Arcade Fever
The Fan's Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games
John Sellers
review by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)
Created:  Dec 29, 2002
Updated:  Dec 29, 2002
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/arcadefever.txt

What directly follows is my sincere attempt to say something nice about 
this book.

****
It's a thin book, so (unlike Supercade) if you drop it on your foot, it
will not cause any damage.

Some of the pictures (e.g. the control panel for Atari Skydiver) are nice.

Some of the interview answers are interesting.

It does have video games in it.
****

The book should have been titled _Dude, This is John Seller's Guide to
Video Games and Other Stuff that Rocked and Sucked_.  Had that been the
title, I might have wondered beforehand why I should care about Mr. Seller's 
opinion.   Luckily for me, the book was a Christmas gift.

After a couple of readings, I believe I have discovered the original 
recipe to the book:

***
Recipe for Arcade Fever

Claim that the Golden Age of Videogames was between 1978-1985 and use the
culture of the time for the stock.

To it add:

several cups of the word "dude"
an entire box of inane, overused and hack puns; beat until dead.
fold in any possible pop-culture references
mix liberally with various allusions to violence and sex
berate the reader and anything you don't like whenever possible

[Note: if interviewing while making this recipe, make sure to ask 
questions about beer to Nolan Bushnell and about sandwich types to 
Buckner & Garcia.]

Spoon into MTV/VH1/ET tapioca bowl (no baking or thought necessary).  
Write personal Donkey Kong high score on bowl.
Sprinkle with puerile humor.  

Makes one bad book.
***

I think the spirit of the book is best summed up by the author himself,
from the arcade lexicon section:

"Here are some key terms you may remember from the arcade era and a few
that I just made up."

Uninformed opinion *and* made up terms?  All in one book?  What could
I have done in this life to be so deserving of such a gift?

Sprint away from this one and never look back.