Thanks so much for posting your thoughts, Calibrator. It's hard to convey how eagerly and anxiously I've been waiting for feedback from people who have seen the book!

This has been a recurring criticism, and not just from Bill. It's doubly disappointing to me, firstly because it took me a long time and a lot of money to take the screenshots, and secondly because I think the pics add a lot of value. However, on a positive note, the publisher has assured me that if the book makes a second printing (it needs to sell something like 2,000 copies for that to happen), the problem will be corrected. I do intend to put the screenshots up for download soon, just haven't had the time. Also, please see that it's not a problem with all, only some of the images. I know that isn't any consolation to people who have the book.

I might note that, whenever possible, if I had a screenshot for a game that Mobygames didn't have, I uploaded one to them. They rejected some of them for various reasons (they are very picky about formats and resolutions), but they kept some of them. In short, you can probably find screenshots for most of the games on Mobygames if you're really curious.

I would have really liked to have a full color book; that would have been incredible. The only problem with that is the cost would have gone up exponentially. My guess is it would have been at least sixty, maybe eighty bucks. The only way something like that would be possible is if it was printed on a very large scale. I personally wouldn't pay that much for it.

This is what I (humbly) think is the strength, too. As I mentioned above, you can really find good screenshots and so on simply by searching the net. Wikipedia and Mobygames has most of the "raw material." What I wanted to do was tell the story, identify patterns and trends, and just try to write a book that I would like to read, though granted I'm poorer than the average Armchair Arcader.

And that's precisely the reason I did dedicate much more time and research to the earlier periods than the later ones. I know some people have criticized me for not dedicating more time to recent works, but it seems less germane since you can pick those games up and easily play them today. I was more interested in the roots and games I felt were particularly influential. It's kind of hard to say if a game like Oblivion or Gothic 3 will still be talked about ten years from now, but it's a safe bet that people will still be talking about Ultima or Dungeon Master then.

Well, you know what they say about us men with prodigious noses. :)