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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.81676
EAN: 9780672328206
ISBN: 0672328208
Label: Sams
Manufacturer: Sams
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 984
Publication Date: December 22, 2005
Publisher: Sams
Studio: Sams
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Written by Computer Scientist Andre' LaMothe, the world's best selling game programming author, The Black Art of Video Game Console Design breaks new ground in game development by bridging the alien worlds of hardware and software together for the first time!
The Black Art of Video Game Console Design is written for the programmer and/or hobbyist interested in software game development, but also wants to understand the hardware games are implemented on. This book assumes no prior knowledge of Electrical Engineering or Computer Architecture, but takes you on a breathtaking journey from atomic semiconductor theory to the design and construction of basic video game consoles that you can build and write your own games for! Included in the book is the entire design of numerous embedded game systems including the XGameStation systems and much more.
The Black Art of Video Game Console Design with 800+ pages covers everything you need to know to design your own game console including:
• Basic atomic physics and semiconductor theory primer.
• Introduction to circuit analysis; current, voltage, and resistance.
• Analog design using discrete components.
• Digital electronics and Boolean algebra.
• Physical hardware construction and prototyping techniques.
• Combinational logic and advanced integrated circuit building blocks.
• Finite state machine design.
• Computer architecture and design.
• Understanding and using microprocessors and microcontrollers.
• Developing software for embedded systems.
• Designing video (NTSC/VGA), audio, and input device systems.
• Interfacing and communications.
• The complete design and discussion of numerous game systems including the XGameStations!
CD-ROM Contains
• PCB and circuit simulation tools.
• All necessary data sheets.
• Demos and source code.
• Complete designs to numerous embedded systems including the XGameStations.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
The Black Art of Video Game Console Design has enormous potential, spanning a massive amount of material from the physics of basic electronics all the way through the implementation of custom computer systems. As a video game developer and hardware hacker, I was thrilled to find it.
Unfortunately, the book was ruined for me by the tremendous number of errors in the diagrams, tables, and text. At one point I started counting them, and was averaging about one serious error on every page. Truth tables are wrong, numbers in the text are wrong, diagrams have serious mistakes or illustrate something totally different than what the text describes, and so on. In some cases you can easily figure out what it was supposed to look like, but in too many instances, the errors substantially alter the meaning of what's being described. Anyone who doesn't know this subject matter already will find the book infuriating. This book needs a second edition, with a thorough editing job.
Rating:  -
Andre LaMothe is an amazing guy, no question about it. He tends to write huge books, and the amount of material he fits into them is superlative. He's obviously got a passion for what he does, and that passion is certainly revealed in his writing style. He's a guy who never lost that simple love of video games.
Perhaps it's his sheer enthusiasm that makes him seem to sometimes write too quickly. A few minutes spent with The Black Art Of Video Game Console Design brings this tendency to light: I don't know how long it took to write this book, but I imagine the author was under some pressure to get it finished before some kind of deadline, because there are the typical signs of a book that didn't get properly edited. There are occasional typos and punctuation glitches, but more worrisome is the potential for factual errors. For example, an early and very glaring inaccuracy is the claim on page 66 that most electronics solder is 60% tin and 40% flux. In reality, typical solder is 60% tin and 40% *LEAD*, not flux; the flux burns and evaporates away from the solder once the solder has been melted. Yeah, it's a small detail, but any technical editor should have caught that one a mile away.
On a larger scale, however, LaMothe's enthusiasm propels the book forward at a speed not typically seen in how-to books. Comprising almost a thousand pages, this is already a pretty massive book, but the amount of material LaMothe crams into that space is remarkable. The first few chapters are something you have to see to believe, each chapter condensing basically an entire college electronics class' worth of material into around 50 pages. While this means that, in a sense, the book is a good value because it provides a lot of material, this compression obviously comes at a price: Some concepts were just not meant to be explained in a single paragraph, and the book falters multiple times trying to explain something as quickly as possible when the concept would really have benefited from some elaboration.
The result is a book that often makes me wonder what audience would most benefit from it. The first few chapters are all about electronics, and are written on a level that would benefit someone with literally no background in electronics at all. However, the focus of the book is on console design, not EE, and there are better books out there for the person who just wants to learn electronics. This, combined with the fact that you really can't (and probably shouldn't try) to learn the entire field of electronics in one night, leads me to believe that anyone approaching this book should probably have some thorough grounding in electronics technology before you actually start reading the book. Once you get past the first half and into the really game-focused material, the book comes into its own, but a majority of the material here would be better read elsewhere.
So ultimately, this is a book with a HUGE amount of material that you can learn a lot from, and if you really want to buy just one book, it's hard to find a better value than this. But if you want a truly broad-based education in electronics, you'll need to do some heavy supplementing with other books before you can get the most benefit out of this one.
Rating: -
I am always amazed how one person can know so much, learn new things and write <<2 000>> page book--and still produce accurate information that any hobbiest can pickup, without burning out! I wonder if Lamothe's next book is going to top his last? This one, just like Tricks 3D, is not for the faintheart but for the passionate individual that wants to learn how things are done in this world.
I'm in school for Electronics and I am shocked at how much information is packed into a single chapter. I think I learned more reading half of this book than in a year of schooling (as far as practical matters go). I have much to say but I should ramble no more... just buy it man! You won't be disapointed.
Rating: -
Some background on me:
I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. I'm also a professional software engineer in the video game industry.
In my education, I had a few classes on electronics/digital circuits and I loved it. I started doing my own circuits outside of class and buying digital ICs to add to my toolkit. Over the years, I'd lost touch with that side of myself and the joy that it gave me. Then I found this book, "The Black Art of Video Game Console Design".
This book is basically an abridged EE (Electrical Engineering) degree with a focus on video game consoles! And the kicker is that you're being instructed by one of the most "readable" authors around. By "readable", I mean that the author has a way of teaching you things as if it was your friend, sitting next to you, turning complicated subjects into an easy-to-understand, entertaining, data stream. The information is clear and the tone is upbeat and occasionally humourous.
As I read through the book, I was hitting everything that I learned in months and months in the classroom, but without all the fuss and only the relevant information. Resistors, capacitors, diodes, truth tables, timing diagrams, etc, it's all there. Then, the author jumped into complicated areas such as joysticks, sound, microprocessors, assembly language, the NTSC (standard TV) video signal (just to name a few). Finally, there we were at the pinnacle of the mountain, the culmination of all our learning, and here's where the real "Black Art" of the book kicks in, the full process of designing a video game console.
In today's hardware driven world, this book should be on every game programmer's shelf, whether they're a hobbyist or a seasoned veteran.
Rating: -
At least a book about the most obscure aspect of game programming: hardware designed to play.
This book gives a unique glimpse to the stuff needed to build your own game machine, the decissions you need to made, why to take certain paths in your designs and so on... even it gives you a very good primer on electronics and semiconductors.
Given the great number of Atari homebrewers out there, this book arrives just in time to create a whole new scene... a scene in which not only you will make your own games.. but the very machine they run on!
Definitely, a must have.
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