Awesome video, Pam. I no longer have any game books and strategy guides. I gave all of them away back in 2006 when I stopped being a dedicated gamer person.
It's not very often that I collect video games books or strategy guide, though last year I did get myself a Smash Ultimate strategy guide as I'm a fan of Nintendo's biggest fighting game. Strategy guides are a neat part of the collection of video games, especially if they show off screenshots and artwork. I've still got old strategy guides by Prima for Nintendo GameCube and Xbox Original games. It's amazing how much work has gone into it, as well as going into depth about what to expect and where to find things like secrets and Easter eggs. There's not many video games art books I have thought, probably because I didn't know that video games art books existed, apart from how to draw characters books.
The moment you randomly opened that Icewind Dale page in the CRPG book, my heart just felt like it got wrapped in a warm blanket of nostalgia and wonderful memories of all the autumn evenings I spent with that game.
This video makes me want to go through my collection. I have a few of the art and guide books shown in the video on my shelf =) One of my personal favourite is my Kingdom of Amular guide, now that's a tome!
Back in the day I did own the Valkyrie Profile strategy guide. It was particularly useful as some dungeons had specific objectives to complete to give you bonus experience, and you also had to send your warriors to Asgard at the end of each chapter, so it helped you to decide who to send to fulfill each criteria. The art was nice also. I don't have any of my game guides, anymore. Sadly. I have bought a few here in Japan, but they are all in Japanese and because my Japanese isn't at native level, I can't appreciate them like I could the English ones. Anyway, nice to see your collection.
Grand collection! The best I can boast about owning are the Nintendo Power Final Fantasy strategy guide and the Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete guide. :) I especially love the heavy “coffee table” art books.
I know you aren't a huge Zelda fan but the guide for Link to the Past is great and very artistic, surprisingly. The Nintendo Power Super Mario 3 "special". Also the NES Game Atlas is a favorite in my collection of 3. I remember buying it at K-Mart when I was little.
I like how the PC adventure game history book is called the art of point n click, but has just as much coverage on the beginning and following 6 years or so of graphic adventure games that almost all used the text parser
I used to buy so many of these in the earlier gens for $9.99 to $14.99 apiece. At the time EB Games (before Gamestop gobbled them up) would give you a couple bucks for them in trade. So it was a nice way to get rid of ones for games you beat and no longer needed them for. Thing is I never knew that stores eventually 'pennied' these things. I found that out in 2005 and went nuts buying them. I bought something like 700-800 in a little over a year or so of scouring various stores with some stores (Best Buy, Gamestops that always forgot to pull them) providing 50-60 a shot. I still have a bunch of them for games I'd like to re-buy at some point but for others I'll probably NEVER buy/re-buy the games.
@@Cannotbetamed1 Indeed. I kept mostly ones for games I have or that I may re-buy at some point. Though there are some I definitely will likely never find a good condition copy of again. like Syphon Filter, that I probably should get rid of. Having that many did pay off a number of years back though as Amazon was offering decent credit for some of them. I think I turned 30-40 of them into $600-800 in gift cards from them.
"Game Secrets" was actually the publisher/series name and not just the name of that particular book. It was Prima's label before they were "Prima Games," I believe. They also published several unauthorized guides under that same label. I still have the one I bought ages ago for Super Mario 64. I remember being shaken because they say "hell" and "damn" in it. Lol.
I don't have much in the way of art books since they are of little interest too me but I have tons of strategy guides, and game related novels. Most of the guides are FPS, RTS, or sim related, guides you already have, or both. The novels run everywhere from X-Com, and Wing Commander to Homefront and Everquest.
I'd be surprised if Supergiant Games didn't put out some art books for their games at some point. I'm not really into strategy guides myself, but that CRPG book looks really cool.
