SEGA Arcade Pop-Up History

by Keith Stuart

32 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2020

About the author

Keith Stuart is a veteran journalist who has been covering video games and digital culture for over 20 years. In 2015 he wrote his first novel, A Boy Made of Blocks, which was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club. It has sold over 200,000 copies and is translated into 24 languages. His second novel, Days of Wonder, is available in paperback, audio and ebook, and his third, The Frequency of Us, was selected for BBC2's Between the Covers series and is available in hardback, ebook and audio. His latest, Love is a Curse is available now.

Reviews

[Lewis Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t help but feel like this was a bit of a disappointment. I don’t think it does enough to earn the title of SEGA Arcade Pop-Up History when 5 of the 6 games featured are all Yu Suzuki efforts. I appreciate the big focus here is the pop-up models based on the more recognisable deluxe arcade cabinets, but if that’s the case then why are they relegated to the back half of the book and not the front? I feel like if they’d swapped this around they could have expanded the actual editorial content with more games and shed more light on more obscure SEGA titles. What really disappoints is how each game’s article is not given the same love and attention. Some games come with accompanying screenshots and concept art while others don’t feature concept art in favour of more screenshots and the screenshots are presented through an ugly CRT filter that betrays the wonderful artwork from these games. There’s such a small amount of editorial content that it feels more like a glorified fanzine than an officially sanctioned SEGA publication, and somewhere along the line the decision was made to remove the originally promised deep-embossed effect from the cover. I can’t deny that the models themselves aren’t impressive and detailed, but the supporting content should have been more substantial. The spine of the book is also too wide for the contents, meaning the book doesn’t rest flat. This could bring undue stress on the spine in the future which would be a real shame. Overall this feels like a missed opportunity. It’s like a working idea for a better book.

[Binni Erlingsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty book that celebrates the most beautiful arcade cabinets of the 80s. There’s interesting text on each but I feel it falls short by only including 6 games. I would also have loved some proper interviews to make it a bit meatier. The pop-ups are lovely though.