Pre-orders are open for the two-volume fifth edition of Phoenix

Pre-orders are now live for Phoenix Edition V, a massive update to Leonard Herman's comprehensive video game history book published by Press Run and Limited Run Games.

Not only do we lo e physical. But we love books about physical. Herman has been documenting the industry since the early 1980s. He published the first edition of Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames in December 1994. At the time, the industry was undergoing a massive paradigm shift. The Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn were launching in Japan, and developers were abandoning 2D sprites for 3D polygons. Phoenix was widely considered the first serious attempt to put the entire history of the medium into a single comprehensive book.

Herman has updated the text periodically over the last 30 years to keep up with new console generations and industry shifts. The previous version arrived in late 2016. A decade of new hardware, studio acquisitions, and digital storefronts adds a lot of paper. The fifth edition covers everything through 2026 and balloons the page count to over 1,150 pages.

A spine-breaking 1,150 pages

The sheer size of the updated manuscript forced a format change. Limited Run Games noted that their printers strongly advised against binding all 1,150 pages into a single hardcover. A book that thick would literally crack down the spine the moment someone tried to open it.

The solution was splitting the release into two distinct volumes. Volume 1 covers the dawn of the industry from 1947 through 1998. This covers the early mainframe experiments, the arcade boom, the 1983 crash, and the 32-bit console wars. It includes a foreword by Joe DeCuir. DeCuir is the systems engineer who co-designed the Atari 2600 television interface adapter and later helped develop the USB standard.

Volume 2 picks up the timeline in 1999 and runs through 2026. This half covers the modern era of online gaming, digital distribution, and the current console generation. Atari CEO Wade Rosen provides the foreword for the second book. Rosen has spent the last few years steering Atari back toward its retro roots by acquiring studios like Digital Eclipse and Nightdive.

$100 for the complete set

Herman's writing style is strictly documentary. He avoids speculative narratives and relies on verified contemporary news sources to build an objective timeline of events. This makes the Phoenix series function more like an encyclopedia or a reference manual than a narrative novel. It is a dense read, which is exactly what you want from a historical reference text.

The publisher handling the release is Press Run. This is the book publishing imprint of Limited Run Games. The company is best known for printing physical discs and cartridges for digital-only indie games, but they have expanded into preserving gaming history through print media as well.

Buyers can grab the volumes individually or together. Volume 1 and Volume 2 cost $54.99 each. The bundled set is priced at $99.99. The pre-order window closes on August 16, 2026.

This might be the final update to the series. Documenting an industry that now generates hundreds of billions of dollars a year is a daunting task for one person. The two-volume set secures that history in a format that does not require an internet connection to access.