A gazetteer of contemporary videogame architecture, a walk through the arcades of yesteryear and the story of how a humble 8-bit computer helped change the computing landscape of a whole country are the subjects of these three new books.
Videogame Architecture
Back in 2024, Thames & Hudson published the Videogame Atlas, one of the first monographs to explore the new digital realms of gaming in a more in-depth, scholarly fashion. Now the company is publishing Videogame Architecture, a new tome from the same team that wants to do the same for the genre’s more fantastical cities and structures.
Arranged as a series of chapters covering some of the key video game releases of the past two decades, including Bioshock, Half-Life 2 and Disco Elysium and many more. To the initiated, these are games characterised by their environments – towering future cities, run-down dystopias or cyberpunk visions.
Videogame Architecture traces the origins and reference material used for all these titles and more, exploring the ways in which architectural form and detail is used to build atmosphere and place, as well as a sense of solidity and realism.
Videogame Architecture: Building Virtual Spaces, Luke Caspar Pearson, Sandra Youkhana, $65, Thames & Hudson, ThamesandHudsonUSA.com, @ThamesandHudson
The Arcade 1971–1999
Subtitled The Stories Behind Classic Coin-Ops, Told by Their Creators, Paul Drury’s new monograph delves into the industry’s rich history and even richer mythology, back when arcade games could still be the creation of a single person not a vast team, and art direction relied on graph paper and felt tip pens.
Published by Bitmap Books, which has made itself a key player in the niche world of video game history and art, The Arcade looks at the first three decades of digital game design, starting with the realm of the arcade and finishing up with the home computer, covering 120 titles in all. With over 400 pages of imagery, interviews and insights, it’s a dive back into a world when pixels could still be trusted.
The Arcade 1971-1999, Paul Drury, £34.99 / $48.00 / €41.95, Bitmap Books, BitmapBooks.com, @BitmapBooks
The Rubber-Keyed Wonder
The Rubber-Keyed Wonder, cover design
Another exercise in 8-bit nostalgia, The Rubber-Keyed Wonder tells the story of one very specific early home computer, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Currently in the planning stage and seeking nostalgia-filled gamers to help Kickstart the project, the plan is for this 200+ page history of Sir Clive Sinclair’s influential machine to appear next year in time for its 45th anniversary.
The computer itself birthed a thriving scene of gaming and programming, with aficionados still creating content for it right up to the present day. Sold around the world, illegally cloned behind the Iron Curtain, and many people’s first encounter with any kind of computer, the Spectrum was a cultural phenomenon. It’s even being re-booted as the ZX Spectrum Next.
The Rubber-Keyed Wonder: The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Story Official Companion Book, support at Kickstarter.com, Golden-Slumbers.co.uk