Today, Katamari Damacy is one of Bandai Namco’s most beloved series, but when its creator Keita Takahashi was trying to bring his quirky idea to life in the early 2000s, he encountered numerous pitfalls along the way, mostly in the form of bureaucratic red tape. But he persevered and won, as author L. E. Hall…
The 2014 indie hit Shovel Knight paid homage to the Nintendo Entertainment System’s pixel art and game design, but its developers also wanted to polish up the harsh edges of 1980s platform games. In this excerpt from Boss Fight Books’ new book Shovel Knight, out today, author David L. Craddock speaks to the four…
I grew up reading Harry Potter, and it shaped my life to the extent that I have a Deathly Hallows tattoo. As an adult, I wish J.K. Rowling would just me enjoy her books in peace.
This is Shareware Heroes, a new book that has behind the scenes tales from studios like id, Epic and Apogee as they blazed a free-to-try trail across the PC market in the 80s and 90s.
Destiny’s Grimoire Cards, an infuriatingly scattered way to read up on a lore that’s actually pretty cool, are being combined and released in a series of books.
Sega Master System: a visual compendium is an upcoming coffee table book from Bitmap Books, the same team behind the incredible Super Famicom box art collection.
Specialist publisher Read-Only Memory, the team behind A+ books like the Sega Genesis Collected Works, are trying something different. Instead of releasing another coffee table book about video games, they’re releasing a coffee table book about video games that also has cardboard pop-ups of old Sega arcade cabinets.
Virtual Cities is an upcoming book by Konstantinos Dimopoulos that takes a very hard look at some of the most famous cities in video games, from GTA V’s Los Santos to Yakuza’s Kamurocho to Fallout’s New Vegas.
The third and final volume in Blizzard’s exhaustive history of Azeroth comes out on March 27. Dark Horse Books slipped us a few pages from World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume 3 to give us an idea of what to expect.
HG101's Kurt Kalata has written a hardcover book “covering 101 weird, obscure, historically important, and just plain cool Japanese video games.” You can grab it on Kickstarter.
In 2012, Square Enix Japan published a trio of Final Fantasy 25th Memorial Ultimania books collecting art, developer commentary and background information on the first 14 numbered Final Fantasy games. Now Dark Horse is publishing the books in English, with the first 336 page volume arriving in July. We got samples.…
Having had tremendous success with its trio of The Legend of Zelda reference books, Dark Horse Publishing sets its sights on the Mushroom Kingdom, chronicling three decades of Nintendo gaming in the Super Mario Encyclopedia.
Varric Tethras is Dragon Age’s wry but poetic dwarf. Making his first appearance in Dragon Age 2, he’s not just a resourceful hunter and trap layer but also a famous writer. His novel “Hard in Hightown” is a best seller in the continent of Thedas and, it turns out, soon to be published in the real world.
For followers of our Fine Art feature, here’s State of the Art : A Digital Art Anthology, a coffee table book showcasing the work of some of the world’s best concept artists, like Ian McQue and Goro Fujita.
Kotaku reader Ian Wenstrand has written and illustrated a children’s book called Plugged In, where a kid obsessed with video games wakes up in a land that “blurs the line between the real and virtual worlds”.
Strategy guide books are a tough sell in 2017, since the internet is free, but I like what Future has tried with their newish Last Guardian thing, which tries to combine tips with other stuff like interviews and concept art all in the one book.
Due out in April from Dark Horse, The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia is a 320-page tome covering the characters, places and things from the first 30 years of Nintendo’s RPG series. The newly-revealed $80 deluxe edition looks very familiar.
Is Final Fantasy V the best of the series? Whether you agree or disagree, if you love old-school Final Fantasy games you might want to read my new book Final Fantasy V, which is available now from Boss Fight Books.
Nintendo’s partnership with publisher Dark Horse has already brought us two outstanding volumes, Hyrule Historia and Art & Artifacts. Next April the “Goddess Collection” gets its third and final volume in The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia, a comprehensive guide to the series from the first game to Twilight Princess HD.
If you are interested in hearing the stories behind games like Uncharted 4, Star Wars 1313, Shovel Knight, and Dragon Age: Inquisition, then I sure do have the book for you!
