Earlier this year Ashcraft emailed me to ask if I would write one of the forewards for his upcoming book on Japanese arcades. I jumped at the opportunity, mostly because it gave me a chance to get my hands on the book’s galley. I’m a huge fan of Ash’s writing and was dying to see how it read in book form.

Turns out it reads really well.

I’ve never been a huge fan of books about video games or gaming culture, mostly because most of them seem to forget about the people and instead focus on the technology. Not so with Arcade Mania! The Turbo-Charged World of Japan’s Game Centres. In it, Ash walks you through a typical Japanese arcade game type by game type. But instead of focusing on the games he talks to the people to whom they matter most. From Japan’s UFO Catcher Queen, to Street Fighter champion Daigo “The Beast” Umehara, to Shump champions and DDR dancers, Ash manages to put a face to every game and give us a glimpse into what makes people so fascinated with them.

My foreward for the book on the jump.