The Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion Volume 2 Review

The long-awaited Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion Volume Two, has finally been released on July 7th, 2018 a mere two months after Volume One. After consuming the first book in the series, I wanted more, I demanded more, thankfully I didn’t have to wait long. In his sophomore release, Brian Matherne continues the same successful format he introduced in Volume One. The forward of the book was written this time, by Darrell Spice Jr., a prolific homebrew programmer with many Atari 2600 homebrew releases to his credit.

If you are not familiar with what a homebrew game is, it is an original game, programmed from the ground up, and completed for the system. So essentially, a new game idea brought to fruition often by a non-professional source. As the book explains “there is an active community of Atari 2600 homebrew developers – the largest among classic video game homebrew communities”.

This book covers some 34 of these homebrew games from 24 cartridges, a few of which are currently works in progress.

When I asked Brian, how he was able to put these books together so fast, he mentioned a lot of the research was pulled from his massive homebrew list, which goes by the title “The Most Comprehensive Atari 2600 Homebrew List”. Up to this point I had not heard of the list. I’ll provide links in the video description.

As with Volume One, the games in Volume Two are arranged alphabetically and the author includes title screen images as well as gameplay screenshots from most of the games covered in the book. There are also images of game boxes and cartridges sprinkled in. Each game is broken into its various sections; background, release notes, gameplay, options, controls, scoring, design, strategy, analysis and it’s done consistently throughout the book.

There’s quite a bit of knowledge to be gleaned within these sections, including in some cases, easter egg reveals, and flashback portable functionality reports.

These two books when put together are sort of like an encyclopedia of homebrew games.

I particularly enjoy the release notes and strategy sections. Here we catch of glimpse of the game development history and the best ways to approach completing them.

The books cover is nicely done. They used a similar gradient for the title font as with volume One, switching the background color to purple. On the bottom half of the cover, many gameplay images from the book are boldly displayed. On the backside, there are a few homebrew images, one from Space Cactus Canyon and the other from Rally-X.

This book contains a nice table of contents that lists all of the game titles. There’s a section explaining what homebrew games are, another one covering how the games are programmed. At the end of the book, there is a short section of definitions and websites covered.

I really like what Brian Matherne has done with this series of books, and I hope he continues the series covering the Atari 2600 homebrews. I would also love to see a similar format used for other consoles such as the Atari 5200 & 7800.

I purchased the paperback version, which is printed in black and white and is available for $12.99. The full-color version of the book was released and is available from Amazon.com for about $30. If that sounds too pricey you can still purchase the Kindle version for 99 cents.

Brian, provided me an additional breakdown of the pricing, in case you were curious. Quoting Brian:

The “cost” just to print and bind the color book is 13.59 and out of the $30.99 retail price, I only make $5 per book. The B&W book cost is $3.03 and I make $4.76 per book off of the retail $12.99. So as you can see I don’t make a lot of profit off of them anyway, I’ve tried to keep them as reasonable as possible.

While on the subject of pricing, if you happen to be attending the Houston Arcade Expo on October 19th and 20th, there will be a vendor there who goes by the name “The Game Czar”, who will be selling both volumes at a reduced rate and Brian will also be there signing books as well.

Brian Matherne has done it again. With volumes One and now Two in full production, we are starting to see the beginning of a new encyclopedia of Atari 2600 homebrew games.

Both volumes clocking in at exactly 182 total pages. This was intentionally done, both to keep the price down and to keep the series of books uniform in size.

Volume 3 is slated for 2019, but Brian informed me he’s working diligently on two more books to be released before the end of the of this calendar year, 2018, a Holiday homebrew book, and a year in review homebrew book. Looking forward to those.

I appreciate the amount of work, research, and polish that went into producing these books. I have personally learned of many new titles I had not even heard of prior to this book. I want to thank Brian at this point for answering my questions. So, what are you waiting for, pick up your copy now.

Highly recommended.

https://1drv.ms/x/s!…VbQayev1Wc1QprN

https://drive.google…ufxAESPY6D/view

http://www.homebrew2600.com

http://www.arcadecenter.com/

Youtube Description:

This is my review Brian Mathernes second book, The Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion Volume 2.

My review of Volume 1:
https://youtu.be/A4moEqCBR78

Paperback version:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1983385271

Color Version:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1983385719

The Most Comprehensive Atari 2600 Homebrew List links:
https://1drv.ms/x/s!…VbQayev1Wc1QprN
https://drive.google…ufxAESPY6D/view
http://www.homebrew2600.com

2018 Houston Arcade Expo:
http://www.arcadecenter.com