designers as Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons; Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering and Larry Harris, creator of Axis and Allies; best-selling authors R. A. Salvatore, Tracy Hickman, Ed Greenwood, and Michael Stackpole; computer industry notables Bruce Shelley of Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires) and Jack Emmert of Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes); as well as dozens of other noteworthy and award-winning creators. Hobby Games: The 100 Best also features a foreword by board game legend Reiner Knizia and an afterword by wargame legend James F. Dunnigan.

    This genre includes classics such as Ultima and The Bard's Tale as well as more modern games such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. Written in an engaging style for both the computer game enthusiast and the more casual computer game player, this book explores the history of the genre by telling the stories of the developers, games, and gamers who created it.