Shootout: Zap the Video Games 25th Anniversary

Scott Miller and George Broussard--two kids growing up in the 70s and 80s, working at fast food places and helping out in sporting courses--found their passion for games when they started managing arcades and writing books on beating video games. In 1982, the two friends released Shootout: Zap the Video Games, and their commercial success eventually led to the founding of Apogee Software five years later.

In '82, we formed the NVGPA (National Video Game Players Assoc.), and we were writing a newsletter, but then the opportunity came for us to write a strategy book on how to beat the top arcade games of the day, so we pursued that. too. We really thought the book was going to make us rich. I remember running the book's potential sale's figures though my mind: In each of the top 250 cities there must be a least an average of 10,000 game players, and if just 100 of them bought our book that would be 25,000 sales, plus in all the remaining cities we should count on at least 5 more books sold in each, which should add another 25,000 sales. And with each sale George and I get $1 each. Wow, that's more money than we can make in 5 real years of work--we'd be rich!

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the book's release, 3D Realms has released it in PDF format here. More information is available on the original 3DR news story about the book.