Feature By

Brad Gallaway

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We don't do a lot of book reviews here at GameCritics.com. It seems like including more literature would be a natural fit for the site, but one explanation for our lack of coverage is that there aren't many books written about videogames in the first place. Those few books that do come out tend to either be aimed at people already well-versed in videogames or too technically oriented to have broad appeal. There have been some exceptions to this rule, but they're few and far between.

However, videogames are slowly but surely creeping deeper into the mainstream every day, and you can tell a thing's really on its way when mediocre coffee-table books start popping up. 1000 Game Heroes was first brought to my attention by a brief review in a nationally published pop-culture magazine. While the book's contents may be disappointing, the fact that the book exists and was reviewed in such a source can be taken as a very positive sign for videogames as a whole.

A hefty volume, 1000 Game Heroes is a 608-page 8"x10" softback weighing approximately five and a half pounds. The pages are glossy, substantial stock and the contents are broken up into ten categories such as "Fearless Heroes," "Strange Heroes," and "Licensed Heroes." Each section begins with a brief introduction, and a few are contributed by impressively big names like Shigeru Miyamoto and Peter Molyneux. Once past the opening, each individual listing receives a one-paragraph synopsis of plot or back-story, a rundown of relevant facts (the exact title, publisher, year of its release, etc.) and at least one full page of visual images, usually more. On the cover is a bold rendering of a recent Lara Croft 3D model, gun at the ready.

Diving right into things, it quickly becomes apparent that the book's title is very misleading. There are only 122 entries, and almost none of them focus on a "hero" or any one character in particular. Rather, the book covers specific games or series with eclectic taste in visual images. The term "heroes" is also inappropriate in this context since many of the characters don't fit the traditional definition. Is Super Monkey Ball a fun, worthwhile title? Most definitely. Do any of the characters in the game qualify as "heroes"? It's doubtful. Adding to the confusion, the number 1000 only comes into play if you add up every single character in every single picture in the entire book, whether they are the subject of a given photo or a tiny speck in the background. (The Pokémon entry alone accounts for about a fifth of the total.)

The jarring discrepancy between the book's title and its contents doesn't end there, however. Rather than being full of history, information or profiling prominent creations, the book's thrust is to present visuals with an absolute bare minimum of text. I think featuring the imaginative avatars and fantastic worlds found in videogames is a fine idea, but it's unfortunate that the volume introduces itself to the reader under false pretenses.

Once clear on the nature of the project, I have to say that its selection and composition leaves much to be desired. I don't know anything about the editor or the publisher, but 1000 Game Heroes feels like it was put together by people who don't play games and know almost nothing about them. The themes and logic are wildly erratic, and quite frankly the various galleries look like they were compiled from stacks of "available for cheap" content rather than hand picked for a sincere purpose or vision.