Goal: £70,000
So Far: £72,000
End: Nov 26th 18:00 GMT
Introduction
Fifty years ago, the home console was an anomaly. A curio that predated even the day when every system was simply known as "a Nintendo." With each passing generation our consoles evolved and gained prominence, their pixels exchanged for polygons. Over time, these machines enabled split-screen chaos, late-night LAN parties, and interlinked online play — connecting friendships worldwide.
But whether you grew up with a Genesis or a Wii under your TV, we enjoy a common love for the systems that have united us and provided refuge in worlds of unparalleled imagination.
The Console Chronicles is a unofficial celebration of every system that you hold dear. We’ll travel back in time to when the NES felt like an impossibility, pondering the beginnings of this new artistic frontier. Rivalries will be revisited, ending with treaties drawn as we explore hardware that now exists in harmony — spotlighting the communities formed around it.
We’ll tell stories of sibling rivalries and disruptive ideas, personal resonance and technical triumph. This is the ultimate tribute to not only five decades of home console gaming, but to the incredible people, and their remarkable stories, which make our shared history special.
Works
The Console Chronicles
Specifications
400+ pages
245 × 200 mm
Printed on Matt 130gsm
Casebound hardcover
FREE ! Backer Extras
(Funding campaign exclusive)
1 Foiled Bookmark
2 Folded Cover Posters
1 Port Zine
3 Stickers
Name In Backer Segment
Digital Wallpaper (PC / Mobile)
Release Date
Shipping Q2 2024
Read the next instalment in Lost In Cult’s series of games history books, following up the smash-hit A Handheld History, now available to preorder at retail via HarperCollins
“A lovely collection of curated essays and painstaking photographs document the history of handheld video game consoles. This eye-catching text with refined visual design features deeply personal stories and fascinating insight into the video game industry’s early years and ongoing development. More than just a pleasing coffee table book, “A Handheld History” is a love letter to all the wonderful handhelds out there.” - Pearson Bolt, Coffee With Comrades
“It would make a welcome addition to any old-school handheld fan's bookshelf or coffee table.” - GameSpot
“Just when you thought your shelves were full, A Handheld History has come along to celebrate every portable device from the Game Boy to the Switch. So shift a few old magazines and give this one pride of place.” - Pocket Tactics
“Beautifully designed, equally beautiful writing, and a careful, personal exploration of why handheld gaming was and remains so important.” - Aidan Moher, Author of Fight, Magic, Items
“A lovely collection of curated essays and painstaking photographs document the history of handheld video game consoles. This eye-catching text with refined visual design features deeply personal stories and fascinating insight into the video game industry’s early years and ongoing development. More than just a pleasing coffee table book, “A Handheld History” is a love letter to all the wonderful handhelds out there.” - Pearson Bolt, Coffee With Comrades “It would make a welcome addition to any old-school handheld fan's bookshelf or coffee table.” - GameSpot “Just when you thought your shelves were full, A Handheld History has come along to celebrate every portable device from the Game Boy to the Switch. So shift a few old magazines and give this one pride of place.” - Pocket Tactics “Beautifully designed, equally beautiful writing, and a careful, personal exploration of why handheld gaming was and remains so important.” - Aidan Moher, Author of Fight, Magic, Items
The Stories Inside:
Divided into nine key sections corresponding to the nine hardware generations, The Console Chronicles will recount history’s headlining events and its essential detours. Each page will deepen your understanding of how games progressed as both an artistic medium and an industry.
With an eye for detail, we will unpack the nuances of each generation’s defining systems — teaching you something new about every console whether you grew up with it or admired its ecosystem from a distance. In doing so, we’ll move beyond the realm of simple retrospective reporting. Every feature has been concepted through a personal lens that will not just teach you why our favourite consoles were successful, but how they touched players around the globe.
A Community Focus:
Games history has always been written collaboratively. From arcade competitions to MMO raiding parties, we have always played together. In doing so, we’ve cultivated friendships and built spaces with history as rich as the games they spawned from. At the heart of The Console Chronicles is the desire to celebrate that truth. From fan translation communities to Animal Crossing’s fan base of passionate creators, we’re making space for the games and the people who play them.
Introducing Hookshot Media:
This book’s success is the result of Lost In Cult and Hookshot Media’s joint efforts. Composed of Nintendo Life, Push Square, Pure Xbox, and Time Extension, Hookshot Media has long been a dominant force in games media. Prioritising accurate reporting, thoughtful features, and community engagement, the Hookshot team is the industry’s best. It’s a pleasure to develop The Console Chronicles with them.
It is an honour to spotlight a wide array of voices from across the industry as well, including Patricia Hernandez, Jon Cartwright, Ashley Esqueda, Kurt Kalata, Howard Scott Warshaw, Sara Heritage, Jonathan Holmes, and many more.
Meet Our Illustrators:
Returning from A Handheld History, Stephen Maurice Graham will once again be leading The Console Chronicles’ visual identity. Supported by Handheld History alums Raul Higuera and Hannah Kwan Cosselmon as well as William Exley and Jack Teagle, this book will be a colourful and stylistically varied visual odyssey.
