The Video Game Library Newsletter - Vol. #033

A very Happy New Year to all you wonderful readers!

Welcome back to The Video Game Library Newsletter!

…And a very Happy New Year to all of you amazing readers! So excited to kick of 2026 with you.

As expected coming out of the Holidays, announcements and new releases are modest. Most of what we’re seeing right now leans heavily toward sales and reprints rather than big surprises. But even in a quieter week, there’s still plenty worth digging into across art books, magazines, manga and of course, GameStudies, from around the world.

I also want to shine a light on something a bit different this week. Over the break, I finally sat down and recorded a full behind-the-scenes walkthrough of how a single book makes its way onto The Video Game Library - from backlog and research, through validation, all the way to the technical work that gets it published on the site. It’s something I’ve been asked about more than anything else, and I’m excited to finally share it.

Let’s kick off 2026 the same way we ended last year: celebrating game-inspired books from every corner of the world, and continuing to build the most complete archive possible!

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📰 News & Highlights

• Dark Horse Books has been a little quieter over the Holidays, but hasn’t stopped them from releasing The Art of The Outer Worlds 2. Great news, considering the game just came out a few short months ago (and I’ve still yet to play it). Well deserving of an art book, but as with most, I’d recommend anyone check out The Artbook Collector’s reviews, as he’s (in my opinion) the foremost authority on art book quality.

  

• Cherry Lake Publishing’s 21st Century Skills Innovation Library series has been promoting video game related entries for a decade, with their first Minecraft books being published back on Jan. 1, 2016. Well, what better way to celebrate 10 years than with their newest wave Minecraft books from Jamie Quinn:

  • Taming and Raising Animals: A Minecraft Guide

  • Combat!: A Minecraft Guide

  • Build It!: A Minecraft Guide

  • Enchanting and Brewing: A Minecraft Guide

  • Redstone and Transportation: A Minecraft Guide

  • Mining and Farming: A Minecraft Guide

  • The Ultimate (Unofficial) Player’s Guide to Minecraft

  • The (Unofficial) History of Minecraft

  

• Released just ahead of Christmas, EDGE #419 hit store shelves, with both the retail and subscription covers being dedicated to Grasshopper Manufacture’s upcoming game, Romeo Is A Dead Man. Inside you’ll also find the 2025 Edge Awards, an exclusive with Expedition 33’s Sandfall Interactive, the making of Fallout 3, and some big reviews including Metroid Prime 4, Routine and Skate Story.

  

• Also in magazine news, Game Informer Magazine #374 hits newsstands this week (that’s right…Game Informer is on the shelves folks!!). This issue spotlights World of Warcraft: Midnight with a 12-page cover story, plus features on Fallout, Soulslikes, Scott Pilgrim EX, previews of Nioh 3 and SOL Shogunate, 2025 GOTY awards, and gorgeous cover art by Bayard Wu.

  

• The Holidays ain’t stopping Sonic, especially when the seventh, and final, Chaos Emerald is so close! IDW released Sonic the Hedgehog #83 last week, with Dr. Eggman breaking out his Egg Juggler to show Sonic and the gang how to party! 3 really cool cover variants for this one.

  

• Want to progress your career as a CG artist? Released over Christmas was Sander Flisijn’s The Pocket Mentor for Game Artists. This is the latest addition in CRC Press’ “Pocket Mentor” series which is shaping up to be a fantastic resource for GameDevs of all skill levels. This one dives into portfolios, jobs, studio life, feedback, health, and insights from industry pros.

  

• And in GameStudies this week, The Role of Enemies in Military Shooter Video Games from Kathrin Trattner released. This book analyzes enemies in military shooters through narrative, gameplay, and culture, introducing “ludic othering” to examine war-on-terror era games.

  

• Exploring how Asian national histories are represented in games, this 2024 release got its Paperback format debut right after Christmas. Asian Histories and Heritages in Video Games is another one to add to any GameStudies pile!

  

• If the above 2 have you scratching your head, you might want to check out Demystifying Game Studies from Michael Heron and CRC Press. It hit shelves this past week and sets out to examine video, tabletop, and roleplaying games using critical lenses and case studies, bridging game studies theory with modern titles and play forms.

  

• Dragon Quest: The Mark of Erdrick continues with Volume 2 getting its English release last week. Taking place 100 years after the events of Dragon Quest III, readers will join Prince Arus in his fight against Lord Imagine. Recently started to dive deeper into the crazy world of Dragon Quest books, and you can expect A LOT more entries to be gracing the site in 2026.

  

• The Holidays also didn’t seem to slow down RBA Italia’s breakneck release schedule for their Videogiochi Leggendari series. The next 2 books in the lineup have been officially published, covering Tetris and Red Dead Redemption.

