Here we go again.

After releasing The NES Encyclopedia in 2019, The SNES Encyclopedia in 2020, The Mega Drive & Genesis Encyclopedia in 2021 and The N64 Encyclopedia in 2022, it’s time for the fifth book in my series.

The Dreamcast Encyclopedia is currently due for release in late September, but if it’s anything like the N64 book it might turn up earlier than planned.

As the name suggests, this covers every game ever released for the Dreamcast.

And, as with the N64 Encyclopedia last year, the Dreamcast book also covers every game released in Japan too (which means a hell of a lot of visual novels).

Again, much like last year’s book, the Dreamcast’s library is fairly small compared to those of the NES, SNES and Mega Drive, but that doesn’t mean the book will be shorter as a result.

The book is still more than 270 pages long, and all the smaller library means is that far more games are given a full page, meaning you can read even more about them.

No fewer than 76 games from the console’s western library will get full pages dedicated to them, while the vast majority of the other western titles will get half-pages.

How does that look in practice? Here’s a couple of spreads: one from the western section, and one from the Japanese section:

In total, there are a little more than 610 games in the book, incorporating 272 western releases and 340 Japanese releases.

I’m also delighted to announce that the foreword has been written by Gary Cutlack, the man behind the now-late UK Resistance, the greatest (and funniest) Sega fan site ever created.

Sold? Splendid. As with all my previous books, The Dreamcast Encyclopedia will be available at all good book shops (and some rubbish ones too, probably) around the world.

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. It’s already up on Amazon, for example.

If you live in the UK though, and want to support yer man directly, then until the end of June you can buy a signed copy directly from me. Here’s how to do it.

Signed copy pre-orders

I frankly don’t care where you choose to buy the book from: I’m just delighted and hugely grateful that you’re taking an interest in my work at all.

That said, if you’re the type who likes something a bit more personal in return, I’m selling a strictly limited number of Dreamcast Encyclopedia books directly here.

The book is an open pre-order until the end of June, which means you don’t have to worry about me running out.

Essentially, once I see how many people have pre-ordered the book by the end of the month, I’ll round that up to a nice round number (so I’ve got some spare copies) and that’s what I’ll order from the publisher.

If 93 of you order one, for example, it’ll be limited to 100. That way anyone who wants one will definitely get one.

Here are the brutally honest pros and cons of buying directly from me.

PROS

• It’ll be personally signed and numbered by yer man Scullion.
• Retailers are a bit of a dice-roll: Amazon was weeks late at delivering my SNES book, but surprisingly quick with the Mega Drive one.
• It’ll be sent through recorded delivery by the Royal Mail and will come with PayPal buyer protection in case anything goes wrong.
• You’ll be supporting me in the best way because I get a far greater royalty for each book sold: £15 for signed books sold through Tired Old Hack, £3 for books sold everywhere else, roughly £1.50 for books sold on Amazon.

CONS

• Although I’m only charging the cover price £30 plus postage and packaging (£36 in total), this is still probably the most expensive way to get the book, since I can’t offer a discount on either the cover price or shipping, so almost every other book shop will be cheaper (Amazon in particular). You’re paying full price for the signature, basically.
• If you order directly from the publisher Pen & Sword Books you may get it earlier than anyone else, because they have their stock in too.

Still keen to buy from me? Lovely.

Before I give you the PayPal link to put down your pre-order, please make sure you read the instructions below. It’s all fairly straightforward but if any of the steps are missing it could hold up the process:

SERIOUSLY, PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS. EVERY BLOODY YEAR SOMEONE DOESN’T READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AND I HAVE TO PLAY WHERE’S WALLY CHASING THEM UP FOR SOME MISSING INFO. THESE ARE OPEN PRE-ORDERS, IT WILL NOT SELL OUT, PLEASE TAKE YOUR TIME.

• Before you even click anything, please bear in mind I can only deliver to people in the UK for now. I’m going to be dealing with a large number of orders and I’m handling them all myself, so I need to keep things simple with a single price and a single delivery type. Again, sorry for the bold text, but UK ORDERS ONLY PLEASE. I promise you every single time I launch a new book I get a couple of international orders who ignore this and I have to get in touch to refund them.

• Click the link below. You’ll be automatically taken to a PayPal site already set up to pay me the full price. It’ll cost £36 – this covers the full price of the book, packing material and recorded delivery postage through Royal Mail (so I can chase it in the very unlikely event that you don’t get your book).

• Look carefully for a bit that asks you to specify what the payment is for (apparently the PayPal app has changed its UI a bit so you may have to look for this). Click that and leave me a note telling me what name you’d like me to sign the book to. While I’ll be using your real name to post the book, if you’d rather I signed it to your username or nickname, this is where you can let me know. If you don’t want me to sign it to any name, please write “no name” in the notes so I know. If you don’t write anything at all I’ll have to chase you up to find out what you want, and if I can’t get hold of you or you don’t reply I’ll just sign my name and nothing else.

• Make sure the payment is marked as “paying for goods or a service” instead of just sending money to a friend. Not only does this help protect your payment if the delivery goes missing, it actually lets you give me your address. Otherwise, you know, I can’t send you the thing. A few people always miss this part out and it’s a huge hassle for us both so let me make it clearer in bold: This bit is VERY IMPORTANT. If you don’t choose to pay for goods or a service, it won’t let you give me your address. I need your address to send you the book, and if I can’t get hold of you I’ll have to refund your order.

• You should see the option to choose your address. PLEASE make sure you have the correct address there, because that’s where I’m going to be sending the book. There’ll be an option to add a new address if you don’t have one stored on PayPal, or if the one you still have on your PayPal account is out of date. Last time one person accidentally had their old address listed and only managed to get their copy because luckily a family member still lived there. I can’t chase this up for you if it goes to the wrong house, so PLEASE make sure it’s right.

• Job done! Once I get the order in I’ll personally send you an email (to the email your PayPal account is registered to) and confirm that I got the order. I’ll be sending these manually, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t get a confirmation email right away (other than a PayPal one). In case you haven’t noticed, Summer Game Fest week is just about to start and I’ll be covering the hell out of that, so it may be a couple of days before you get your email in some cases.

• I’m happy to draw wee doodles or write specific messages when signing the book, within reason. Please don’t ask for anything really elaborate (I’ll probably be doing well over 100 of these), and if I’m not comfortable with what you ask me to write I’ll politely decline. Speaking from experience here!

Right, with all that said, if you’re up for it, here’s the link:

DREAMCAST ENCYCLOPEDIA SIGNED PRE-ORDER

If you do decide to buy the book, whether you order a signed copy or order from somewhere else, thank you so much for doing so.

I’m so happy that the Encyclopedias are building up a nice wee following now, and I’m really happy with The Dreamcast Encyclopedia because there’s a nice combination of detailed descriptions of western games, followed by a Japanese section in which you see a man descend into madness as he struggles through literally hundreds of dodgy visual novels.

I’ll see you next year for The Game Boy Encyclopedia, but until then I hope you enjoy going back to the Dreamcast era one more time.

Thanks everyone.

Chris ❤️