1000 Game Heroes

Rating:
Summary: It's all in the game.
Review: A super-size dazzling collection of 1000 digital game heroes, all in color and beautifully printed. Not only the heroes and scenes from the games but many have development drawings too. Each hero has a page introduction (in three languages) and some technical info about the platform, developer, issue date and more, then a page devoted to the character, usually as a cut-out on a white background (these are not screen shots but taken from the original digital development) followed by scenes from the game. Naturally with just over six-hundred pages it is very comprehensive and can get a bit overwhelming. Divided into ten sections, 1 Fearless Heroes, 2 Fighting Heroes, 3 Funny Heroes, 4 Heroes of the Future, 5 Kings of Action, 6 Legends of Video Games, 7 Licensed Heroes, 8 Magical Heroes, 9 Sexy Heroes and lastly, Strange Heroes, you might find the placing of some characters in these divisions a bit arbitrary. The back of the book has a game and a platform index so you can flip to your favorites.

Though the book is quite stunning visually I found it hard work reading it, mainly because the typography is not very user friendly, for instance, the page numbers are turned sideways and positioned in the top right-hand corners of each left-hand page, the games technical information is also turned sideways, in small capitals, and printed in black and white on darkish panels. Perhaps most annoying are the introductions, this text, fortunately only a few lines deep, stretches across the page in lines 160mm wide with the English printed in various colors, lucky French and German readers get black type.

So apart from the silly typography I think game fans you will love this huge book, a printed record to remind you of all the (enjoyable) hours and sore thumbs endured in chasing the heroes around the screen and watching the bad guys win or lose.

Rating:
Summary: wonderful book but missing crucial areas
Review: i recently purchased this book after finding out about it on the taschen website. i have seen several of their books and knew that this book would be of good quality.

overall i am happy with the book and the quality of the paper and the layout of the book. i am a graphic designer first and a video game enthusiast second. i find myself playing less and less but i still find time to keep track of the newest games.

the book is divided into 10 sections some of which are strange. a few samples of the categories are "funny heroes, legends of video games, sexy heroes, fighting heroes, strange heroes, licensed heroes, and fearless heroes" to name some of them.

upon looking through the categories, i found that some games were missing or could have be included for the substitution of the mentioned games in the book. "resident evil", "wolfenstein", "ultima", "metroid" (but featured as part of "smash bros"), "contra", "street fighter", pitfall harry are just some games and characters missing from this book which i believe are worth mentioning. the capcom universe of characters and many from the squaresoft universes could have been be shown. there are some games mentioned in here that i vaguely remember due to bad concept or gameplay.

i think that the book as a whole is a wonderful compilation. boasting "1000" heroes is quite a selling point. while some characters were given several page spreads (tekken), some were only given a page spread despite their influence (case in point, castlevania). there may have been reasons behind the conceptualization of this book for why certain games are less prominent in this book so i realize i must be understanding toward that point. while many great games are mentioned, many go unnoticed especially in the area of classic games.

but from a design standpoint, this book is a great attempt at gathering many well-known heroes (and some unknown ones) into one nice book. a nice gift to the designer or video game enthuasist.

Rating:
Summary: 1000 heroes, 600 pages, and zero context
Review: If you were to go through the waste bins of all the game magazines--or go to an E3 convention and pick up a CD-ROM press kit from each publisher in attendance--you, too, could publish 1000 Game Heroes. It's literally little more than a collection of printouts of existing sketches, renders, and screenshots, vaguely compiled by genre (the airplane shooter Crimson Skies and abstract character-based strategy game Pikmin share nothing in common, but they're both filed under "Strange Heroes"). Each game gets one quick summary paragraph, and there are some short essays by famous game developers (Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux), but they're not enough to save the project.

Mostly what this book lacks is context--now that we see the pretty pictures, why are they here? What do they say about game design, or character design? What was the artist's intent? You'll never know, and the result is a feeling that these pieces were included because that's what Nintendo and Sony sent the author on CD. If you've been following video games for a while (and why would you be interested in this book otherwise?), you will quickly realize that you've seen this all before, on the covers and in the pages of game magazines like PC Gamer and GamePro. 1000 Game Heroes is 600+ pages of shallow recycling.

Yes, it's printed on pretty paper and what few words appear do come in three languages (English, French, and German). The good points end there. Without any context, 1000 Game Heroes lacks true value--and as regurgitated content repurposed by a third party without fresh insight, it certainly isn't worth the asking price.

Rating:
Summary: Great coffeetable book for any gamer
Review: If you're looking for a gorgeous coffee table book to page though, 1000 Game Heroes might fit the bill if you enjoy games at all!

