Indeed, A Handheld History looks great on top of a coffee table.Įach console is introduced with a short essay detailing its history and unique technical specifications. It’s also where the coffee table format is best served with sleek graphic design joining words and pictures in an attractive way. This structure is best utilized in the book’s first sections, where Nintendo and Sony consoles are covered. Some of these are widely known and have sold tens of millions of units (e.g., the Game Boy and the PlayStation Portable), while others are obscure novelties mainly relegated to the homes of diehard collectors (e.g., the FunKey S). The structure follows a simple logic: each section is dedicated to one handheld console. Saltalamacchia describes Retro Dodo as a “…brand that entertains retro gamers.” A Handheld History is published by Expanse, a publishing wing of HarperCollins UK that focuses on gaming, television, and movies, in collaboration with the indie publishing imprint Lost in Cult and the aforementioned Retro Dodo.Ī Handheld History‘s structure is split into dozens of sections discussing handheld video game consoles, like the Nintendo DS (Dual Screen), the Game Boy, and the Sony PlayStation Portable, just to name a few. However, don’t judge a book by its cover.Ī Handheld History is the brainchild of Brandon Saltalamacchia, founder of the retro video game collecting website Retro Dodo. No doubt, A Handheld History is a good-looking book. The book’s graphical layout is also equally alluring. A Handheld History’s presentation grabs one’s attention with its hefty size and cover illustration. A recent example is the new coffee table book A Handheld History: A Celebration of Portable Gaming. The publishing world has recently seen a steady stream of tomes cataloging the history of video games.

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