Attack of the Flickering Skeletons: Book Review.

Attack of the Flickering Skeletons is the second book written by Stuart Ashen and published through the ever popular crowdfunding publisher – Unbound. So what its the book actually about? here’s a quote from the author.

In my previous book Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of I showcased a bevy of amusingly awful titles. And now I’m going to do it again, because what the world needs right now is to know exactly how bad Domain of the Undead for the Atari 8-bit computers was.

With that said, I can honestly say I ‘ve never really wanted to read about rubbish games, in fact like most of you, I would use reviews to steer clear of those games, mainly because my pocket-money back then needed to be spent wisely and lets face it, who really wants to play a rubbish game and end up smashing something. Having read the book for the past week or so, I’ve gone from thinking, is this a book actually worthy of being a real physical book, not for any other reason than do we need to read about these terrible games, I can honestly say a BIG FAT YES ITS WORTHY. Clearly the author spotted a hole in the market here, after a successful first book “Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of”, and now this follow-up book, covering more of those terrible games and as the title suggests, some we have probably never heard of. You can say that again Stuart.

All the games covered were released between 1980 and 1995 inclusive so a huge selection of games to choose from, so clearly the book was well researched. The layout works well and the writing is very good including lots of info about each game just incase you want to pick and few up and pull your hair out trying to play them. As an added bonus there are some interviews with other well-known Youtubers spread throughout the book, again adding a nice touch that changes the pace of the book and breaking things up nicely.

The book itself measures in at 19 x 18.4 cm and my initial thoughts was its pretty small,  actually on reflection, its perfect for what this book is all about. The content is spread across 208 pages in total and the paper used appears to be of good quality – oh I almost forgot, its hardback only and that’s a plus in my book.

Would I recommend the book? YES, for a retail price of £12.99, and I’ve seen it for substantially less than that, why not look at gaming and its history from a different angle, in order to appreciate great games, we actually need to experience poor games, otherwise how would we know the difference?  So hats of to Stuart Ashen and those that contributed to the book, a great book for the price of a few beers.. Go on you know you want to.

zapiy

Retro head and key holder of RVG.