This massive tome has over 600 pages of glossy images and information on games from Ghost Recon to Tomb Raider, Ecco to Virtua Cop to Dungeon Siege. Most of the games featured are newer ones, and the graphics they choose to highlight are truly spectacular.

Each title lists its platform, release date, developer and editor. A paragraph about each game is given in English, French and German. This means that you don't get a huge amount of depth for each game. But the book is already 600 pages long. If they had in depth information on each game, it would have turned into 2,000 pages and would have cost over $100. Instead, there's just enough about the game for you to see if you're interested in it, at which point you simply go to the web and learn everything you could possibly hope to know about it.

The organization of the book is a bit strange. You have "Kings of Action" which includes Metal Gear Solid. You have "Legends of Video Games" which puts Diablo next to Rayman? Then you have Sexy Heroes full of slinky women, and Strange Heroes which holds the wonderful female hero in Syberia.

Still, many of these games are blasts from the past, and it's fun to look through screenshots of Diablo and Dungeon Siege and remember the hours and hours we spent playing these games. I do warn that some of the graphics involve sexily clad (or topless) female characters, as one might expect from an industry that at least until recently pushed primarily towards teenage boys as its target audience.

Highly recommended for any gamer!

Rating:
Summary: Fine for what it is.
Review: Most of these reviewers are being anal genre dorks. This isn't intended to be a deep-seated essay on or analysis of video games. It's just a collection of pretty pictures and I don't think it makes any claims to be anything else. It's by Taschen for god's sake - who buys their books for the text? It's kind of thrown together, there is some lack of continuity in the categories, and there are one or two bad reproductions, but you're basically getting a decent sourcebook. Yeah, you could have the same or better by compiling yourself from various gaming mags, etc., but this is at least more convenient. The price IS too high though, and I've never seen it on sale. But if you just want to get a more-or-less comprehensive notion of the visual elements of gaming culture as it stands at present, flipping through this book for an hour should provide you with that.

Rating:
Summary: Fine for what it is.
Review: Most of these reviewers are being anal genre dorks. This isn't intended to be a deep-seated essay on or analysis of video games. It's just a collection of pretty pictures and I don't think it makes any claims to be anything else. It's by Taschen for god's sake - who buys their books for the text? It's kind of thrown together, there is some lack of continuity in the categories, and there are one or two bad reproductions, but you're basically getting a decent sourcebook. Yeah, you could have the same or better by compiling yourself from various gaming mags, etc., but this is at least more convenient. The price IS too high though, and I've never seen it on sale. But if you just want to get a more-or-less comprehensive notion of the visual elements of gaming culture as it stands at present, flipping through this book for an hour should provide you with that.

Rating:
Summary: Lacking
Review: The writing is subpar; each entry about a game only gets one paragraph, typically detailing the bare bones of its story. Critical evaluation of the game itself is almost always missing, though that's arguably out of the scope of this book. However, the text barely talks about these "heroes" either.

The book commits several factual errors as well, ascribing games to incorrect platforms. It also has the annoying habit of pretending games mostly did not exist prior to 1999; long running franchise series are represented solely by their most recent entries. Absolutely no mention is made of the earlier games. For example, the classic Sega character Sonic's writeup does not mention the platform or game which introduced him to the world. Those not in the know might not even realize the book's information is incomplete. Finally, the typos are hard to forgive for a book with so few words, even if it is published in 3 languages.

The game selection is haphazard even taking the arbitrary "semi-new games only" restriction into account. Several important publishers/developers and their entire catalogs are completely absent from this book.

The words are obviously an afterthought, the game selection arbitrary. So... this book must be about the art. And it is the great strength of this book in some cases: some games present in-game screenshots, rendered 3D art, and preproduction sketches. However, most entries lack screenshots, sketches, or both. The analogous situation -- if this was a book about movie heroes -- would be entries composed of a single poster, no stills or on-set candids. It's a serious drawback for both people who really enjoy playing games as well as people who enjoy seeing the process.

In the end, "1000 Game Heroes" is pretty but vapid. It earns 3 stars for print quality and the few entries that satisfy.

Rating:
Summary: Lacking
Review: The writing is subpar; each entry about a game only gets one paragraph, typically detailing the bare bones of its story. Critical evaluation of the game itself is almost always missing, though that's arguably out of the scope of this book. However, the text barely talks about these "heroes" either.

The book commits several factual errors as well, ascribing games to incorrect platforms. It also has the annoying habit of pretending games mostly did not exist prior to 1999; long running franchise series are represented solely by their most recent entries. Absolutely no mention is made of the earlier games. For example, the classic Sega character Sonic's writeup does not mention the platform or game which introduced him to the world. Those not in the know might not even realize the book's information is incomplete. Finally, the typos are hard to forgive for a book with so few words, even if it is published in 3 languages.

