Last year, YouTuber Pat Contri,
who you may recognize from
the Pat the NES Punk series
or the Completely Unnecessary Podcast,
launched a Kickstarter for his ambitious book,
"Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library."
The project was fully funded in just TWO days
and is now available for purchase.
At 450 pages, it's a behemoth of a book.
It contains reviews on every North American NES game,
a section on the most popular NES accessories,
a look at the PAL-exclusive games,
and a whole bunch more.
But is it worth your hard-earned money?
Well, let's find out.
But before we do, full disclosure:
I actually wrote an article for this book.
Pat asked me to contribute and I was happy to.
It's basically a written version of my
Gaming Historian episode all about Tengen.
I wasn't compensated for the article
and I don't get royalties for every book sold,
so I don't have a horse in the race.
But I did want to make you aware.
With that being said, let's take a look!
Let's start with the physical appearance.
This thing is HEAVY.
Almost seven pounds!
But the quality is great.
It's a glossy hardcover with a nice design.
The pages are also thick and glossy,
so I don't have any worries about them ripping.
When a book is self-published,
there's going to be a concern about the quality.
But you don't have to worry with "Ultimate Nintendo."
When you open it up, the first thing
you'll notice is a table of contents,
which is handy if you need to quickly look up a game.
There's also a foreword written by Blake Harris,
the author of "Console Wars."
It's a nice little write-up on the
Nintendo Entertainment System
and how it beat the odds to
save the industry back in the '80s.
Next is the meat of the book, and that's the reviews.
Most pages contain two reviews each,
but some of the bigger titles, like Super Mario Bros.,
get their own page.
Each review has a uniform look that includes the title,
genre, release date, developer and more.
Basically, everything you need
to know about each game.
I'm also a fan of the 3D-modeled
cartridge for each game.
When you're out game hunting,
this is most likely what you'll be looking for,
since coming across boxed copies is more rare.
Each game also has a star rating, up to five.
Although the reviews are full of good information,
the write-ups are kind of bland.
They're very basic descriptions that
tell you about the game and how it plays.
These aren't very fun to read,
but the reflections below them are.
These reflections were written
by several different authors
so it's cool to hear their personal
experiences with the game.
Eventually, I just stopped reading the
descriptions and only read the reflections.
If I wanted to know what kind of game it was,
I just looked at the four screenshots at the bottom.
As I said before, every North
American NES game is in here.
I enjoyed browsing the pages and occasionally
I found a game that piqued my interest.
There's a ton of games in here that
I've never heard of or played before.
For example, who knew Big Nose
Freaks Out was a good game?
Now I wanna buy it and try it out for myself.
And I think that's what makes this book so good.
It's nice to have an all-in-one
source for every NES game.
It's a tribute to the games you love
and gives you a heads-up about hidden gems.
Once you get past this section,
you'll find reviews on all the PAL-exclusive games,
HES-exclusive games, like Little Red Hood,
special promo cartridges,
and even test cartridges.
There's even a section on label variants.
Did you know there was a Mario 3 label variant?
Me neither.
After the section on NES accessories,
you'll get to the articles.
There's one about the launch of the NES,
how the NES Zapper works,
censorship on the NES,
and more.
It's a good mix of history and analysis.
The book ends with some
screenshots of unreleased NES games.
Yikes! Hard Drivin' on the NES?
I wonder how THAT would have played.
Overall, this is a well-made book,
but it does have some issues.
The backgrounds on each page
should have been toned down.
The background image blends
with the screenshots too much,
so your eyes aren't sure where to look.
I also think the articles could
have been formatted better.
There's not much design work here,
and I'm not a fan of the double column look.
Plus, the columns are too wide which affects readability.
But bottom line, if you're a fan of
the Nintendo Entertainment System,
this is a great book and worthy of a purchase.
It's gonna run you $60, but I think that's worth it,
given the insane amount of content
and the quality of the book.
If you want to save some money,
there is a digital version that costs $30.
But honestly, this is the type of book
that I would want in physical form.
There's also an app coming soon for iOS and Android.
It'll cost $5 and contains most
of the content from the book.
But it can also keep track of your NES collection.
To order a copy of the book for yourself,
visit UltimateNES.com.
That's all for this episode of Gaming Historian.
Thanks for watching!
Funding for Gaming Historian is
provided in part by supporters on Patreon.
Thank you.
(NES MUSIC PLAYS)
