Lucky Wander Boy Book Review

[PackratVG]

For anyone interested, I just posted my review of the new video game collecting novel Lucky Wander Boy on the Packrat website. The address is:

 

http://www.packratvg.com/lucky.htm

 

Any comments, suggestions or questions are invited!

 

Sincerely,

Jarett Waite

Owner

Packrat Video Games

[Retro Rogue]

You were a lot nicer than I'm going to be in my review. While he does capture the feelings of collectors in very brief parts of the book, I felt overall the book was terrible. I realize it's a fictional book based in real life circumstances. But he obvioudly did very little fact checking for the technological parts of the book, and the glimpse in to "our world" reminds me of the very "we are not hollywood" thing he's trying to make fun of. No different than any of Hollywood's actual attempts to portray the computer culture in Hackers or the "online experience" in The Net.

[PackratVG]

I can understand where you're coming from Marty. At times he does deviate a little from classic gaming. I think that what made me really like the book is that for once I was reading something with classic video games as a central theme. There's not too many books out there like it. I'll look forward to your review.

 

Jarett

[Room 34]

I am about halfway through the book right now, and I think it's a great book!

 

It's not really trying to be "the novel for the AtariAge crowd." It's about a lot of other stuff than just classic video games. I think the fact that I can relate to other aspects of the book (such as the protagonist's absurd experiences working for Portal Entertainment) help.

 

There are some pretty impressive references to fairly obscure modern and post-modern philosophers in the book, and I think his integration of their theories into his reviews of games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong is brilliant! It also helps if you're somewhat familiar with modern Japanese fiction by authors like Haruki Murakami... Weiss is clearly influenced by their style of writing and novel structure.