Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

I was researching about the first two volumes of Hardcore Gaming 101's Untold Japanese gaming history books when I also came across this smaller edition (Hardcore Gaming 101 Digest Vol. 2: Taito Arcade Classics), which has 80 capsule reviews of the SFC import games.
So I decided to get the PDF link on the Sellfy page and have gone through it a bit. I do like the mainstream section where each Taito arcade classic was reviewed in a detailed way and even they have comparisons between their arcade original version and their console/computer ports. Many screenshots and box covers to be seen. It's very nice.
Now I then checked the SFC section and saw that many of them are RPGs while others are action games, fighter games, scrolling shooters and some other genres. Each game has a brief blurb that say what things they had and the occasional opinion of them along with a box scan and an in-game screen. I believe that most of them have not been fan-translated so far. Yes, the three Fire Emblem games are in there as are all 3 Ganbare Goemon sequels. I think they are well covered and I'd say that it's worth getting the book just to learn more about these games and for anyone here who'd like to do the research on them.
You can choose to purchase a digital edition of this book or if you donate $5 US/month to HG 101's Patreon page you'd get not only this edition but also all other ebook files that they've created so far.

The first Digest volume also has a section on 80 Japanese Playstation games.

I checked at the bottom of the PDF file that HG 101 will be making these books:
- HG101 Presents: Data East Arcade Classics:
- Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: Sega Arcade Classics Vol. 2:
- HG101 Presents: Konami Special: Contra and Ganbare Goemon!

Found a Jan, 2016 review of another encyclopedia book on retro-gaming. It's not related to the SNES/SFC, but since it covers several other 16-bit consoles and games I thought all of you may like this one. It has links to the author's website where you can even order one with his autograph, and Amazon sale page (including a Kindle edition).

Book Review: Classic Home Video Games 1989-1990


As one Amazon user has mentioned the one great mark against this book is that there's no game screenshot for each game, so it's more of a reference/chronicle book than the typical bookazine/magazine that you see elsewhere. But Brett still put in his own opinions on all US-released games for those consoles. Also there's no comparison between the multi-platform versions of a game on both Genesis & Super Nintendo.

And, OMG, the author Brett Weiss and I seem to enjoy many very similar habits!

OH MY GOD! You all WILL LOVE THIS ONE! While reading about a new artwork celebration book that is due to ship out this month - April 2016 - called ARTCADE - The Book of Classic Arcade Game Art I then checked the Books section from the Bitmap Books webpage and learnt that among the books they're going to print soon is a book entitled "Super Famicom: The Box Art Collection"! Cheaper deals here; second place?

Yes, it's a compilation of the Japanese game packagings only. Yes, you read that right - it's JUST ALL the 250 Japanese-only game box covers that the author's chosen to show!

I had only just now learnt that the Artcade book from the KS project was going to ship out this month, well over 3 years after its promised delivery date, which I'd never knew about! LOL! I only picked up the digital file tier and after looking at the sample photos I don't think I'd be interested in getting the physical hardback copy as well and I think that's alright. It's just the marquee banners that were on those arcade cabinets - that's it, and it's split into two adjoined pages inside the book. BUT after learning of THAT SNES artwork book then yeah I've got something else to look forward to! I also was a backer of Bitmap's KS project for the Commodore Amiga: a visual Commpendium book and got the physical copy of that a long time ago.

You could go for the Collector's Edition with a SNES box-like packaging containing the book inside. However you can only get it during the pre-order stage - the book's due to ship out next month (May 2016). But it's rather overkill for me and the artwork is probably just a custom one, not to mention that it's double the price of the normal hardback edition, which I don't think is worth it (the CE).

http://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/blogs/news ... collection (OCT 01, 2015)
The Twitter account & Instagram account from the book's creator, Stuart Brett AKA Super Famicom Guy. His linked blog featuring a few cool SNES-related features.
Rare APR 26, 2013 (By ANT HARPER) interview with many fantastic rough shots of many of Stu Brett's Super Famicom game boxes.


