The Nostalgia Nerd’s Retro Tech - Computers, Consoles, & Games

[ Table of Contents ]

The Nostalgia Nerd’s Retro Tech - Computers, Consoles, & Games
By Peter Leigh

The Nostalgia Nerd's Retro Tech: Computer, Consoles & Games, a November 2018 released book by author Peter Leigh, covers about 50 gaming consoles and home computers from the early to mid 70s through to the early 2000s. Except for a brief blurb at the end of the book, it purposely leaves out handheld gaming and PC gaming, possibly as subjects for future books. In addition to the hardware, three “Must See, Must Play, and Must Avoid ” games for each platform are briefly covered as well. In addition to hardware popular with North American consumers, the author, based in the UK, covers systems that were popular in the UK and Europe as well, so I was able to learn about systems and games that I wasn’t as familiar with.

I didn’t always agree with the author’s “Must See, Must Play, and Must Avoid” choices, who doesn’t like K-Razy Shoot-Out? But I wholeheartedly agree with others, like Ultima IV on the Apple II platform. It's all subjective, and like the Apple/Atari/Commodore wars of the early 1980s, it's all part of the fun.

Ultima IV

Other than the few editing mistakes (see page 70 for an  example), and a few errors (page 127, Ballblazer was originally released for the Atari 8-bit computers, not the Atari 5200), my one complaint, is that the text can be rather small in some places (Must See, Must Play, and Must Avoid), which is unfortunate, as there seems to be plenty of surrounding white space that could have been filled with a large font size.

If you are a fan of retro gaming consoles, retro computers, and retro video games, you should enjoy this book. The hardcover edition has full color graphics on a kind of thick, flat, cardstock type paper. It has 224 pages full of retro goodness. As of this writing, the hardcover edition costs about 14 USD on Amazon, which makes it a bargain.