Modernist art book meets classic video games

The book – which raised over £24,000 during its funding campaign last September – is written by games industry legend Gary Penn and produced in collaboration with Jon Hare of Sensible Software.

It is the definitive history of the pioneering British games company. Between 1986 and 1999, Sensible Software produced some of the most fondly-remembered games ever to grace a home computer – including Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder and Wizball. The book chronicles the rise of Sensible from its humble C64 beginnings, through its million-selling Amiga heyday in the early ’90s, to its ultimate demise at the hands of the console revolution.

Interviewees include Jon Hare, Stoo Cambridge, Jools Jameson, Chris Chapman, Martin Galway, Peter Molyneux, Gary Whitta, Mike Montgomery and Dominik Diamond.

Alongside the written history is an exhaustive visual retrospective, including game imagery, photographs, archive material, design documents and never-before-seen inklings of unreleased games – all packaged in a stunning high-spec book with a fold-out jacket. This is the flagship title from Read-Only Memory, which aims to publish considered, high-end books on gaming history.

Jon Hare: “It takes you back to that moment in time when video games really were the new rock ’n’ roll and the British development scene was on top of the world...”

The book is available to pre-order now at readonlymemory.vg.