For anybody who once remembered the Super Play magazine (not me), here's a May 7, 2011 retrospective interview. Also here's the tumblr page to a large collection of the mostly US SNES box cover art shots, just because... I think SylarDean should add this link to his fan-site! Moreover this general Box VS. Box tumblr page is great (The archive page has a browsing drop-down menu box. It starts from April 2012.)! Some extra box shot examples.


*****
* EDIT July 9, 2016: Good news. You can now get that Super Famicom: The Box Art Collection book in PDF format for £10.00 GBP if you don't want a physical book or get it more cheaper. But there are a couple other stores that sell this physical edition a bit cheaper than the official publisher's shopfront, which you can check right near the top of this post. Also Funstock now sells it - one of the below's gallery pages linked to it - but at the same regular price. It also shows truncated photos of some more pages inside it.
It now also has a new 6 minutes-long interview video with the book creator Stuart Brett. Very lovely!

Some time before I saw that video I came across a couple of sites which opened up the book and gave their opinions of it. Fantastic! You can even look at photos of more pages!

• A little look at… Super Famicom: The Box Art Collection (June 20, 2016 by Oliver Jameson)
  
• Exclusive: Unboxing The Super Famicom Box Art Collection Collector's Edition (Fri 13th May 2016 by Alex Olney). This one has the special edition bookcase with the LE art. A 7 min 30 sec unboxing video is also included therein.
• Gallery: Cover To Cover With Super Famicom: The Box Art Collection (Tue 17th May 2016 by Nintendo Life Staff)

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When I was researching Esparks, an action-adventure RPG of sorts, I came across this blog piece showing the game's box cover and some screenshots. Then I learnt that the blog's author had a certain link on the right-hand pane, which is sure to (provide you with wet dreams) make you gasp longingly! The person who goes by the nick 'opkij86' is a Swedish collector of retro SNES/SFC RPG only games and specific franchises on later consoles. Let me show you that feature below...

* The SFC Collection - This is a long and amazing page full of screenshots showcasing his bookshelves with all of those 200 beautiful Japanese SFC-based RPG game boxes!

Be sure to see the bottom section of the above post to check on more galleries & opinions for that Super Famicom: The Box Art Collection's release and even more so THAT SFC Collection (Photos of virtually all RPG SFC games!).

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HG101 has a couple of worthy historical game collection/preservation topic videos that they put out on the same day on their news archive (Jun 10, 2016), but the videos were uploaded on Jun 7, 2016.

• Video: Meeting with a Book Collector (19 min 13 sec)
  
  Quote:
  A meeting with a collector of almost every video game book ever. Includes a look through his absolutely massive library of stuff.
  
  
  This one below really isn't relevant to this thread, but at another close by thread that I also made but anyway...
• Video: A Look at the Japanese Game Preservation Society (13 min-ish)
  
  Quote:
  From the Untold History of Japanese Game Developers DVD. A look at the Japanese Game Preservation Society's laboratory in Tokyo, as guided by Joseph Redon. This organization works to preserve Japan's software, which, like software from all over the globe, was initially distributed on rather fragile medium.

@ObiKKA: A big thanks again for digging up all this rom/gaming-related news and posting it on the forums. It really makes for some great reading material!

AS we are posting about oldschool magazines, HERE'S a website I use often for pdf scan files of a TON of magazines and collections.

https://retropdfs.wordpress.com/current ... llections/

I came across this whilst searching around for Superplay magazines for sale, cos I eventually want to try and get my collection complete
from when I used to collect them as a kid. These pdfs are ALL free to D/L by use of a torrent programme.

Great stuff, only thing I can add is this website/database of the book collector guy reviewed in the above video. Only in japanese unfortunately.
http://vgsearch.info/

Great finds. And in that first link I also see some Amiga magazines and issues for download. That's cool if I or anyone wants to find out what the various games on that computer were like. But there are the online fan-sites for that platform as well.

