The NES Era has arrived

My latest book, which offers a holistic photographic overview of Japanese console games from 1979 through October 1985 (you know, when Japanese consoles first reached the U.S. via the NES) is now available for preorder at LRG.

This is a proper, traditional coffee table book focused on images and photos while still providing context for the games and the circumstances of their release. It's also very large! The size of a modest vinyl boxset, specifically—12x12x1"! Here is a to-scale comparison of a page from Vol. 3 to a page from NES Works 1985:

This first volume features a large box photo and description of every* Japanese console game from before the NES launch... about 240 in total. I don't know if it would make sense to release a book adaptation of NES Works Gaiden Epoch/Gakken/Casio/etc., since it's such a niche topic, but I do think a showcase of all these gorgeous boxes (that just happens to include a bit of text focused on history and that places each game in its original release context) has more appeal. So this may be as close as you ever get to a proper NES Works Gaiden book, at least until I win the lottery and can afford to lose money on a vanity press project like that.

Speaking of not losing money, the large size of this book makes it very expensive to produce, which is why these are going to be released strictly in this single preorder-based print run... you know, like LRG's standard business model. Books of this size usually retail for $80-150+ bucks in order to cover the cost of printing without having to sell through the entire run, but I don't want to charge that much for a book. The limited preorder approach means we can sell each volume for $65 and still not have to worry about losing our shirts.

*Uh oh, an asterisk! Yes, there are a few omissions: Two extremely rare games I have not yet managed to find. Also, I'm not including Atari's Japanese iterations of the 2600, since neither of those efforts involved new, original game releases. I do have an Atari 2800 game sample in there, though!

I hope you will please check it out and maybe even buy a copy? If I can sell enough of these NES Era books, I can convince the powers-that-be to let me tackle the 16-bit era next. And maybe handheld games, the Atari age, and who knows what else. Let's make the dream work, with team work (i.e. commerce).