There were a lot of books published during the video crazy that you could buy to give you the "insider's edge" in beating the classics. Lots of these books are great in this respect. Books that contain all the patterns in Pac Man, for example. How to survive a LONG time in Defender. (Some kid played this game for sixteen hours! Some gave detailed overviews of handheld games, console games, and other classic vids.

Click to see the cover:
• How to Win at Video Games.
  By Consumer's Guide. This thing is spiral bound and covers eight to ten different coin ops that were common during the golden age of classic arcade gaming. It features full color illustrations and photographs of the coin ops. It also contains TONS of cool classic-vid clip art too. I've scanned the very cool coin op photographs from inside for you to see:
  • Asteroids
  • Centipede
  • Defender
  • Donkey Kong
  • Omega Race (Sit Down)
  • Omega Race (Stand Up)
  • Pac Man
  • Phoenix
  • Qix
  • Tempest

• How to Beat the Video Games.
  By Michael Blanchet, video game wizard and tournament champion (well, that's what the COVER says anyhow). Nowhere near a complete guide, but does have some good diagrams and hints for games like Pac Man, Defender, Qix, Galaga, Eliminator, Omega Race, Star Castle, and Mousetrap.

• Invasion of the Space Invaders.
  By Martin Amis, another classic coin-op review book.

• The Video Master's Guide to Defender.
  By Nick Broomis. I was never any good at Defender, and I'm still not. Supposedly there are people that have played it for more than 15 hours, though.

• Video Invaders.
  By Steve Bloom. Gives some reviews of the video game craze, developments at Atari in their home console line, and upcoming arcade games. Reviews games such as Space Invaders, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Tempest, Space Duel, Frenzy, Galaga, Qix, and Centipede.

• How to Win at Video Games, a Complete Guide.
  By George Sullivan. Gives tips on how to survive in the arcades, and reviews Berzerk, Gorf, Space Invaders I, II, Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe, Defender, Tempest, and others. This book is NOWHERE near a complete guide! :)

  He does have these cool excuses you can use at the arcade in case you suck, though! Check some of these out:

  • I wasn't playing for score. I was just experimenting.
  • I thought they fixed this machine!
  • Somebody bumped into me!
  • There must be a new chip in this machine.
  • The controls are too tight.

• How to Master the Video Games
  By Tom Hirschfield. Centipede, Galaxian, Pleiades, Moon Cresta, Scramble, Space Fury, Asteroids, Defender, you-name-it. Has that oh-so-cool section on exercises you can do at home to sharpen your skills.

  Check out the cover with the ever-so-eighties guy playing Space Invaders.

  A very cool cover variation of this book provided by Greg Chance. Thanks!

• The Winner's Book of Video Games
  By Craig Kubey, 1982. Excellent book. Covers all the major arcade games, and many more obscure/old ones, eg Pong, Night Driver, etc. Lots of coverage of home games, videogame trivia and history, etc.

• Score! Beating the Top 16 Video Games
  By Ken Uston, 1982. A resonable book, similar in style/layout to How to Master the videogames, but less pretentious. Each game gets covered along a set formula, "Play area", "Controls", "Aim", "How you win", "How you lose", "Tips", etc. Also covers home video games in a very minimal format (read they bunged in some home stuff at the last minute to grab extra sales...)

• The Sparrow Book of Video Games
  By Frank Webb, 1982. Cheesy obvious plagarism of Score!/How to Master the videogames, some pages have been directly copied. No indication of licensing etc, so I guess its a sort of ripoff. Covers the same games as most of the others. Does have some coverage of tabletop/handheld games as well tho.

• How to Master Home Video Games
  By Tom Hirschfield. Reviews some 2600 VCS titles such as Asteroids and Combat and all the game matrices! agh! Reviews some Activision titles too. Has a smaller section on Intellivision stuff, Armor Battle, Astrosmash, Sea Battle. Has a section with freaking exercises you can supposedly do to hone your video playing skills!

Pac Man probably had more literature made for it than anything else, not to mention other consumer items. Strategy guides, posters, bed sheets, food trays, a #1 song, a Saturday morning cartoon show. Hey, I liked the cartoon. It was cool. Here are some of the books I have regarding Pac Man. Click to see and learn more about each one.

• Win at Pac Man Pac-Man
  By Ernest Zavisca, Ph.D, and Gary Beltowski. Another Pac Man guide, nowhere near as complete as Ken Uston's book on Mastering Pac Man, but does contain some good patterns nonetheless. It also has a section on Mastering Ms. Pac Man.

• Ken Uston's Mastering Pac-Man
  This is an excellent reference guide for playing coin-op Pac Man. It has patterns for each level and picture guides to each. It also goes over some somewhat interesting details:
  • Hustling people at Pac Man. Pac Man Gambling?
  • Patterns for ROM revisions and variations like Puck Man.

• Ken Uston's Mastering Pac-Man (Special Edition)
  An expanded version of the book which features patterns and strategies for Ms. Pac Man, some tabletop and handheld versions, and also the 2600 VCS version. I need to write up a separate page to deal with the added patterns.

• Pac-Mania! 96 Pac Filled Pages of Biting Humor!
  This book is the cheesiest thing that I have ever seen. I mean, it's highly cheesy. It's probably not even worth the $.10 I paid for it at the thrift. Check out a few examples of the "biting humor":
  • Pac Man solving the Rubik's Cube
    
  • Pac Man biting the bullet
    
  • Pac Man biting off more than he can chew
    
  • Pac Man with bad breath

    Hey, I told you so.

• The Pac-Man Riddle and Joke Book
  Above I said that the Pac Mania book was the cheesiest thing that I had ever seen. Well, I was wrong. I recently found THIS one, and believe me, it's worse. Check it out:
  • What kind of vehicles does Pac-Man prefer?
    
  • Count Pacula

    Hey man, I warned you.

The following are miscellanous bits and pieces that I've picked up here and there.

• Game Over : How Nintendo Captured the World
  By David Sheff. This is an excellent account of Nintendo's rise to domination of the home video game market. Details the start and development of Nintendo from its inception, and gives very good biographical detail of its major personalities. Biased in some parts, but still a very good read.

• Blips! The First Book of Video Game Funnies!
  If you read anything out of the Pac-Mania section above, then you realize that there are just some people that take things to extremes to market a product. This book is cheesy, cheesy, cheesy, and is simply NOT funny. Of course, it's kind of video game related so I bought it anyway.

  Here's proof, dude:

  • The "Start" Page, where you "insert a quarter here".
    
  • Pac Man, having to Eat and Run.
    
  • Merv Griffin Invaders.
    
  • 10 Reasons that will NEVER Convince your parents to let you play video games.

• Master Ultima: Mystery, Magic and Strategy.
  The bookstore at Auburn University ditched this book for $4 during one of their clearance sales. Idiots. This has to be the best reference book that I have EVER found for the Ultimas. It covers PC Ultimas 1-6 in excruciating detail. Goes over the history of each game, describes towns and people, spells, armor, weapons, and everything else that deals with each game. Even goes into details on the cheats available in Ultima VI.

  If you ever find this book, I would suggest getting it. It's the Ultima reference book to have.