Here's a Kickstarter project for a couple massive tomes on all of the SNES games released outside of Japan as well as some Japanese games (the latter in the 2nd Compendium book)!
The Complete SNES - Collector's Book & Ultimate Guide.
"500+ Page Comprehensive Super Nintendo Collector's Book & Ultimate Guide to the SNES w/ US, PAL, Unreleased, Homebrew & More!"

Unfortunately no Super Famicom-focused releases book here. But more on that below for the 2nd sister book.
What are the differences between the main book and all others out there for sale now? Well, for starters, it's got every page in full colours!
* About this project:

Quote:
The Complete SNES is a comprehensive near 500 page Super Nintendo Collector's Book. Like with my previous project, to my knowledge there has not been a comprehensive book on the Super Nintendo that has covered every game released with complementary artwork! Aside from the licensed and unlicensed US releases, this book will also include PAL exclusives, Competition Carts, Homebrew Games and even accessories. We are striving to make this the Ultimate source for the Super Nintendo!

The book itself will be optimal quality with a large 8.5" by 11" size, around 500 beautiful color pages with a glossy hard cover; perfect for a coffee table! This is also completely consistent with the previous book releases and will look perfect next to them on a shelf.

We are also trying to create a second book called the Super Nintendo Compendium to go along with the main book. This secondary book is available to back right at the launch of the project and we will be able to do a full print run once we hit our first stretch goal!

The pages will be in minimalist format as described over there. It looks similar to the style that HG101 used for a selection of Japanese only games from each console at the end of their digital/printed books on the arcade games or groups of games from various companies.

* The second compendium book is worth getting as it'll cover some Super Famicom games too... The pages look nice.

Quote:
The Super Nintendo Compendium will be a second book we are releasing once the secondary funding is met. This will have 100-200 pages of SNES amazingness!

- Personal Super Nintendo Stories
- Supplemental Articles
- Backer Contributed Expanded Reviews
- Notable Super Famicom Games
- Expanded Essential SNES Game Reviews

* The community articles that can go into this compendium will include things such as:

Quote:
- Super Famicom Hidden Gems
- SNES Fan-Translated Games

Maybe some of you can write things about some of the fan-translated games on here and elsewhere?

There will be book contributions from "An All-Star Cast of Community Contributors!" Check them there; there are many but one of them is Steve aka RVG Fanatic!

The digital tier for both SNES books is $50 US - that's good. But for me getting both physical books would be more than thrice that with shipping, ouch! Not sure if I'll upgrade to that tier. But the creator's past books have not dropped in price, probably due to their rarity, so... He's got past books like the Complete NES books and more which you can add-on if you pledge for the project. They are still available at his blog but at little bit higher prices. I feel that these books are a very helpful way to let me know about which of the localized SNES games were worth it to play. I had played some SNES games back then and had absolute blasts with them but was too young to discover that there indeed were many more for the console to tap into! There's also a BackerClub members page that lets you link up your account with your KS account if you have both and the creator will definitely put your name into a special section in the books! Ends in 10 days.

* P.S. There were 783 official releases for the SNES. But the Super Famicom console had well more than double that (1447 on SFC, plus 231 on Satellaview and 13 on Sufami Turbo)! No wonder there are still hundreds of decent SFC games left to be translated!
Also check this awesome video with a well-done presentation: The Super Nintendo Project - All 752 US SNES Games - Every US Game (Jul 31, 2015) - 1hr 28 mins long! The same user also has several videos on specific genres (no RPG lists). These videos below also cover Japanese games in their genres.
- All SNES Fighting Games (Every Super Nintendo Fighting Game) (Feb 27, 2016)
- All SNES Beat 'Em Up Games (May 6, 2016)

Wow, man, I just came across this one also. It's an archive of thousands of computer and computer gaming magazines and their issue bundles in a neat and nice website design. On the search page on the front page you see a nice mosaic of these little box cut-outs where each one represents an unique magazine that existed for a time along with a thumbnail picture of a mag cover, mag title and number of items (meaning total number of issues that magazine had before ending publication). And what's more when you go to an issue of a magazine there are loads of download options to get it in a file format!

https://archive.org/details/computermag ... -downloads