Your coffee table is about to become astounding, and you don’t even know it yet. The world has been blessed with many great pop-up books over the decades, creating a quasi-AR-before-AR like state – however, to my knowledge none have yet to feature arcade gaming greats from Sega. Well, the time for that is now, thanks to a new Kickstarter.

Publisher, Read-Only Memory (who specialise in books about retro gaming) has launched a campaign for a pop-up book that is all about Sega arcade machines. It is to be named SEGA Arcade: Pop-Up History and has been created as a full collaboration with Sega towers. Most machines featured come from the man himself, Yu Suzuki: Hang-On, Space Harrier, After Burner and Out Run, with the outlier being 1987’s Thunder Blade (although that was also developed in-house at Sega).

Besides from the slick paper-powered 3D models themselves, each spread will be accompanied by close-ups of the artwork, schematics, as well as a historical blurb written by Keith Stuart (who is a gaming writer for The Guardian). Additionally, the pop-ups have been crafted by paper engineer, Helen Friel while the illustrations are by Kam Tang, who is a commercial artist.


With 27 days still to go, I would be surprised if this Kickstarter wasn’t somehow funded. The overall goal is £40,000, however, over £21,000 has already been raised by 529 backers. If you’re after one yourself, a pledge for the book will set you back £35. There were some cheaper early bird specials, but these are all but gone, sadly. If you decide to take the plunge, though, the Kickstarter version will feature a silver foil cover that is deep-embossed. If it does go to print after the campaign, the cover will be printed and flat, unlike the content within.

If this is your jam and you’re a keen coffee table owner, the Kickstarter can be found here.

Brendan Meharry Brendan Meharry (149 Posts)

Growing up while the fifth generation of consoles reigned supreme meant that Brendan missed out on much of the 80’s and early 90’s of gaming the first time around. He either lacked the cognitive ability to play them, as naturally, he was a baby - or he simply didn’t exist yet. Undeterred, Brendan started a blog called Retro Game On in 2011. This followed his exploits as he collected and played everything he could get his hands on no matter what the release date. While RGO is mainly YouTube focused these days concentrating on video reviews and historical features, the itch to do some old fashion writing never went away. More recently, Brendan has been a staff writer for the gaming website, GameCloud, mostly focusing on the indie gaming scene in his locale of Perth, Australia.