  

• For Portuguese readers out there, Final Fantasy: Lost Stranger Vol. 10 got a release last week courtesy of translator Luis Libaneo. This comes nearly 3 years after the original Japanese manga release, but it’s still so great to see Minase’s work spread to new audiences! In this issue, Shogo and the others head to the Gold Saucer in their search for “Raise”.

  

• Over in Japan, G-MOOK got one more “Perfect Catalogue” release off during the Holidays, this time based on the Nintendo Wii and Wii U. Like the other entries in the series, in addition to the hardware overviews, this book dives into the consoles’ libraries, including all 461 Wii titles and 249 Wii U packaged titles, plus Virtual Console, WiiWare, and download-only titles.

  

• Sansai Books also released their seasonal GameLab issue with ゲームラボ 年末年始2026. This retro gaming special celebrating 35 years of Super Famicom and 30 years of Pokémon, with rare games, interviews, and deep hardware history.

  

• Konami has teamed up with Japan’s iconic Travel Guide series Ruburu! for this real-world guide through Momotaro Dentetsu 2. The guide covers all 47 prefectures, featuring around 300 real locations tied to in-game properties.

  

• The latest entry in the Kadokawa Game Mook series is Once Upon A Katamari: A Guide To The Present and the Past. In addition to walking Japanese players through the game’s mechanics, it also details the stages and collectibles found throughout. A supplemental Once Upon a Katamari: Cousins Encyclopedia also comes bundled with the book.

  

• As is tradition with Weekly Famitsu, we got their annual year-end ‘combined issue’ over the Holidays with 週刊ファミ通 2026年1月8・15日合併号 No.1929. The Famitsu staff reflect back on the titles of 2025 with their Top 20 rankings compiled from nearly 200 creators and industry insiders. Plus a great cameo from their mascot, Necky the Fox, graces the cover!

Did I miss something cool? Want to see this laid out differently?
Drop it in the comments or swing by our Discord to share it with the community.

Let’s keep this celebration of game-inspired books going strong!

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📚 Behind the Shelves

Every week, I take you behind the scenes of The Video Game Library. From surprising discoveries to cataloguing challenges, there’s always something new as we dig deeper into this ever-expanding archive of game-related literature.

Since starting this project, the single most common request I get is to understand, how a single book actually make its way onto the site? Over the holidays, I finally sat down and recorded a detailed walkthrough showing the full process: what the backlog looks like, how we begin our research, all the steps of validation and cataloguing decisions along the way, and all the technical web-nonsense that goes into getting it actually posted.

If that kind of behind-the-scenes work interests you, and if you’ve been enjoying the newsletter enough to support us with a monthly coffee, subscribing will give you access to that walkthrough and more of these deep dives into how the Library operates day to day.

Looking ahead, one of our major goals for 2026 is to fully catalogue the Prima Games collection. On the surface, this might sound straightforward, but Prima’s history is surprisingly tangled. There’s a huge amount of misinformation online: unreleased titles that never made it to print, regional variants incorrectly listed, and covers that were only made for marketing materials. Our aim is to cut through that noise and ensure The Video Game Library becomes the definitive reference point for printed video game guides.

I’m incredibly grateful to our volunteers, who’ve kicked things into overdrive to help lay the groundwork in the past week.

A handful of Prima Games guide catalogued over the past few days

On the personal collecting front, things have been fairly quiet over the New Year break. I was lucky enough to receive a small trilogy from ITOMI, including both of their Pixel books (imagine A Profound Waste of Time, but beautifully produced in Italian), alongside Storie di Videogame.

I also recently discovered UK publisher Little Brother Books, who’ve made a few generous additions to the collection. Was surprised to see the dozens of video game books under their umbrella over the past decade, so those have been added to the backlog as well.

3 gorgeously illustrated, Video Game History and retrospective books from ITOMI.

3 entries in their 2025 lineup, including Pokémon, Roblox and Mario

This, as usual, is only a small sample of all the things that have been happening behind the scenes, so take a peek at the site to see everything that’s been added since last week! And while you’re at it, drop your thoughts in the comments below. Your feedback helps shape how we deliver these looks behind the curtain.

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💡 Book Spotlights

Every week I like to zoom in on a few standout books from the collection. Sometimes it’s brand new releases, other times it’s older gems that deserve more love.

If you’re looking for deeper dives and not just quick headlines, check out some of these spotlights from this past month:

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🙏 THANK YOU for Reading

That’s a wrap for this week’s Newsletter. I hope you discovered something new, surprising, or just plain fun.

As always, your feedback helps shape this project - so don’t be shy! Drop a comment below, join the conversation on Discord, or just reply to this newsletter and share your thoughts.

And if you’re enjoying these weekly roundups, please consider supporting The Video Game Library with a paid subscription or forwarding this to a fellow fan. Every little bit helps us keep preserving and celebrating these incredible works - and the passionate people behind them.

Until next week — happy reading,
Dean (Founder, The Video Game Library)