Bitmap Books

[QualityChimp]

PC Engine: The Box Art Collection

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Cover Art by Wil Overton.

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[Colin]

Saw the email about this earlier, definite purchase for me.

[Baseley09]

That cover artwork is proper grim imo, deffo need this tho i'm sure the contents will be amazing!!

[Colin]

Agreed. Kind of hoping the standard version has a nicer cover.

[Baseley09]

Why did they get someone who did art for Nintendo mags, I feel attacked.

[jonathan_ingram]

I really like these books, I use the SNES/Super Famicom : A Visual Compendium as a coffee table book / menu of what to play on the jailbroken SuperNT

This would be a lovely edition for the PCE Everdrive setup

I don't need that special edition cover at all though

[wheelaa]

PCE Boxart. Looks cool. But I can just look at several shelves and see pretty much all of it in the flesh (and look at several more shelves if I want to see numerous covers behind pullstrips).

So...it's a definite pre-order!

(Not that LE pisstain cover though, utter garbage! Offensively so. Pure ducking shyte!)

[Colin]

I occasionally wonder just how ridiculously big your collection is Wheelaa, even though you’ve sold a chunk off. From decades of being on retro forums you seem to have owned (own) pretty much everything.

[wheelaa]

For the formats I love, I've gone very deep over the last two/three decades. PCE, Neo, MD, Marty, Saturn, Lynx. And flyers. Then just bits and bobs across everything from Famicom to Acan to Series X. Not much Nintendo / Sony though.

The sad thing is, a lot that I have sold, not all (Acan for example), has been doubles, or selling used but keeping new etc. I've always loved a big trade pile too. Just often forget to do the trading part.

Except Saturn stuff where I've lost a lot of the love for it. New Sunseibu SGX, E0 Special crate, protos, betas, Navi Saturn TV tuner, sealed Delisoba, sealed blister PDS, NOS Sonic TRU, NOS Bomberman Kit and so on, all gone. Just sealed Taromaru, and a couple of hundred+ other three figure items to go. And the lower tier stuff and so on.

(What you may have seen me sell is nothing compared to what has gone privately. My stash is a pittance compared to a couple of people I've sold the above stuff and more to.)

Anyway, that LE book cover is truly awful.

I'd love it if they did a retro Japanese PC boxart book. Would be huge, and need to cover a lot of formats.

[QualityChimp]

I never had a PC Engine, but it's always appealed to me.
It's diminutive form an still-modern design just clicks.
Love the idea of those tiny HU Cards too.
Even the logo is brilliant.

Being Japan-only, all the boxart has a different vibe to the UK/US covers of the Master System boxes.

Realistically, I find the games a little primitive, if I'm totally honest with myself. Yes, there are some bangers, but 8-Bit is a bit limited, for me. Just for me, I can see why people collect and play PC Engine games.

I could get one of those mini PC Engine emulators, but unsure how many games I'd play without the additional draw of nostalgia that the Mega Drive version has.

I have the PC Engine Bible from Pix'n Love, but it's A5 sized, in French and crams a lot in.
I can imagine me getting this book, as it's cheaper than starting a physical collection of cards.

I can put it in the cupboard with the SNES and Game Boy books that sit unread after an initial flick through. :/

[wheelaa]

This isn't going to be a complete PCE boxart catalogue?

I don't have the GB or SFC books, but it appears neither of those are.

From the March email

"collecting over 300 professionally shot photographs of distinct and vibrant box-art from the NEC console’s library, dozens of high quality screenshots, and pages of insight into the history, impact, and legacy of a gaming machine that captured and informed a particular moment for popular culture in the 1980s and 1990s."

I think my own incorrect expectations have killed my enthusiasm for this. Eagerly awaiting the next newsletter!

[Hirst]

This isn't going to be a complete PCE boxart catalogue?

I don't have the GB or SFC books, but it appears neither of those are.

If that is what you're after, there is a PC Engine book by Geeksline Publishing which has a comprehensive listing of all the boxarts: https://www.geeksline-publishing.com...380170221.html

I can't speak for whether it's any good as I don't have it, but I have their NES/Famicom one and have found that to be well-written and extremely useful.

[wheelaa]

I saw that the other day, plus the Gunhed edition. Was somewhat put off by reading about the English translation though. On the maybe list!

[fuse]

Yeah neither the SFC or GB ones are comprehensive - the SFC one came first and that very much started life (on Kickstarter) as being photos of the one guy’s collection in particular.

[Colin]

This PCE book is available now for anyone after it, I just ordered the vanilla version.