Wow those books are really neat! Those pictures of King's Quest took me back. I remember playing that in my dad's friend's den on his PC in like 1985ish. We didn't have a PC. Makes me want to fire it up on ScummVM. Good friend of mine LOVES everything Mass Effect and turned me onto a one-off fan song produced. IDK if links are allowed here but I recommend looking up "Old Machines (Reaper Dubstep)." Has to be the reaper dubstep version for obvious reasons. It's pretty deep and dark but neat. Great video once again. :)
I have almost all of the same Strategy guides on PSX. Had the books for Parasite Eve 1 and 2, All of the FF games from VII to X-2. Love the Special edition cover I got with Rikku on it. X-2 is such a great game. You being a fan of shooters, have you ever checked out Radiant Silver Gun? It is an absolute masterpiece on the Saturn.
I used love me a good strategy guide book back in the day. In fact, I remember before I got the FF7 one back in the day, I legit printed out the entire Game FAQ and had it in a binder. Lol
Very cool. If you like art books more generally, something to check out is Davids Drawings, which is a collection of drawings created for Alien Covenant (David, the synthetic, is an avid sketcher...among other things). I dont have any art books of games, actually - I would kind of like one for the Silent Hill series, Silent Hill 2 and 3 in particular, I think that would be kinda cool. I think there is one for Dead Space too, which would be pretty cool, I think.
After seeing the Room Tour video i had to watch this, I used to have that Escape From Monkey Island guide! Oh and i checked out that Bitmap Jrpg book, It looks awesome! Over 600 pages. Oh and thanks for recommending The Tea Party in the new video 👍 Recommending cool bands as well as great games.
The Final Fantasy IX guide drove me mad back in the day, something with the chocobos had me confused for ages, back when it was released the internet wasn't as common, I remember playing it over a summer break with no internet access anywhere!
I hope you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism. I found the music in this video to be a bit distracting. It felt like some of the songs had a weird stereo effect, and some of them were rather distracting in how they sounded, switching their sound noticeably and very sharply. I only own a small handful of strategy guides, never felt like it was something I would want to spend money on. My favourite is probably the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past guide that I have, which would dedicate a few pages to talk about Hylian culture, clothing and so on. Far more interesting than the main guide itself!
Just picked up Metal Slug by Bitmap Books. Fantastic art and great interviews. I like my coffee table books to have some information to read as well as great art and game/consoles that mean something. With that said the only art books I own are the Bloodbourne and Dark Souls Design works.
I love strategy guides. it's a bummer they don't make them much anymore. The latest games I was able to get them for were Cyberpunk and Red Dead Redemption 2. Life Is Strange has a cool coffee table style book about the town it takes place in.
Brady's Final Fantasy IX strategy guide is the best of all time. Want to know more? Check out Playonline.com and use the code "Sarcasm". For those that don't know, it was a strategy guide that had the majority of the secrets, complete lists, and stuff you would buy a strategy guide for all located on a website and only gave codewords to enter on SquareEnix's information portal site playonline.com if you wanted the info you paid for. The codes were worded in a way like the initial sentence in this post.
I bought the FFIX strategy guide when FFIX came out, and I remember being SO disappointed with it. I loved the FFVIII strategy guide, so I was hoping FFIX would be good as well.
Thanks again for another video. I really liked the Duck Tales NES stream a week ago. You should do Castle Of Illusions for the Sega Genesis in the future.
Piggyback used to do the best pure strategy guide books ie. Kingdom Hearts. Absolutely gorgeous art included. Not a guide but a wonderful coffee table book is "20 Years of Tomb Raider" by Meagan Marie and another coffee table book i'd recommend although might be difficult to find now is "Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar" about the development of Half Life 2 and includes lots of great art that wasn't included in the game.
Final Fantasy XII has a really great strategy guide/artbook combo thing. Both books are inside a beautiful bigger book. FFIX artbook is cool too. The Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Legendia artbooks are fun too. The Resident Evil Archives book tells the story of RE up until RE0. It's half strategy guide-half novel. That's a few game books I have.
I have all of those FF guides! Plus the FF Tactics one! (which included a wood finished soaked back thanks to my mom) About that Lunar guide. It's based on the Japanese version of the game and Working Designs changed a lot in the North American version so it doesn't really work well with the game. See if you can find the WD guide. It's in color with WD's notorious humor spread throughout.
at 25:58, Pam, that is the bad version strategy guide for Lunar. Look into the Official Strategy guide by working designs. It is a magnificent looking guide and really thick with content and tips. I highly recommend it.