The game selection is haphazard even taking the arbitrary "semi-new games only" restriction into account. Several important publishers/developers and their entire catalogs are completely absent from this book.

The words are obviously an afterthought, the game selection arbitrary. So... this book must be about the art. And it is the great strength of this book in some cases: some games present in-game screenshots, rendered 3D art, and preproduction sketches. However, most entries lack screenshots, sketches, or both. The analogous situation -- if this was a book about movie heroes -- would be entries composed of a single poster, no stills or on-set candids. It's a serious drawback for both people who really enjoy playing games as well as people who enjoy seeing the process.

In the end, "1000 Game Heroes" is pretty but vapid. It earns 3 stars for print quality and the few entries that satisfy.

Rating:
Summary: COFFEE TABLE EYE CANDY
Review: What can I say? This book is a pure piece of coffee table eye candy. In no way is this book to be construed as an all inclusive history of gaming heroes/characters. Take it for what it is, a visual cross section of games, some of it's characters, and a few lines about it to boot. While I'm personally disappointed that Tenchu isn't represented here, I can only hope that Taschen (a visual publisher if there ever was one) will crank out another volume in the near future. Until then, relax and turn the page.

Rating:
Summary: Not much more than Eye Candy..
Review: When I saw this book, I though "Ooh! A book of video game heroes!", so naturally I had to give it a look. When I came across it at [a book store] I thought "Man, this looks really nice!", but the truth is, that's about all it is. It LOOKS nice, but beyond that, you're not really getting much of anything besides pictures. If you want some kind of decent list of the greatest video game heroes of all time, you're not going to get it.

Before I tell you how disappointing I found this book to be, I'll tell you what I liked. First off, it's filled with beautiful CG pictures from all kinds of video games, probably including a few you've never heard of. Second, the book is multilingual, which I find to be INCREDIBLY cool. I believe it is written in 3 different languages.

That's all, though.

Now let me tell you what I DIDN'T like.

1. The book is clearly called "1000 Game Heroes", right? You'd THINK it'd be about game heroes, but instead it's this weird mix of game series titles AND hero names. Where on one page you'll see "Final Fantasy", on the next you'll just see a character name like "Sonic" or "Mario" or "Zelda". Those are character names, whereas "Final Fantasy" is not. Final Fantasy is a large series of games.

2. Speaking of Final Fantasy, it IS mentioned in the book, but here's the kicker. The only Final Fantasy game you'll see mentioned is FFX, and it's not even labeled as such. The page just says "Final Fantasy" and then underneath you get a paragraph plot synopsis of FFX. So what about Final Fantasy games 1 through 9? Do they not deserve any mention because they're not "recent"?

3. Like I said above, if a game isn't recent, it isn't mentioned. For instance, Xenosaga is mentioned... but Xenogears is not.

4. For the Sonic and Zelda series games as well as other hugely popular series, they've chosen not to include older game art. Instead they just want to show us the recent stuff. Sonic's designs have changed considerably since the Genesis days, and if they're going to feature Sonic, they shouldn't just show pictures and screen shots from Sonic Adventure. They should show Sonic's original design and Sonic's original game's overall look as well.

5. The book has a stupid and confusing way of categorizing their "heroes" (or in actuality, random popular characters and random game titles) into different sections. There's even a section for "Sexy" game heroes, and "Tomb Raider" is one of them. First off, "Tomb Raider" is the game's title, not the game hero. If they want to show sexy heroes, they should really be more specific. Oh, and all of the sexy heroes were females. No guys. Now I know the target audience for most video games is male, but many girls like to play video games too, and I'm just one of them. If you're going to do a section of scantily clad females, then put some nice looking men in there too, will ya?!

This book needs to be titled "Random Video Games, Video Game Heroes, and Pretty CG Pictures", because that's all it is. While you do get plot synopses, you'll end up with crap like Final Fantasy X's plot representing the entire Final Fantasy series. Even though ANY Final Fantasy fan knows that the plots and characters for every Final Fantasy game are vastly different (sans Chocobos, Mogs, etc..)

Anyway, to sum it up, this book is only good for the pictures, really. You'll get some great shots from certain games, but if you want pictures that much, you're better off buying the art book for whatever game it is you really like, or finding the pictures on the internet. I even found a picture in the Mario section that looked like it had horrible JPEG compression. Who wants to buy a book with compressed JPEG images in it? I know I don't.

If you're looking for a good book on video games and game heroes, buy "High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games" instead. It's a much better book with much better content, and it'll cost you half as much as "1000 Game Heroes" will.