Dual Reviews – By Michael Mertes

Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld – Book Review By Michael Mertes

As a video game player, you can probably name a few different game titles that intrigued you so much that you could potentially be clinically

Thoughts of the game and how to play it race through your mind, even when you’re away from it, and you can’t wait to get back to the game to take another crack at it. David Sudnow, the author of the latest tle in the Boss Fight Books series “Breakout: Pilgrim in the Micro- world”, experienced this syndrome, with the Atari video game: Breakout. Ini ally released in 1983 under the name “Pilgrim in the Microworld”, the book has been re-issued and re-edited under the Boss Fight Books label.

David Sudnow’s fascina on with video games start-ed with Missile Command, as he watched his teenage son save ci es from ballis c missile a acks in the game at the local arcade. Not ini ally impressed with the con-cept of video games, it wasn’t un l he laid his hands on the Atari 2600 port of the game that he realized the hid-den depth these electronic games had to them. David endsupbuyinghisownAtari2600console,anddueto the store not having any copies of Missile Command, he picked up Breakout in its place. From there, the deepdive into Breakout and how the game works, begins.

Box Art: A Gaming Documentary

Movie Review by Michael Mertes

Launched after a successful Kickstarter Campaign, Box Art: A Gaming Documentary is an eight-episode series that focuses on the artists behind some of the most famous video game box art from such games as Castlevania 3, Mega Man 2, Doom 2 and others. This documentary series was produced by Rob McCallum and Pyre Productions, who has created other exciting documentaries such as

I found each episode to be very educa onal, but the third episode is my favorite out of the eight, as it intro-duces us to legendary Konami ar st Tom Dubois. Tom was responsible for producing the cover artwork for many fa-mous Konami tles for the Castlevania series and othergames such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV, Blades of Steel, and Contra 3: The Alien Wars. Tom shares some fantas c stories about how he got involved with Kona-mi, got sued by Sports Illustrated, and o en saw much of his artwork get cropped out due to the way Konami letter-boxed the cover art for their NES releases. Other artists such as Marc Ericksen (Mega Man 2) and Gerald Brom (Doom 2) are also featured and share their stories about crea ng some of the most iconic video game cover art ever seen.