@@Cannotbetamed1 at a convention sure. I got mine on ebay a couple of years ago when the market was still semi affordable. Working Designs really took special care and interest with these guides. There's the Lunar 1 and 2, Vanguard Bandits, Alundra, and the first 2 Arc the Lad games. Since you have that guide, i looked into the "official" one, its not too expensive for the first lunar game, runs about 40 to 50 bucks. But damn for Lunar 2, that one is expensive 😳 . Still i recommend getting your hands on the first book
Hah, hilarious; I wrote two reviews for the CRPG Book and I had no idea there was a bound version available. I should check if we can get a discount, haha.
That’s a very generous offer. However this comment just made me realize that most things I said when I talked about that book were wrong. The whole time I was thinking about the Master System (which I have not played), not the Genesis (which I’ve played a number of games for).
You did that video about the lack of mom protagonists in video games. Just saw this movie trailer that seems like it would make a good mom-centered game: ua-cam.com/video/VhRErQhD23Y/v-deo.html
You haven't ever played a Sega Megadrive/Genesis game? That's a bit surprising. When you decide to try it out let your community know. I'm sure we'll inundate you with game suggestions.
That was a brain fart. Despite just having pulled out a schematic of the Genesis for some reason the Master System was stuck in my head. I've not played any SMS games.
Imagine if Control had a physical game guide book. There is so much material in that game that is worthy of print!
That would be great
Futurepress is releasing an Art Book for Control next month, at least.
Ikr, i got stuck at s certain point n gave up
@@Cannotbetamed1 If you know, Dead Rising 2: Off The Record is Non-Canon.
Awesome collection Pam!
I love and appreciate the artwork on this books
They are so rich in detail
Great video as always. Pat's book is tremendous. A lot of detail.
Awesome video, Pam. I no longer have any game books and strategy guides. I gave all of them away back in 2006 when I stopped being a dedicated gamer person.
Perfect timing Pam. I was just looking for Hint & Strategy Books for my Sega Genesis RPG games on eBay. Thank you for making this video.
You're welcome!
That's the best thing about having strategy guides...looking the exclusive artwork.
something about pixel graphics on print is wonderfully trippy!
Pam goes ASMR by tapping on the Dragon Age Origins book and I immediately smile.
This was a nostalgia trip and a half. :) So many great games. Shadow Hearts: Covenant is still one of my all-time favourites. :)
It's not very often that I collect video games books or strategy guide, though last year I did get myself a Smash Ultimate strategy guide as I'm a fan of Nintendo's biggest fighting game. Strategy guides are a neat part of the collection of video games, especially if they show off screenshots and artwork. I've still got old strategy guides by Prima for Nintendo GameCube and Xbox Original games. It's amazing how much work has gone into it, as well as going into depth about what to expect and where to find things like secrets and Easter eggs. There's not many video games art books I have thought, probably because I didn't know that video games art books existed, apart from how to draw characters books.
The moment you randomly opened that Icewind Dale page in the CRPG book, my heart just felt like it got wrapped in a warm blanket of nostalgia and wonderful memories of all the autumn evenings I spent with that game.
That’s the one BLack Isle CRPG I never out much time into. I’ve always kinda wanted to go back to it
This video makes me want to go through my collection. I have a few of the art and guide books shown in the video on my shelf =) One of my personal favourite is my Kingdom of Amular guide, now that's a tome!
Somehow I missed this video. Thanks Pam!
30 minutos on strategy books and game books? Nice way to start my Monday!
Back in the day I did own the Valkyrie Profile strategy guide. It was particularly useful as some dungeons had specific objectives to complete to give you bonus experience, and you also had to send your warriors to Asgard at the end of each chapter, so it helped you to decide who to send to fulfill each criteria. The art was nice also.
