This book is great as long as you know what you're getting into.

Some video games histories, like Console Wars and The Ultimate History of Video Games, are about individuals and story. Phoenix IV is not. The author loves sales figures and hardware. The former gets a little boring, although I'm happy he's cataloging it for posterity.

The hardware, however, is great. The author aims to describe as many video game consoles, controllers, and peripherals as possible, with photos. If you've ever walked into a used video game store and marvelled at a strange old piece of tech, then prepare for that to happen every couple of pages in this book!

I'm most fascinated by the number of times console manufactures tried to slap a keyboard peripheral onto their machine and call it a personal computer. It happened for decades.

Thanks to the author for all his years monitoring video game news, and compiling it into one volume.