‘Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1985-2001’ Sets A February Release
by Erik Amaya
The video game era between 1985 and 2001 was a time of great change and upheaval as the business molted from a disastrous 1983 into a global powerhouse divided by four major companies. The period saw the arrival of Nintendo on American shores, resuscitating the industry back to life by claiming to be a children’s toy; the company’s eventual console war with Sega, and the arrival of two major technology companies who would utterly alter the playing field by the century’s end. And in all that time, videogame fans saw coming and going of systems like the Super Nintendo, the Sega Dreamcast, Atari’s Jaguar, the NEC TurboGrafx-16, and a slew of handhelds while the PC master race carried on. Looking pack at those times is writer and curator Van Burnham in Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1985-2001, an upcoming coffee table book from Dynamite Entertainment.
Continuing on from the previous volume, the new 500+ page book details the staggering change in the videogame landscape across the last 15 years of the 20th Century via “high quality screenshots and photographs joined by research and commentary on the significance of each entry to the industry at large and those gamers who played them.” Additionally, Burnham interviewed creatives like John Romero, Tim Schafer, Warren Spector, Eugene Jarvis, and Richard Garriott, and invited contributions from the likes of Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, Robin Hunicke, Roland Ingram, Alex Kane, Chris Kohler, Kelsey Lewin, Tom Vanderbilt, Brittany Vincent, and many more.
In a statement, Burnham said, “After the original Supercade was released, I was asked by readers and game fans when I’d do a sequel and I honestly didn’t feel it was important until now. The next generation of gamers have since come of age, raised in the aftermath of the crash, and over the past two decades they’ve expressed a passion for the games of their youth — Street Fighter, Space Harrier, and Super Mario — which are now equally, if not more relevant than the games of the golden age.”
Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1985-2001 is due for release in February 2023.
