What’s the size of a manga tankobon but brimming with Japanese Arcade goodness? It’s “Arcade Mania! The Turbo-Charged World of Japan’s Game Centers” by Brian Ashcraft (of Kotaku) with Jean Snow (previously with the now dead Pingmag).

Compact in size the book nevertheless remains an eye opening experience on Japanese arcades, known there as game centers. If you thought that arcades are all about Street Fighter and DDR, you are seriously mistaken.

From crane games to shmups and then over the beat-em-ups and card games, Arcade Mania rises above the din of arcades to bring you not only both old and new Japanese arcade trends but also the personalities in the respective trends.

Among those featured are the Beast himself, Daigo Umehara, shmup game creators, a DDR-playing gaijin (who is very good with it), sticker booth model Sakurina and many more. The book is also chokeful with little known but very interesting facts. Did you know that Sega and Taito were not formed by Japanese, even though they are now identified as Japanese video game companies?

This book, is a must have for arcade fans or anyone curious about Japanese gaming culture. I bought mine over at Acmamall after failling to find the book at both Kinokuniya and MPH.

I’ve got a collection note from Pos Laju that requires me to collect something from the post office, in-person, no representatives allowed. Could it be that my copy of Arcade Mania (by Brian Ashcraft) is sitting at the post office, waiting for me?

Well, it will have to wait till Monday cause today is a Friday. Furthermore, even if the post office opens tomorrow, I’ll be leaving early for a holiday at the Cameron Highlands. To all you guys out there staying back in KL, all the best stemming the feeling of pain after spending a bomb on Valentine Day’s dinner.

A friend of mine who recently came back from his holiday Down Under passed a copy of FHM Australia’s March 2009 issue. Ahh. Now this is a much more classier, cooler, hotter, nicer (you can put together all the nice adjectives here) compared to the Malaysian rag we have here. The articles are quite good, nevermind the women (I think they toned it down a bit).

Even a news items from Malaysia made a two page news item in the magazine and here’s the downer, it was concerning the landslide in Bukit Antarabangsa. My problem with the mag is that the landslide piece made KL sound like the landslide capital of Asia.

Here’s the part where it gets to me a little: “The city was hit by a massive landslide on 6 December last year……And it’s not the first time nature pulled the rug from under the Malaysian capital. In 1993, the Highland Towers apartment building collapsed after a landslide triggered by heavy rain, killing 48 people. Visit at your peril”

But then again, if hillside developments continue to flourish, then perhaps FHM Australia is right!

Talking bout FHM and Malaysia, Tim Chew of Mediacorp Publishing posted a comment on my old FHM knockabout post (here). Seriously man… http://fhmmalaysia.blogspot.com/? Two words for a magazine of FHM’s stature: Lifestyle Portal, and not cheap ass blog wannabe.

My PAL SNES looks exactly like the Japanese Super Famicom, except that the words printed on either console. In any case, have you ever wondered the total number of games released on the Super Famicom?

A quick lookabout the interwebs put about the count to be around 750-800. That’s way off the mark since the Super Famicom 1445 Title Complete Coverage Book, which keeps tabs on ALL Super Famicom titles, puts the count at (if you haven’t guessed it already), 1445.

The book is chokeful of screenshots, release date information and game descriptions for the 1455 SFC games released between 1990 to 1999. The page count: 193.

Do note that the entire book is in Japanese. Interested? Click here for details.

Upon opening Nic Kelman’s book, Video Game Art, one can’t help but to marvel at the abundance of video game visuals and concept art expounding the fact that video games are in fact, art. While I do not have a problem with that statement (one doesn’t need to go far, some video game manuals are indeed pieces/works of art), my main problem with the book is that there is no mention about the artists.

As mentioned earlier, the book is just bursting with concept art and visuals from video games, but only the video game publishers are mentioned, not the artist(s) involved in producing those works of art. It’s like displaying the Mona Lisa in the Lourve and not mentioning that the painting was done by Leonardo da Vinci.

Flawed as it is, Video Game Art is still a pretty good read, or a book filled with pretty pictures. The author could have done a little better though tapping into more games; I keep getting Shin Megami Tensei and Oddworld references. The cover is a nice touch, alternating between Abe (Oddworld again) and Naked Snake (from Metal Gear Solid)

Heh. Even though MGS graces the cover of the book, there are no concept art or visuals from the game shown inside the book.

I bought my copy of Video Game Art (hardcover) at Sunway Pyramid’s Popular Book Store for just RM 49.90. Do check it out, like I said, it’s a book filled with pretty pictures. Shame about the credits though.

If there’s a real life, albeit much more notorious version of Marvel Comic’s Tony Stark (a.k.a Iron Man), Broadcom’s co-founder Henry T. Nicholas would take the cake. The man makes high-tech his business (Broadcom makes integrated circuits), is a billionaire and has his own vices too, drugs and alcohol. He even has a moustache/beard thing going on:

Picture is from Wired Blog

The only difference is he doesn’t have a suit of armour, but goes around spiking tech execs with Ecstasy (you know..the drug?)

Read all about it here: Billionaire Entrepreneur Slipped Drugs To Tech Execs, Feds Allege

From the pages of Final Crisis #6, it looks like the superhero of the year for 2008, has finally met his maker, no thanks to Darkseid and Grant Morrison. And who more appropriate to retrieve his body than the other half of the World’s Finest Team and perhaps his closest superhero friend, Superman.

I found out that reading the entire run of Ultimates 3 (issues 1 to 5) does little in helping to alleviating the negative stance I had since reading issue 1 earlier this year. The artwork is horrendous as usual with muddy tones being the order of the day throughout the entire series.

It doesn’t help that the plot is a pretty lame ass attempt at getting a bunch of superheroes investigating a murder. Those Watchmen and the JLA did way better with their own murder storylines in the Watchmen graphic novel and Identity Crisis mini series respectively.

The only thing I’m looking forward to would be Ultimatum and hopefully any future series for the Ultimates would see the return of Millar and Hitch.

Have you been to your local bookstore lately? Browsing through the Sci-Fi and Fantasy sections would probably yield a number of books which are video game tie-ins. The usual suspects are Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft and Halo.

The next question would be, as a video gamer, are you ever inclined to read these books? Well, I for one wasn’t, until my brother got me a Halo 3-book set for Christmas, and the books turned out to be an interesting, if not, enjoyable read bar one.

Hello Halo

The three books in the set were “The Fall of Reach”, “The Flood” and “First Strike”, and are best read in the aforementioned sequence. Everyone’s favourite hero in green armour (I’m not talking bout Link) gets his introduction and backstory in “The Fall of Reach”.

Here, you get to know how John, became the Master Chief and that there are other Spartans as well. “The Flood” basically retells the first Halo video game, and it reads like a video game as well. This picture best sums up my feelings for this book:

First Strike shares the same author as The Fall of Reach, and is pretty good, but having said that, you’ll need to read The Fall of Reach to get an idea on what’s going on. With my first batch of video-game tie-ins read and sitting pretty on my bookshelf, are there any other recommendations?