Just a quick note that our book, Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time, is part of Amazon's "Game On: Featured Game Design Titles" promotion, as seen here. The best part? This means that you can presently get it for a low, low price of - as of this writing - just $14.56! Be sure to check it out. Also, be sure to check out a different, but similarly valuable promotion for Wii Fitness for Dummies, including a $5 mail-in rebate!

Our book, Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time, has been spotted on Italian TV. Claudio Todeschini and Stefano Gaburri, who translated our work to Italian, were featured on a Rai.TV program. Check out their original blog post about it, then check out the video. It's a great feature on them and the book (even for those of us who don't speak Italian) and it starts at approximately the 06:25 mark. Cool stuff! (Matt and I should be receiving our copies of the Italian edition any day now as well)

Gameplay: The Story of the Videogame Revolution, is a feature film documentary that celebrates the amazing story of videogames, focusing on the industry's most decisive moments throughout its history.

We've been getting asked quite a bit lately to reveal more information about our forthcoming feature film documentary, so I thought I would share the current promotional description making the rounds. While we're still tweaking things here and there, what follows should be pretty close to the release version of the film:

Gameplay: The Story of the Videogame Revolution, is a feature film documentary that celebrates the amazing story of videogames, focusing on the industry's most decisive moments throughout its history. Comprehensive in scope, the film covers games from all genres and platforms, from the late 1950s into modern times. Featuring interviews with industry greats such as John Romero (Doom), David Crane (Pitfall!), Steve Meretzky (Planetfall), Todd Howard (Fallout 3), and John Smedley (EverQuest) - plus many others - Gameplay offers an in-depth look at the industry that has redefined popular entertainment. The film explores the impact of mega-hits such as Atari's Pong, Nintendo's Super Mario Bros., and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, as well as the role played by revolutionary technologies like the CD-ROM and the Internet. Loaded with high-quality clips from hundreds of vintage and modern games, Gameplay is a film no gamer can resist.

The film is being written and produced for Lux Digital Pictures by Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton, authors of Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time (Focal Press, 2009), Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games (A.K. Peters, 2008), and Wii Fitness for Dummies (Wiley, 2010). Matt and Bill are also the founders of Armchair Arcade, recognized by PC Magazine as one if its Top 100 Websites. Lux Digital Pictures has produced several recent, critically acclaimed documentaries, including Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue and American Grindhouse, which covers the history of horror and exploitation films, respectively. While Gameplay naturally touches upon controversial topics such as violence and sex in games, the overall tone is overwhelmingly positive. Lifelong, passionate gamers themselves, Barton and Loguidice are committed to ensuring accuracy, fairness, and integrity in all the topics covered in the film.

Pixel Perfect Gaming has posted a very nice review of our book, Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. Right now it appears on their front page, but here's the direct link to the review article for when it gets bumped down. I won't spoil what the reviewer has to say, but I certainly can't complain on this one. Don't forget, Vintage Games is still available from retailers worldwide, has its official page here, and an Italian edition here. Enjoy!

Claudio Todeschini, the Italian gentleman who is spearheading the special Italian edition of our book, Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time, has sent word that the Italian Website is now live, along with a Twitter feed, Facebook group, blog, and Pong bonus chapter in both HTML and PDF formats. Too bad I can't read Italian, but there's no denying this is a wonderful, wonderful effort, truly above and beyond!

I don't have all of the details, but I was given the heads up from Italian friend Luca Antignano (involved in CreatiVision homebrew activities, among other things) that our book, Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time, will be present at the Video Games History event, October 3 and 4, 2009, Italy. I'm told the book will be both part of the promotional materials and also "introduced" at the event. As you may or may not recall, while Vintage Games is available worldwide, there has been interest from other publishing companies to create region/language-specific "special editions" of the book, starting first with Italy. Also, be sure to check out another Italian site, GamesCollection, for additional news.

The ninth of nine free online bonus chapters that are in addition to the 25 chapters found in our book, Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time, available at booksellers worldwide, including Amazon.com, is now available. Head on over to Gamasutra to read Star Raiders (1979): The New Hope. This concludes our experiment in providing a true value add for readers of the book, content that could never fit in a reasonably priced mass market publication. Hopefully this convinces the last of the fence sitters to buy the book! Don't forget there are well over 100 bonus images not found in the book or in the online bonus chapters, available here. Want to know what others' think of the book? Check it out here. Between all of the free online content and the content in the book, it should keep you busy for quite some time. It looks like there is also a good possibility for fully translated special editions of Vintage Games for other territories, starting with an Italian Edition. We'll let you know as this news develops.

Our next book out should be Wii Fitness for Dummies, which will be released in early 2010, followed by an amazing feature film documentary on the history of videogames through Lux Digital Pictures. Keep checking back at Armchair Arcade for the latest on these and other exciting projects!

University Chronicle has an extensive interview feature on both me and Matt Barton, and our work on Vintage Games, as well as our upcoming feature film documentary, Playing Games, which is referred to in the article by its previous working title of The Age of Videogames. Let us know what you think (and henceforth I wish to be known solely as "The Loguidice" like in the article)! ;-)