Our Values:
The Console Chronicles is crafted to last, each copy demonstrating our commitment to sustainable business. Produced and assembled with high-quality artisan materials, we work with carbon-neutral, anti-corruption partners and factories. We believe in ethical manufacture as strongly as we believe in games preservation. So, treasure each page of our FSC-accredited book with the knowledge that your money supports well-respected labour.
The Campaign Edition:
By backing today, your copy of The Console Chronicles features a trove of FREE compelling extras that will further enrich your reading experience. Including both a foil bookmark, two cover posters, stickers, and the exclusive zine, Port, from designer Arkotype, the Campaign Edition is the ultimate tribute to console gaming.
And like A Handheld History before it, The Console Chronicles will come to retail. Launching in Fall 2024, the Retail Edition will offer a smaller size mass market version of the book, available around the world in marquee stores. However, the extras associated with the Campaign Edition are not included in the Retail Edition, and the Campaign Edition also features higher quality materials and multitudes of exclusive artwork.
Port: Disposable Digest For Control Freaks
Designed by the inimitable Arkotype, this lo-fi zine that will reconnect you to the particular relationship between controller and player. Exploring the tactile curiosities of gaming’s most unique controllers and peripherals, Port is a necessary digression for readers who find joy in the odder turns and brilliant craftsmanship of games history. From chainsaws and bongos to train controllers, Port will remember the inputs that time has forgotten.
Port is included for free with all Campaign Edition purchases of The Console Chronicles.
Bookmark
A foiled cross-section of Stephen Maurice Graham’s outstanding cover, The Console Chronicles’ collectible bookmark comes free with the Campaign Edition. Display it on your shelf or leave it poking out of your book as you explore The Console Chronicles’ 400+ pages of games history.
Posters
Two folded A3-sized posters come free with the Campaign Edition, one of The Console Chronicles’ front cover and one of its back cover. Illustrated by Stephen Maurice Graham, both pieces capture the eclectic memory of our personal histories with console gaming. Sophisticated and nostalgic, both pieces deserve a spot on your wall.
By Hel Covell
By Jack Teagle
By Stephen Maurice Graham
£80,000
£90,000
£100,000
£110,000
To Be Revealed
To Be Revealed
Stickers
Every Campaign Edition backer will receive a bespoke sticker pack that travels through decades of home console play. As community lies at the heart of The Console Chronicles, we will be concepting this sticker pack collaboratively. Throughout the campaign, the sticker pack will grow, introducing new guest artists and community-voted designs. Stay tuned to Lost In Cult’s social media to participate in the sticker pack’s creation!
*Gallery imagery from A Handheld History (2022)
A Handheld History: 88-95
The click of a game cart slotting into a coveted handheld sits among the medium’s many small pleasures, alongside the subsequent flick of a power switch and the LCD explosion as connected circuitry spins up fantastical worlds not inches from your nose. Handheld gaming is intimate. We’re emotionally tethered to the experiences provided by these machines. They are minute in scale, but overflow with silent meaning and memory etched by their creators into each pin connector and internal battery.
Brought to you in partnership with Retro Dodo—the internet’s leading retro gaming site, A Handheld History (2022) surveyed a four-decade legacy of hardware. Now, we mine deeper. A Handheld History vol 2: 88-95 will traverse the annals of time to uncover the stories behind both your favourite childhood titles and the tumbled curios which the medium forgot. We’ll meet the mavericks who gave them life, and we’ll trace their vision through the industrial context that defined this pivotal eight-year era. So, join us on a voyage through the low-bit landscapes, chiptune sounds, and developer profiles foundational to portable play.
Our Exclusive Sponsor
It is our pleasure to announce that The Embracer Games Archive is sponsoring The Console Chronicles. Located in Karlstad, Sweden, The Embracer Games Archive stands at the phalanx of games preservation.
Building a shine to games history and culture, the incredibly passionate team behind The Embracer Games Archive has curated over 80,000 games, consoles, and accessories — and they’re not finished yet.
Their dedication and ethos align perfectly with ours, and we are eager to collaborate as they continue to grow as the definitive haven for physical games history.
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Through extensive research, we at Lost In Cult create historical, critical, and educational resource books dedicated to Video games, Movies, and pop culture.
We often work directly with a multitude of developers and Publishers in the relevant communities. But in the event we do not:
All projects fall under Fair Use: Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act in 1976; Allowance is made for "Fair Use" which is a doctrine in the United States and Sections 30 & 64 of the Copy Designs Patents Act 1988, United Kingdom, copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for purposes including commentary, news reporting, criticism, teaching, scholarship, and research. We also acknowledge “The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use in the Visual Arts “( CAA 2015) with particular reference to factor 4; Analytical writing and in consideration of its limitations. Lost In Cult also asserts that all artwork is intended to be informative and illustrative and is sufficiently transformative from its intended use.
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Fair Use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
All rights and credit for the intellectual property and any copyrighted content used in a limited scope in this book go directly to the applicable company in question. No copyright infringement is intended and all fan-made original content (Written, Inspired, or Artwork) within the book was created by Lost In Cult LTD, the creators of these unlicensed books, which is not endorsed by or in association with the applicable company in question.