I don't have any of my game guides, anymore. Sadly. I have bought a few here in Japan, but they are all in Japanese and because my Japanese isn't at native level, I can't appreciate them like I could the English ones.
Anyway, nice to see your collection.
I've got quite a few books as well.. Mostly because I loved the games, not because I needed a guide. I especially like the book The art of Oddworld.
You've some of my favorites just in the thumbnail.
Fantastic collection of video game books. I do love a good strategy guide! Great video! :)
Thank you!
Grand collection! The best I can boast about owning are the Nintendo Power Final Fantasy strategy guide and the Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete guide. :)
I especially love the heavy “coffee table” art books.
Good grief, I had no idea books in that much detail existed. I just liked my Nintendo Power magazine.😉
It's fun to watch people talk about things they love. :)
Really nice video Pam :)
Now I will buy this CRPG book, hope I find it.
I know you aren't a huge Zelda fan but the guide for Link to the Past is great and very artistic, surprisingly. The Nintendo Power Super Mario 3 "special". Also the NES Game Atlas is a favorite in my collection of 3. I remember buying it at K-Mart when I was little.
I still got all my snes and ps1 rpg walkthrough guides, my favorite was always the Lunar 2 eternal blue hard cover guide. Great video 😃
Awesome.
Thanks!
I like how the PC adventure game history book is called the art of point n click, but has just as much coverage on the beginning and following 6 years or so of graphic adventure games that almost all used the text parser
That’s a good point
I used to buy so many of these in the earlier gens for $9.99 to $14.99 apiece. At the time EB Games (before Gamestop gobbled them up) would give you a couple bucks for them in trade. So it was a nice way to get rid of ones for games you beat and no longer needed them for.
Thing is I never knew that stores eventually 'pennied' these things. I found that out in 2005 and went nuts buying them. I bought something like 700-800 in a little over a year or so of scouring various stores with some stores (Best Buy, Gamestops that always forgot to pull them) providing 50-60 a shot. I still have a bunch of them for games I'd like to re-buy at some point but for others I'll probably NEVER buy/re-buy the games.
That’s a lot of strategy guides!
@@Cannotbetamed1 Indeed. I kept mostly ones for games I have or that I may re-buy at some point. Though there are some I definitely will likely never find a good condition copy of again. like Syphon Filter, that I probably should get rid of.
Having that many did pay off a number of years back though as Amazon was offering decent credit for some of them. I think I turned 30-40 of them into $600-800 in gift cards from them.
"Game Secrets" was actually the publisher/series name and not just the name of that particular book. It was Prima's label before they were "Prima Games," I believe. They also published several unauthorized guides under that same label. I still have the one I bought ages ago for Super Mario 64. I remember being shaken because they say "hell" and "damn" in it. Lol.
I don't have much in the way of art books since they are of little interest too me but I have tons of strategy guides, and game related novels. Most of the guides are FPS, RTS, or sim related, guides you already have, or both. The novels run everywhere from X-Com, and Wing Commander to Homefront and Everquest.
I'd be surprised if Supergiant Games didn't put out some art books for their games at some point. I'm not really into strategy guides myself, but that CRPG book looks really cool.
I'd love if Supergiant put out an art book.
Wow those books are really neat! Those pictures of King's Quest took me back. I remember playing that in my dad's friend's den on his PC in like 1985ish. We didn't have a PC. Makes me want to fire it up on ScummVM.
Good friend of mine LOVES everything Mass Effect and turned me onto a one-off fan song produced. IDK if links are allowed here but I recommend looking up "Old Machines (Reaper Dubstep)." Has to be the reaper dubstep version for obvious reasons. It's pretty deep and dark but neat.
Great video once again. :)
I’m not a big dubstep fan, but I looked up the song and it’s pretty good. It goes so well with the creepy Reaper noises.
I have almost all of the same Strategy guides on PSX. Had the books for Parasite Eve 1 and 2, All of the FF games from VII to X-2. Love the Special edition cover I got with Rikku on it. X-2 is such a great game.
You being a fan of shooters, have you ever checked out Radiant Silver Gun? It is an absolute masterpiece on the Saturn.
