As I’ve mentioned before, I love reading books about video games — which is the reason I love the series of StoryBundle collections Simon Carless puts together, the most recent one released last month. If you’re looking for some good suggestions on what to read, there’s tons of great books (over 100) listed here (it even links to a few others lists, like this one from the New Yorker).
I’m a huge fun of the game-themed book bundles that Simon Carless curates for StoryBundle — I’ve happily bought every single one of them, even though I still have plenty to read. A new one came out this past week, and I’d say it’s even extra special as it’s themed around my friend Joseph White‘s Pico-8 fantasy console. On top of including the full Pico-8 development software and the 4 issues released so far of the excellent Pico-8 Zine, it’s also a fine selection of great game-related reads — I’m currently reading the Super Mario Bros. 3 book from Boss Fight Books (one of my favorite imprints), while I’m actually playing the game again on my NES Classic Edition. Make sure to grab the bundle before it expires.
All that classic music you’ve heard in Taito games? It was created by Zuntata, and the great news is that 114 albums of its game music can be found on iTunes — and more importantly, available to stream through Apple Music. I don’t tend to listen to game music outside of the context of playing games, but I love that this stuff is made available. Thanks to Simon Carless for pointing out this post, which is based on this announcement — and if you’re wondering where to start in terms of listening, here are a bunch of reviews.