[.ca] 1000 Game Heroes (ISBN 3822816337)

Chronique amazon.fr:
Taschen frappe encore là où on ne l'attend pas. L'éditeur aborde un thème surprenant, jusque-là délaissé, les stars du jeu vidéo. Véritable dictionnaire des noms propres du jeu vidéo, 1 000 Games Hereos ne s'arrête pas aux figures habituelles et va au-delà des biographies des sacro-saints Lara Croft et Mario pour nous faire découvrir un univers riche en couleurs, peuplé de personnages virtuels variés qui mériteraient sans aucun doute leur étoile au panthéon des vedettes du cinéma. Loin de s'adresser uniquement aux initiés des jeux vidéo, 1 000 Games Hereos se parcourt comme tous les livres d'art Taschen. On découvre ainsi page après page, à travers des illustrations sur papier glacé, le fossé qui nous sépare aujourd'hui des amas de pixels des années 80. Les photos sont splendides et témoignent de la créativité et de l'univers particulièrement riche des jeux vidéo. De Mario à StarFox en passant par Tekken, 1 000 Games Hereos passe en revue sous toutes les coutures les 1 000 vedettes qui ont fait, ou font, l'histoire du jeu vidéo. Un seul regret, on aurait tout de même aimé que le livre dépasse la revue de détail et le côté catalogue pour nous livrer de croustillantes anecdotes sur la genèse des jeux. Clin d'oeil de la part de l'éditeur ou volonté de coller au caractère international de ces stars, le livre est rédigé en trois langues : français, allemand, espagnol. 1 000 Games Hereos est un splendide cadeau, que l'on soit fan ou non des jeux vidéo. --Frédéric Danilewsky

Not much more than Eye Candy..:
When I saw this book, I though "Ooh! A book of video game heroes!", so naturally I had to give it a look. When I came across it at \oa book store\c I thought "Man, this looks really nice!", but the truth is, that's about all it is. It LOOKS nice, but beyond that, you're not really getting much of anything besides pictures. If you want some kind of decent list of the greatest video game heroes of all time, you're not going to get it. Before I tell you how disappointing I found this book to be, I'll tell you what I liked. First off, it's filled with beautiful CG pictures from all kinds of video games, probably including a few you've never heard of. Second, the book is multilingual, which I find to be INCREDIBLY cool. I believe it is written in 3 different languages. That's all, though. Now let me tell you what I DIDN'T like. 1. The book is clearly called "1000 Game Heroes", right? You'd THINK it'd be about game heroes, but instead it's this weird mix of game series titles AND hero names. Where on one page you'll see "Final Fantasy", on the next you'll just see a character name like "Sonic" or "Mario" or "Zelda". Those are character names, whereas "Final Fantasy" is not. Final Fantasy is a large series of games. 2. Speaking of Final Fantasy, it IS mentioned in the book, but here's the kicker. The only Final Fantasy game you'll see mentioned is FFX, and it's not even labeled as such. The page just says "Final Fantasy" and then underneath you get a paragraph plot synopsis of FFX. So what about Final Fantasy games 1 through 9? Do they not deserve any mention because they're not "recent"? 3. Like I said above, if a game isn't recent, it isn't mentioned. For instance, Xenosaga is mentioned... but Xenogears is not. 4. For the Sonic and Zelda series games as well as other hugely popular series, they've chosen not to include older game art. Instead they just want to show us the recent stuff. Sonic's designs have changed considerably since the Genesis days, and if they're going to feature Sonic, they shouldn't just show pictures and screen shots from Sonic Adventure. They should show Sonic's original design and Sonic's original game's overall look as well. 5. The book has a stupid and confusing way of categorizing their "heroes" (or in actuality, random popular characters and random game titles) into different sections. There's even a section for "Sexy" game heroes, and "Tomb Raider" is one of them. First off, "Tomb Raider" is the game's title, not the game hero. If they want to show sexy heroes, they should really be more specific. Oh, and all of the sexy heroes were females. No guys. Now I know the target audience for most video games is male, but many girls like to play video games too, and I'm just one of them. If you're going to do a section of scantily clad females, then put some nice looking men in there too, will ya?! This book needs to be titled "Random Video Games, Video Game Heroes, and Pretty CG Pictures", because that's all it is. While you do get plot synopses, you'll end up with crap like Final Fantasy X's plot representing the entire Final Fantasy series. Even though ANY Final Fantasy fan knows that the plots and characters for every Final Fantasy game are vastly different (sans Chocobos, Mogs, etc..) Anyway, to sum it up, this book is only good for the pictures, really. You'll get some great shots from certain games, but if you want pictures that much, you're better off buying the art book for whatever game it is you really like, or finding the pictures on the internet. I even found a picture in the Mario section that looked like it had horrible JPEG compression. Who wants to buy a book with compressed JPEG images in it? I know I don't. If you're looking for a good book on video games and game heroes, buy "High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games" instead. It's a much better book with much better content, and it'll cost you half as much as "1000 Game Heroes" will.

