Writing this article gives me goosebumps. For years, I have wanted to develop a book, and now I have the opportunity to do just that for the handheld community, a community that I have been involved in for many years.
I remember opening Pokemon Yellow for my 8th Birthday, it was the moment when I became obsessed with handheld games consoles, and now, 21 years later here I am trying to build a website and a book about retro gaming.
The world works in mysterious ways, that’s for sure!
We are teaming up with Lost In Cult to produce a bespoke, coffee table book about the history of handhelds and our crowdfunding campaign launched on 7th April 2022 at 21:00 GMT.
I have always respected the evolution of handhelds, watching them evolve from the original Game & Watch to the brand new Steam Deck is something truly incredibly and they’re transforming at a rapid pace.
As you know every year there are more and more of the best retro handhelds coming up, creating this constant competition to evolve, and this is why there’s so many to choose from over the last 40 years.
We decided to pay respect to all of these handhelds by building a book that takes a look back at this incredible industry and features stories, information and art from incredible creatives within the gaming industry.
We have collaborated with over 30 contributors to make this book a community driven piece of physical content to have on your coffee table for years to come.
We have big names on board such as Ashens, Kevin Kenson, Elliot Coll, Mike Diver, Larry Bundy Jr, Bob Wulf, Retro Game Corps, and a whole lot more.
Each of these incredible creatives will be discussing the history of a handheld, each giving a new perspective and insight into their personal stories about these handhelds.
Alongside incredible written content you will be able to explore impressive illustrations and you will be introduced to incredible new artists that have the same passion for handheld gaming as you do.
Lost In Cult has a history of creating incredibly well made gaming journals, with their recent 3 journals getting fully backed in just a few days. The reason we worked with them is to replicate their quality into a hard back book about handheld games devices.
We’re going all out with this book, to a point where we need to hit some pretty big goals in order to make this a reality, and that’s why we need your help.
With over 250+ page, 30+ contributors, 15+ artists and featuring over 30+ handhelds this book is packed with a lot of content, a lot of art and a lot of words.
To make this a reality (and i’ll be very transparent here), we need to hit a backing goal of £21,000 to put this into production. This is a goal I think we can hit, because the handheld community is by far one of the greatest, and most passionate in the gaming industry.
This book is coming out at the perfect time, with the Steam Deck, the Analogue Pocket and the Play Date being released as we write this, there’s been no time like this over the last 40 years that has pushed the handheld industry forward.
Our goal was to hit £21,000 in 30 days… we managed to hit that in just 24 hours! It’s an incredible achievement and it just goes to show that handheld enthusiasts are genuinely interested in a piece of physical content about handhelds.
As of updating this article on 13th April 2022, we have raised over £32,500 in under a week. It feels great.
This is the first time I have personally done anything like this, and when the Retro Dodo team went to London with the Lost In Cult crew to launch the campaign I couldn’t have been more nervous.
I was so worried about it not funding that I couldn’t sleep the night before, but fortunately thanks to you, and the handheld community it is now officially becoming a reality.
If you would like to snag a copy and help us make this a reality, you can do so at ahandheldhistory.com. There’s two editions, a standard which is retailing for £34.99 and a deluxe version which retails for £49.99.
The deluxe version comes with a lot of awesome extra, for example, if you back the deluxe version your name will be in the book under our backers section, you will receive a premium quality poster of the front cover, five A5 prints of b_b_retro‘s featured photography, we’ll hand sign and hand number your copy alongside a limited edition OBI strip, a book mark and more!
