Supercade
A Visual History of the
Videogame Age

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We are finally starting to see more and more books on classic gaming appear on bookstore shelves.  One of the more recent releases is Supercade, by Van Burnam.

As evident by the title, this book takes a strong look at classic gaming from a visual perspective.  The book focuses on coin-op gaming, but coverage of the major consoles are included as well.

The photos in this book are simply incredible.  What is great about these photos is that they also show the arcade cabinets, controllers, side-art, etc.  While many photos consist of flyer scans, or other material that was readily available to the public, there were many photos that have not been seen before.  There is a photo of Nolan Bushnell "testing" Tank coin-op games as they roll off the assembly line.  The photo is absolutely priceless, as it shows "The Father of the Video Game Industry" looking like an amazed little kid playing a new game.

On the downside, many of the photos and flyers have a "pixilated" and grainy look to them as though they were scanned at a low resolution, and enlarged.

Many screen captures have been included to show how the games looked.  Most of the screens are bright & clear & do a very good job of showing elements of gameplay.  I imagine these were taken using MAME, or some other arcade emulator.  Having said that, some of the screen captures left me scratching my head wondering why they were included.  For example, the screen capture for Tron shows the "menu" screen where you select which of the four mini-games you want to play.  The photo didn't show the tanks, the MCP cone, the lightcycles, or any other major element of gameplay.  I felt that was a poor choice.

Also, there are places where there should be some screen captures, but none have been included.  Two pages were dedicated to the "Vectrex" system.  There was plenty of room to show photos of the colored screen overlays, yet no in-game screen captures were shown for this vector-graphics home console.

The book just does not "flow" very well.  The chapters are divided in chronological order up to 1984.  However, the games in each chapter are presented in alphabetical order instead of chronological order.  In my opinion, that was not the right way to do it.  Why?  I'll illustrate my point by looking at the chapter for 1973.  Atari's fourth coin-op (Gotcha) is described in the book before Atari's second coin-op (Space Race).  (The book incorrectly identifies Space Race as Atari's third coin-op.  In fact, Atari's third coin-op was Pong Doubles.)  Also, Space Race was licensed to Bally/Midway and later released as Asteroid.  The entry for Asteroid comes before Space Race, but does not describe the gameplay at all.  It just says that the gameplay was identical to Space Race, so if you want to know what the game was all about, you have to page ahead to the entry for Space Race.

I found this to be confusing.  If you are going to present your material based on the year it was released, I would think that the chapters should be organized by date of release.  Thus, the entry for Space Race should have been first, followed by Gotcha and Asteroid.  This puts the information in proper chronological order, and improves the flow of the material.  I think this would have avoided a lot of frustration on my part while reading the book.  For that matter, why include a separate listing for Asteroid.  A brief mention of the game in the section for Space Race would have been enough. 

I think what really annoys me about this book are the quantity of errors and incorrect facts.  There many ridiculous and glaring mistakes in this book.  Some mistakes were so obvious, I am surprised no one caught them before the book went to press.  Want some examples?  Well, I have plenty, but I'll list a few of them here....

Page 277 states that Atari renamed the VCS to 2600 in 1982, yet page 331 says that the name change didn't take place until 1983.

Probably the most boneheaded error in the book is on page 378.  The author talks about the Atari Games title 720.  The article talks about how the game was released in 1984.  Well, the author is dead-wrong, as the game wasn't released until 1986.  How do I know this?  Aside from the fact that I pride myself on my knowledge of coin-op history, the answer was right in front of my face.  The screen capture that accompanies the article on 720 shows the copyright date as 1986.  That's right -- the copyright date for the game is right on the picture.  How did everyone miss this?  Technically, this game never should have been in the book, because the book only covers games up until 1984.

Other errors include listing Alan Alda as the commercial pitch-man for the Atari 400/800 computers.  (Alda didn't make his appearance until the 600XL/800XL computers were introduced several years later.)  The book states that the Pop Flamer coin-op by Jaleco was a Japan-only release.  I knew that was wrong when I read it, because I remember playing it.  Sure enough, after a quick check on the Killer List of Videogames site, I saw that it was licensed in the US by Stern in 1983.  KLOV even shows a photo of the American Pop Flamer coin-op marquee with the Stern name and logo on it.    

The book also barely mentions the split of Atari after the Tramiel family stepped in.  As a result, all post-Tramiel coin-op games are incorrectly identified as produced by Atari.  They should be listed as created by Atari Games, which ended up as a completely separate company.

This brings up another inconsistency.  Many times over the years, a coin-op company will license out games for manufacture in foreign countries.  Namco licensed many of their Japanese games to Atari for manufacture in North America.  At the top of each coin-op page, the game and the company who created it are listed in large type.  In some cases, games (such as Dig-Dug) are properly listed as created by Namco.  In other cases (such as the driving game TX-1) the Namco games are incorrectly mentioned as being created by Atari.

There are other errors pertaining to the coin-op companies as well.  For example, page 392 states that Atari, and not Bally/Midway, created The Tapper series of games.  (Tapper, Root Beer Tapper, etc.)

Conclusion:

Supercade has the finest collection of classic videogame photos that I have seen in any book.  As a "coffee table book," Supercade is a winner.

The problem is the written material.  So much of it is wrong, and much of the historical data is presented just as well (if not better) by various classic gaming sites on the Internet.  There is very little in the way of "new" information in this book, so I find it almost impossible to justify the $50 suggested retail price.  Granted, there are some great articles in this book, such as the story of "Q*Bert" by the designer of the game, and Keita Iida's section on the Atari 5200.  Another good story was written by a former contestant of the old "Starcade" game show.  Other information provided by distinguished authors Leonard Herman & Stephen Kent is first rate.  However, those few sections hardly outweigh the massive quantity of old & rehashed material.

The book mentions all of the games that we used to play.  The entries you would expect to see like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Pole Position, etc. are all here.  I'm disappointed about the lack of coverage of the rare games we might not have seen during the "golden age."  Where is our coverage of games like Midway's Dog Patch from 1977?  The game had a cabinet that looked like an outhouse, and featured two guys in overalls shooting tin cans out of the air with shotguns.  Granted, it is a silly game that people probably never played, but obscure games like this is what made the "golden age" so much fun.

Van Burnam is a contributing editor to Wired magazine, a member of a number of organizations such as the International Game Designers Association, and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.  Considering the countless resources at her disposal, I would have expected to find more "new" and "fresh" material.  I came away from this book feeling like it was a "cut and paste" book -- as if most of the material was collected by visiting gaming web sites and reading game descriptions from promotional gaming flyers.  Van claims to be a "videogame junkie," but I found very few sections of the book that showed any true knowledge or passion for the games.  In short, I expected more material, fewer mistakes, and better stories from someone like Van Burnam.

I really wanted to give this book a high rating.  I thoroughly enjoyed the photos and art.  Supercade does a great job of showing us what it was like during the golden age of gaming.  In the end, I just couldn't give this game a great rating because the visual "eye-candy" doesn't cover up all of the faults, errors and inaccuracies with the book.

For more information, or to
order a copy of Supercade,
visit the Supercade web site