Last year I released my first book, The NES Encyclopedia.

As the name suggests, The NES Encyclopedia was a complete guide to every game officially released for the NES in the west, along with a hefty helping of unlicensed ones too.

At the time I explained the agreement the book’s publisher and I had reached: if the NES book sold well enough, they’d contract me to write a SNES one, and if sales continued we’d keep doing more.

Essentially, the idea was that as long as you kept buying them, I’ll keep writing them. Well, enough of you bought the NES one, and it’s thanks to you that The SNES Encyclopedia is now mere weeks away from release.

Even better, this time, should you so desire, you can pre-order a signed copy directly from me at the book’s cover price plus postage (UK only). Keep scrolling down if you want to do just that right now. Update: pre-orders for signed copies are now sold out.

The exact date isn’t confirmed: the book’s being printed in India and then shipped to the UK, so it’s essentially ready when it’s ready. But the most recent update is that we’re looking at mid-to-late September (the 2Xth, basically) for both the UK and North America.

Yes, this time the book will launch in North America at roughly the same time as it does here in the UK (the NES book took a couple of months to get there). Not only that, each region will have the correct SNES model on the cover: the PAL version with the coloured buttons in the UK and Europe, and the NTSC version with the purple and lilac colour scheme in North America. It’ll cost £30 in the UK and $39.95 in the US, though if you shop around online you’ll find it for cheaper.

Just like its predecessor, The SNES Encyclopedia covers every game released for the SNES in America, Europe and Australia. Obviously all the big games are in there – Super Mario World, Star Fox, Street Fighter II Turbo and the like – but in my opinion the book’s strength is its acknowledgement of all the ‘smaller’ games that are often forgotten in ‘best of’ compilations.

Maybe you were a big fan of Kid Klown in Crazy Chase. Maybe you bought Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City in a bargain bin and developed a soft spot for it. Maybe a grandparent got you the wonderfully named Spanky’s Quest for Christmas and nobody knows what you’re on about when you try to bring it up in conversations today.

Or maybe you just like the idea of having a reference book with a console’s entire library in it, that you can either look up whenever the need arises or read cover-to-cover. Whatever your situation, hopefully my book will appeal to you.

That’s not all: there’s also a bonus section at the back. My dream is ultimately to one day write an encyclopedia for every system, but I’m fully conscious that some systems have very small libraries.

Take the Virtual Boy, for example: it only got 21 games before it was canned, and with the best will in the world nobody’s going to buy The Virtual Boy Encyclopedia if it’s only 21 games long.

So I decided to put The Virtual Boy Encyclopedia at the back of the SNES book, making it two systems in one. Hooray!

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How to order

As was my previous book, The SNES Encyclopedia is available at all good book shops (and some rubbish ones too, probably). Be it Amazon (all countries), Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, Indigo Chapters or even Walmart, just search for ‘Chris Scullion’ on your site of choice and with any luck you’ll find it available to pre-order. Here’s a selection to help you order quickly.

UK
• Pen & Sword Books (the book’s actual publisher: your best chance at getting it quickest)
• Amazon UK
• Waterstones
• Blackwell’s

The Americas
• Amazon US
• Barnes and Noble
• Walmart
• Amazon Canada
• Chapters Indigo (Canada)
• Amazon Brasil
• Amazon México
• Book Depository (likely to be the UK cover)

Europe
• Book Depository (free worldwide delivery)
• Amazon France
• Amazon Deutschland
• Amazon Italia
• Amazon Nederland
• Amazon España

Australia
• Book Depository (free worldwide delivery)

Asia
• Book Depository (free worldwide delivery)
• Amazon 日本 (Japan)
• Amazon भारत (India)
• أمازون الإمارات (UAE)

Whether you were quick enough to buy a signed copy directly from me, or you decide to buy one direct from the publisher or buy one from any other bookstore you prefer, thank you so much regardless.

When I started writing this book my daughter had only just been born, so to say that writing it was exhausting is a severe understatement. You should have seen the state of me (and the literal pain my hands were in) when I finished it.

It’s worth it, though, and every time someone buys my book, gets something out of it, laughs at some of my terrible jokes and lets me know they had a good time with it, all it does is remind me why I wrote it, and why the publisher and I have agreed to keep going.

However you choose to buy it, I hope you thoroughly enjoy The SNES Encyclopedia when it turns up, and I’ll hopefully see you next year for The Mega Drive Encyclopedia.

With love

Chris ❤