Since its inception in 2020, Brian Riggsbee’s indie publishing house Retro Game Books has been producing high-quality, stunningly beautiful video game compendiums focussing on the 8- through 32-bit eras.
Pixel Art: Metroid, for example, covers the lovely original art from this NES classic which begat an entire genre. The Complete History of Rygar, meanwhile, is an impressively extensive account of anything and everything to do with this now (largely forgotten) Tecmo platformer series.
Riggsbee’s latest project – with the help of several friends – is the Video Game Maps series, covering (to date) the NES, SNES, and Genesis (aka MegaDrive). Each volume (three so far) features a stunning array of artwork, some original, much of it borrowed from game manuals and magazines, showcasing the world maps and level layouts of classic games.
Map design, they say, is a lost art form. The advent of ever-updating digital mapping (and outsized influence of Google Maps) means we have indeed lost something in the abandonment of a slower, more methodical, and, just as importantly, hand-drawn science/art to which we owe the famously evocative “Here Be Dragons”.
As real world maps have evolved, so too have those representing entirely fictional spaces. And one thing that’s so lovely about a collection like Video Game Maps is the way it centers – and reminds us of – the incredible work of those artists-cum-technicians responsible for designing the pixelated worlds we’ve come to love so well. Some of the pieces featured in these books are concept art; others fall into different categories of technical drawings; some are pulled from strategy guides (remember those?) or magazine features. Some of the best ones are brand-new, highly-skilled fan art created for the collection. Nearly all are wonderful, some are even revelatory.
The earliest games featured in Video Game Maps are drawn from the NES (aka Famicom) era. The main, 250-game, NES compendium runs 346 full-colour pages and features pretty much every notable title from the original Nintendo Entertainment System, plus dozens more you’ve either forgotten about or which have otherwise faded into obscurity. (There’s also a smaller, “Greatest Hits” NES compendium featuring only the most popular titles.) Big games – you know the ones – benefit from multi-page treatment, while the default for each entry is a single page, capturing just enough information – and interesting artwork – to pique your interest even if you don’t know the game. Impressively, the compendium pulls extensively from Japanese-language sources, with beautifully illustrated maps excerpted from sources never before seen on Western shores.
As Sega fiends, the book we were most excited about was the Genesis (aka MegaDrive) Maps collection, which spans just over 100 games, from across Japanese and Western releases. The fantastic, Ghosts ‘n Goblins-themed cover, won us over instantly, but it’s the diverse array of content inside that makes this an absolute must-buy. Readers of the Genesis Maps Collection will delight in poring over everything from classic Electronic Gaming Monthly-style “level guide” illustrations for Sonic the Hedgehog, to Ecco the Dolphin layouts. Other titles featured include the exceedingly map-friendly Lemmings, Mortal Kombat 2 stage art, and designs from Street Fighter II.
The crowning achievement, however, is the two volume (and counting) Video Game Maps: SNES collection. Both volumes currently hold pride of place on our coffee table, with their expansive, meaty, and well-researched collections of maps and layouts. The centrepiece of these books is the section (in Volume 2) devoted to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, with an accompanying assortment of original Japanese artwork, excerpts from guidebooks, and lovingly illustrated concept art from classic strategy guides. This section is also where the Maps series’ attention to detail pays off, with wisely chosen text excerpts from, i.e., the recent Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia, which help to contextualize the maps on display.
Other highlights of the SNES Maps collection include chapters devoted to the criminally underrated Kirby’s Dream Course (still, in our humble opinion, the best-ever golf game), the astonishingly beautiful painted overworld maps from Romancing SaGa, and various guide excerpts from the beloved Mega Man X titles.
Publisher Retro Game Books, a self-declared passion project from creator/editor Riggsbee, is the definition of indie publishing done right. The self-published titles give little hint that they’ve been cobbled together by hobbyists, instead representing finely-honed, meticulously organized, compendia touching on fascinating aspects of gaming history.
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Browse the Retro Game Books catalogue here.