Great coffeetable book for any gamer:
If you're looking for a gorgeous coffee table book to page though, 1000 Game Heroes might fit the bill if you enjoy games at all! This massive tome has over 600 pages of glossy images and information on games from Ghost Recon to Tomb Raider, Ecco to Virtua Cop to Dungeon Siege. Most of the games featured are newer ones, and the graphics they choose to highlight are truly spectacular. Each title lists its platform, release date, developer and editor. A paragraph about each game is given in English, French and German. This means that you don't get a huge amount of depth for each game. But the book is already 600 pages long. If they had in depth information on each game, it would have turned into 2,000 pages and would have cost over $100. Instead, there's just enough about the game for you to see if you're interested in it, at which point you simply go to the web and learn everything you could possibly hope to know about it. The organization of the book is a bit strange. You have "Kings of Action" which includes Metal Gear Solid. You have "Legends of Video Games" which puts Diablo next to Rayman? Then you have Sexy Heroes full of slinky women, and Strange Heroes which holds the wonderful female hero in Syberia. Still, many of these games are blasts from the past, and it's fun to look through screenshots of Diablo and Dungeon Siege and remember the hours and hours we spent playing these games. I do warn that some of the graphics involve sexily clad (or topless) female characters, as one might expect from an industry that at least until recently pushed primarily towards teenage boys as its target audience. Highly recommended for any gamer!

Fine for what it is.:
Most of these reviewers are being anal genre dorks. This isn't intended to be a deep-seated essay on or analysis of video games. It's just a collection of pretty pictures and I don't think it makes any claims to be anything else. It's by Taschen for god's sake - who buys their books for the text? It's kind of thrown together, there is some lack of continuity in the categories, and there are one or two bad reproductions, but you're basically getting a decent sourcebook. Yeah, you could have the same or better by compiling yourself from various gaming mags, etc., but this is at least more convenient. The price IS too high though, and I've never seen it on sale. But if you just want to get a more-or-less comprehensive notion of the visual elements of gaming culture as it stands at present, flipping through this book for an hour should provide you with that.

COFFEE TABLE EYE CANDY:
What can I say? This book is a pure piece of coffee table eye candy. In no way is this book to be construed as an all inclusive history of gaming heroes/characters. Take it for what it is, a visual cross section of games, some of it's characters, and a few lines about it to boot. While I'm personally disappointed that Tenchu isn't represented here, I can only hope that Taschen (a visual publisher if there ever was one) will crank out another volume in the near future. Until then, relax and turn the page.

1000 heroes, 600 pages, and zero context:
If you were to go through the waste bins of all the game magazines--or go to an E3 convention and pick up a CD-ROM press kit from each publisher in attendance--you, too, could publish 1000 Game Heroes. It's literally little more than a collection of printouts of existing sketches, renders, and screenshots, vaguely compiled by genre (the airplane shooter Crimson Skies and abstract character-based strategy game Pikmin share nothing in common, but they're both filed under "Strange Heroes"). Each game gets one quick summary paragraph, and there are some short essays by famous game developers (Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux), but they're not enough to save the project. Mostly what this book lacks is context--now that we see the pretty pictures, why are they here? What do they say about game design, or character design? What was the artist's intent? You'll never know, and the result is a feeling that these pieces were included because that's what Nintendo and Sony sent the author on CD. If you've been following video games for a while (and why would you be interested in this book otherwise?), you will quickly realize that you've seen this all before, on the covers and in the pages of game magazines like PC Gamer and GamePro. 1000 Game Heroes is 600+ pages of shallow recycling. Yes, it's printed on pretty paper and what few words appear do come in three languages (English, French, and German). The good points end there. Without any context, 1000 Game Heroes lacks true value--and as regurgitated content repurposed by a third party without fresh insight, it certainly isn't worth the asking price.