PixlBit

For those of us whose interest in games goes beyond just playing them, these two books are fascinating reads. Game Over chronicles the rise of Nintendo and its dominance of the 8-bit market (the tale of how Nintendo came to possess the Tetris license is particularly interesting) whereas Console Wars covers Sega's assault on that dominance with the Genesis. The book adopts an odd narative style, as if it were a novel rather than a historical account, but the information it purveys is great stuff. Neither book is perfect—Game Over, published in 1993, is colored by the Japanophobia of the time and Console Wars has a little hero worship going for Tom Kalinski, Sega of America's president during the majority of the Genesis era—but together they provide a great starting point for the amateur game historian.

The game Song of the Deep holds a special place in my heart. I picked it up right before the birth of my first daughter (#3 in the overall line up) and my memories of it are tied to that stressful but happy time. For Christmas that year my wife got me the novelization and later I found the Pop figure and vehicle for way under market value and grabbed that too (game, novel, and Pop make a nice display). The novel (which I have read!) is aimed at a younger age set and is certainly not as strong as the game but I enjoyed it all the same, swimming again through those memories of when our family first became five people.

Here are some more second hand finds I'd like to read. The BioShock prequel, Rapture, is more rewarding the more familiar you are with the series. Much of the BioShock story takes place before the game, and so characters that you only hear of or encounter once they're crazed or deranged figure prominently into the story. The Witcher should need no introduction since that series is still all the rage these days. This is the first book. My wife picked up the Quantum Break novel entirely on the surprising strength of its reviews. The game looks pretty interesting too, so if I ever get around to the one, I'm sure I'll get to the other after that.

Finally, something I've read through! (I promise, folks, I do actually read things.) I love the Deus Ex franchise and have read both of the novels you see below. The first one, Icarus Effect, is a prequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution and stars original characters. It is pretty good and really helps to set up the world that the games take place in. This novel was followed by a mobile game that was an honest to goodness full Deus Ex experience that continued the story of these characters. The game is supposedly quite good but when I tried it I could not grok the controls. The screen was so cluttered with buttons and icons and menus! The second novel, Black Light, stars Adam Jensen from the console games as well as some other familiar faces like Pritchard. Of the two it was the novel I enjoyed more, perhaps because of its intrinsic fanservice qualities, but they were both good. I don't know that I would recommend them to someone who was not a fan of the games (there are so many great science fiction novels that stand alone, after all) but if you enjoyed that world and are looking for more, by all means dive in.

Speaking of my wife (which I did yesterday), here is her collection of Dragon Age books. DA is her favorite game series and these novels are supposedly quite good. Similar to our Halo novels, these have not been read yet and three of the four were picked up second hand. But she'll get to them! And I wouldn't be opposed to reading these myself, perhaps, once I finish with the fourteen thousand other books I have.*

One time in high school we had an away football game that was so far away that we stayed overnight. One of the other guys brought the first Halo novel, The Fall of Reach, with him but then proceeded to socialize rather than read it. Weird. So I borrowed it and got about halfway through the book that weekend...and then never finished it. But I did like what I read. Fast forward the better part of a decade and I'm married to a wonderful girl who likes both reading and Halo. So while neither of us has actually read through any of these books yet, we always pick them up when we see them at Goodwill or a second hand shop. One of these days I'll have a Halo novel marathon.

My wife loves the Costume Quest games and at one point I got her this comic, which she tells me was very good. I have gone through two consectutive Octobers now where I said I would read it (because you have to read it around Halloween, duh) and haven't yet. But I have read this Prince of Persia comic and it's really weird. Not bad but...seriously, there are giant sand babies at one point. Weeeeird.

At one point Nintendo Power—back when print journalism was a thing—ran comics for some of their big franchises. My favorite, by far, is the Mario Adventures comic. It was just so much fun, especially when Luigi and Princess Toadstool (who was not yet known as Peach) swapped clothes to fool the koopalings. Such hijinks! And I love the art. The A Link to the Past comic was good as well, though of course much less silly. There have also been a bunch of high quality Zelda manga but I've read only the one for Ocarina of Time. I'd like to get more of them though. There is even a short Skyward Sword manga in the back of Hyrule Historia.

Since Mega Man and Sonic were under the same publishing roof for a while and written by the same person, we got to enjoy TWO big crossovers between the franchises (and the second one then brought in all kinds of Capcom and Sega goodness). The first crossever, Worlds Collide, came out in three trades and then one large omnibus, which is what I bought. The first two trades of the second crossover, Worlds Unite, came out before Archie dropped the ball and I had to buy the remainder of the series as used single issues.

When I ran out of Mega Man comics to read, I shifted over to Sonic. Writer Ian Flynn got his start with Sonic before being given Mega Man as well and while I don't think Sonic ever reaches the heights of the blue bomber, it is still quite enjoyable. Archie was still bungling publishing. Trades came out something like two years after the issues they collected. If I had the time and money (I don't have enough of either), I could hunt down all the single issues that didn't make it into trades, but that's a pipedream.