‘The Arcade 1971-1999’ Book Review: A Solid History Of Arcade Gaming, Despite A Few Omissions

Much of gaming’s formative history occurred in the arcades, and it’s wonderful that we now have a book that covers much of that in great detail.

The timeframe of 1971 to 1999 is also no accident, as this era marks the heyday and the period when arcade games held a huge sway over gaming as a medium.

From the rise and fall of Atari and Sega, not to mention Midway and a slew of other companies, arcade games were a big deal, and it’s nice to see them celebrated like this.

Naturally, as the number of arcade games made is obviously extremely numerous, this book does its best to pick salient games from this era and then go into some nice depth on each.

Some games get more page space than others, but all feature comments from the people who made them, and often some really great concept art as well.

Reading up on games like Darius and R-Type is really lovely, especially as both these series of games defined how shmups as a gaming genre would develop.

This book is also nicely agnostic in the sense that it doesn’t pick a side on which type of arcade games were better, and it also includes both Japanese and American-made arcade games alongside one another.

One of the more unfortunate aspects of arcade games is that fans tend to omit certain types of games depending on where they originated, and the fact that this book doesn’t do that is definitely refreshing.

That said, one of the inevitable aspects of a book like this, even with 408 pages of games covered, is that some key arcade games have had to be omitted.

For instance, both Virtual On and Virtual On Oratorio Tangram are not included here, despite falling within the timeframe this book covers.

Both were and are highly influential arcade games, so it’s unfortunate to see them absent.

While the end of the book covers some interesting cases of unreleased arcade games, I would have rather seen more notable arcade games covered in their stead.

Overall, this is a great book that covers the history of arcade games in a solid and insightful way. Along with great artwork for each game featured. Naturally, some arcade games failed to make the cut, but that doesn’t detract too much from what the book manages to achieve. Definitely worth getting if you were born after this era of games, as it acts as a wonderful window into a now sadly lost era of arcade gaming.

The Arcade 1971-1999 is available from Bitmap Books for $48.

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This article was originally published on Forbes.com