The special edition FFX-2 guide is so nice. I had it... but I don't know where my art book went.
I used love me a good strategy guide book back in the day. In fact, I remember before I got the FF7 one back in the day, I legit printed out the entire Game FAQ and had it in a binder. Lol
Especially before internet, id go to the bookstore to find stuff on videogames.
Yeah I remember when our Prodigy subscribtion ran out I printed off guides for tons of games, and I still have the binders I keep them in.
Rogue Rifter ok glad I wasn’t the only one lol
This is great!
Very cool. If you like art books more generally, something to check out is Davids Drawings, which is a collection of drawings created for Alien Covenant (David, the synthetic, is an avid sketcher...among other things). I dont have any art books of games, actually - I would kind of like one for the Silent Hill series, Silent Hill 2 and 3 in particular, I think that would be kinda cool. I think there is one for Dead Space too, which would be pretty cool, I think.
A Dead Space art book would be cool
@@Cannotbetamed1 Hmm, Ive had a look at it and it looks pretty nice. Might get it at some point. :o)
👏👏👏👏
Here we go!
New video!
After seeing the Room Tour video i had to watch this, I used to have that Escape From Monkey Island guide! Oh and i checked out that Bitmap Jrpg book, It looks awesome! Over 600 pages. Oh and thanks for recommending The Tea Party in the new video 👍 Recommending cool bands as well as great games.
Nice collection
Wow nice video
Thanks
The Final Fantasy IX guide drove me mad back in the day, something with the chocobos had me confused for ages, back when it was released the internet wasn't as common, I remember playing it over a summer break with no internet access anywhere!
I hope you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism. I found the music in this video to be a bit distracting. It felt like some of the songs had a weird stereo effect, and some of them were rather distracting in how they sounded, switching their sound noticeably and very sharply.
I only own a small handful of strategy guides, never felt like it was something I would want to spend money on. My favourite is probably the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past guide that I have, which would dedicate a few pages to talk about Hylian culture, clothing and so on. Far more interesting than the main guide itself!
Just picked up Metal Slug by Bitmap Books. Fantastic art and great interviews. I like my coffee table books to have some information to read as well as great art and game/consoles that mean something. With that said the only art books I own are the Bloodbourne and Dark Souls Design works.
The Metal Slug book looks gorgeous
I love strategy guides. it's a bummer they don't make them much anymore. The latest games I was able to get them for were Cyberpunk and Red Dead Redemption 2. Life Is Strange has a cool coffee table style book about the town it takes place in.
Future press is only one still around making them, they just announced elden ring strategy guide
@@TorryGood and Piggyback
@xman777b I have not seen any more piggyback guides after cyberpunk 2077 I thought they closed down.
@@TorryGood I haven't seen anything after that either.
Love the Alice series games. Didn't know there was an art book.
The alan wake collector's strategy guide is my favorite.
Brady's Final Fantasy IX strategy guide is the best of all time. Want to know more? Check out Playonline.com and use the code "Sarcasm".
For those that don't know, it was a strategy guide that had the majority of the secrets, complete lists, and stuff you would buy a strategy guide for all located on a website and only gave codewords to enter on SquareEnix's information portal site playonline.com if you wanted the info you paid for. The codes were worded in a way like the initial sentence in this post.
I bought the FFIX strategy guide when FFIX came out, and I remember being SO disappointed with it. I loved the FFVIII strategy guide, so I was hoping FFIX would be good as well.
Thanks again for another video. I really liked the Duck Tales NES stream a week ago. You should do Castle Of Illusions for the Sega Genesis in the future.
I’ve been wanting to play that one
Fantastic. I have Xenosaga 1and 2 guide. Xenosaga 2 is the limited edition it has a spot for a disc it was not in it. I enjoyed the video.
Piggyback used to do the best pure strategy guide books ie. Kingdom Hearts. Absolutely gorgeous art included.
