Game art books review

The Japanese ones are certainly more colourful, and this has a whole rainbow backing up the cute alligators prowling the tropical pinball table. This one comes from Gremlin Graphics in , and it came out in one form or another on everything else too. We also get a good paragraph on the cover art, which might not be festooned with alligators and rainbows, but does have an action photo of the Williams Formula 1 car that Mansell won the championship in.

Long enough for a Game Boy Colour version to arrive, maybe? Reblogged this on DDOCentral. Like Liked by 1 person.

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The Super Mario Encyclopedia likely holds the answer! When it comes to art books, Blizzard wrote the book. Terrible puns aside, the acclaimed studio has yet to release an underwhelming album. Due to covering a wide berth of licenses rather than sticking to a specific field, this book is a great place to start for those seeking to dip their toes into this subgenre of collectibles.

Clocking in at over pages, The Art of Blizzard Entertainment holds a staggering variety of intricate sketches based on arguably the studio's three most popular series. For those interested in only one property, Blizzard has published multiple books dedicated to a single universe.

Ready to be impressed? Dark Horse pressed pages into this exhaustive exhibition of Hideo Kojima's iconic stealth series. As hyperbolic of a statement as this may seem, we are not exaggerating. The former contains black and white sketches that cover the entire spectrum of Metal Gear Solid 's universe, while the latter injects a touch of color to the mix.

Originally published as three separate books, The Sky: The Art Of Final Fantasy is a page boxed set highlighting Yoshitaka Amano's artwork from the first ten games in the series.

This version is near impossible to purchase for anything resembling a reasonable price; luckily, Dark Horse published an alternative in Unlike other art books, The Sky is not interested in detailing any lore or even supplying names for all the inserted characters. Consequently, The Sky will be of most interest to enthusiastic artists wishing to learn from one of the industry's greats.

If asked to nominate an ideal gift for fans of Nintendo's legendary property, The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia Deluxe Edition would have to take the prize. The final entry in The Goddess Collection trilogy - which also includes Hyrule Historia - Dark Horse's encyclopedia comes wrapped in gold foil and covers thirty years of the franchise's history. While hardly lacking in data pertaining to the hundreds of weapons, items, and enemies featured throughout The Legend of Zelda 's entire run, the pages prioritize visuals over passages of texts.

Now, in all fairness, Hyrule Historia and Create A Champion explore their specific topics to a deeper degree than the encyclopedia; however, the latter offers something for everyone.

Prior to proceeding any further, please note the above photo is of The World of the Witcher 's hard to find limited edition boxed set. The normal version is the book without any of the bells and whistles, although CD Projekt RED's compendium is anything but ordinary!

Echoing the trilogy's clever storytelling, The World of the Witcher is told from the perspective of five in-universe characters, including Geralt and Yennefer.

Depending on the fictional person's expertise, their chapter concentrates on a distinct aspect of life on The Continent. The Witcher 's fully realized world is gloriously illustrated in the ultimate companion piece to the series. With the exception of perhaps Nintendo, Atari is gaming's most important company. The publisher's relevance has declined considerably over the last three decades, but Atari changed the scene during the '70s and '80s.

As the first project to collect and preserve the company's illustrations, Art of Atari encompasses nearly half-a-century of gaming culture. Combining history, never before seen art pieces, and a healthy dose of nostalgia; Art of Atari is a museum exhibition available for the public to purchase.

While the technology of the era could not quite do justice to many of the illustrations featured in this book, Art of Atari is a testament to the industry's ambition and imagination. Along with breathtaking paintings, art books tend to be peppered with tidbits of information and lore associated with the universe. In certain cases, these collectibles contain data absent from the main game, therefore the only way to receive a full picture is to do some additional reading.

Players may be too preoccupied with surviving another encounter with the Necromorphs to dedicate too much attention to Dead Space 's environments and enemy designs, but that hardly means a ton of effort was not put into these components.

The Art of Dead Space spreads more than images over nearly pages, while also providing cool insight into the universe's characters and social constructs. Destiny infamously launched with a lack of content, primarily due to Bungie's frustrating decision to eliminate anything resembling a story and limiting the lore to Grimoire cards.

Despite all the justified criticisms, even the most ardent of haters could not help admit that Destiny 's worlds were rather pretty. The Art of Destiny distills gorgeous visuals into a series of detailed images that contain more personality than the game's launch version.

Bungie's eye to detail is impressive and both volumes illustrate the diverse sources used as inspiration to craft Destiny 's array of planets. Fans and critics are equally likely to find something to enjoy. These are only a few of our highlights but there's a sea of video game art books available out in the wild to wade your way through - and I'd bet each one is totally worth it.

This is a real humdinger of a collection. Less heavy on game-creating artworks, this series concentrates on fleshing out the world of the Elder Scrolls further still. It's something that exists simply to give more information to fans of a particular series, and it's truly magnificent. In addition to this, The Elder Scrolls Online book set two volumes is also worth a look because it packs lots of extra lore, art and information on the world of Tamriel - not just that of the online game, despite the title.

This volume finally brings those tales together into a complete package that's much easier to follow. Another exercise in bigger-scale world-building as opposed to pure behind-the-scenes artwork, The World of the Witcher is a brilliant compendium that accompanies the Witcher III in terms of release but also complements and contributes to the whole Witcher world. As a bit of a quirk, the in-book text is written from the perspective of Dandelion.

This series of games has long been lauded as having created rich, deep worlds both in terms of its aesthetic and art, but that's also thanks to oodles of hidden lore and history. Meanwhile, the Bloodborne Official Artworks book covers everything about the world of hunters and the old blood.

Chock full of eerily beautiful and haunting artwork, each one of these books are a must-have for fans. This is a stupendous companion to one of the best games of recent times, includes material from the DLCs, and is one of the best entries in the video game art book market from Nintendo.

Oh, and a fifty-five-page historical section that divulges the history of Hyrule as it is known in-game. What's more, the book chucks in some interviews from heavyweight names behind the games for good measure. However, it is currently only available in Japanese - but you can still get it from Amazon.