Not a guide but a wonderful coffee table book is "20 Years of Tomb Raider" by Meagan Marie and another coffee table book i'd recommend although might be difficult to find now is "Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar" about the development of Half Life 2 and includes lots of great art that wasn't included in the game.
here in Brazil we had the magazines super game power, ação games and gamer ... good times when I went to stores to buy
Final Fantasy XII has a really great strategy guide/artbook combo thing. Both books are inside a beautiful bigger book. FFIX artbook is cool too. The Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Legendia artbooks are fun too. The Resident Evil Archives book tells the story of RE up until RE0. It's half strategy guide-half novel. That's a few game books I have.
Awesome collection!
I have all of those FF guides! Plus the FF Tactics one! (which included a wood finished soaked back thanks to my mom)
About that Lunar guide. It's based on the Japanese version of the game and Working Designs changed a lot in the North American version so it doesn't really work well with the game. See if you can find the WD guide. It's in color with WD's notorious humor spread throughout.
If you haven't played Lunar SS or EB, you are missing out on 2 of the best JRPGs of the era
Nice library
Thanks!
That’s a great shirt! I’m wearing the same one! GameDave FTW!
I love the shirt! It’s such a nice design
I recommend the collector's edition of Assassin's Creed origin
I am begging for one about the hole Elder Scrolls games, it would be huge.
at 25:58, Pam, that is the bad version strategy guide for Lunar. Look into the Official Strategy guide by working designs. It is a magnificent looking guide and really thick with content and tips. I highly recommend it.
I saw that one once at a convention. It was expensive
@@Cannotbetamed1 at a convention sure. I got mine on ebay a couple of years ago when the market was still semi affordable. Working Designs really took special care and interest with these guides. There's the Lunar 1 and 2, Vanguard Bandits, Alundra, and the first 2 Arc the Lad games. Since you have that guide, i looked into the "official" one, its not too expensive for the first lunar game, runs about 40 to 50 bucks. But damn for Lunar 2, that one is expensive 😳 . Still i recommend getting your hands on the first book
I love the content of your channel videos! Big hug here from Brazil, you look more beautiful in red.
*You’re the best!!!*
🙂
I need that crpg book now.
It’s really in depth, I’m glad I got the physical copy of it.
Nice video.who do you think made the best strategy guides?
Hah, hilarious; I wrote two reviews for the CRPG Book and I had no idea there was a bound version available. I should check if we can get a discount, haha.
You should! They seem pretty good about giving their books away in exchange for coverage.
I really need to get those books by Bitmap ❤️
They're very nice
I only have 2 strategy guide books for GTA San Andreas for PS2 and God of War Ghost of Sparta for the PSP
I prefer the sequels skill tree but I still think Origins is the best Dragon Age.
Origina is definitely the best, but I actually enjoyed my time with all of them.
I have a spare megadrive I could send you sometime Pam, such is my admiration for you 😍
That’s a very generous offer. However this comment just made me realize that most things I said when I talked about that book were wrong. The whole time I was thinking about the Master System (which I have not played), not the Genesis (which I’ve played a number of games for).
😃
Dragon Age!!!
Anyone else sniff their art books and strategy guides? Maybe I’m weird... 🤷🏽♂️
You did that video about the lack of mom protagonists in video games. Just saw this movie trailer that seems like it would make a good mom-centered game: ua-cam.com/video/VhRErQhD23Y/v-deo.html
You haven't ever played a Sega Megadrive/Genesis game?
That's a bit surprising.
When you decide to try it out let your community know. I'm sure we'll inundate you with game suggestions.
That was a brain fart. Despite just having pulled out a schematic of the Genesis for some reason the Master System was stuck in my head. I've not played any SMS games.
@@Cannotbetamed1 Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh okay. I gotcha.
I love Sega but I've never played a Mastersystem, 32x, or Sega CD title.
Not a cold person...lives in Canada.
I keep meaning to finish X-2 I just hate it so much.
Then you should probably not put any more time into it :p
I know but I love X and I wanted to continue the characters stories.
Strategy guide collector and you have nothing by Future Press?.. ☹️
I really want you to be my wife.
Pretty lady. Cute face. 👌