As with any subculture, it's inevitable that the more hardcore members grow up and write stories about their obsessions. Often such pieces are written as a piece of nostaliga, on par with Americana in this age of post-post modernism and kitch. It's hip, it's urbane. It was only a matter of time until the gaming subculture had an author. It's just unfortunate that the author is D.B. Weiss with his first novel: Lucky Wander Boy.

Lucky Wander Boy is a fictional story about Adam Pennyman - a man who is compulsively drawn to a fictional game named Lucky Wander Boy, a quarter-muncher that is just as surreal as it's name. For years Pennyman had repressed the game in his mind - the numerous hours he spent trying to piece together it's puzzles until cruely one day the proprietor of his local arcade unplugged it, just as he was about to make a major breakthrough. Pennyman is reintroduced to Lucky Wander Boy and other classic videogames through the advent of MAME emulation, and he starts journaling about his memories and current insights on these games of yesteryear in a project he calls The Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainment.

The Catalogue follows his career and personal life as he meanders through a series of trainwrecks that include faking creditials to get work on a Polish made-for-tv viking movie that lead to an aquiring of a polish girlfriend and subsequent firing from the film. He drags his new girlfriend with him back to America where he finds a new job working at Portal Entertainment - the makers of the 'classic' movie adaptation of the video game 'Eviscerator' (a thinly veiled version of Mortal Kombat.) As luck would have it, Portal Entertainment has also optioned the movie rights to Lucky Wander Boy. Pennyman becomes obsessed with getting to the root, and bringing the true vision of his venerated childhood to the silver screen.

Make no mistake - Lucky Wander Boy is not a book about video games - it's a novel about obsession and delusion, about the geeks that forever haunt specialty newsgroups discussing the nuances and depths of games that many have forgotten. The use of one of these compulsive types as the main character is part of the downfall of the book - Pennyman is a selfish person, a confused mind that is on the verge of crossing into madness. As a result, most of the supporting characters only appear as crutches for his work and nothing more - NPC's if you will. To extend the analogy further, they act like NPC's in a poorly constructed RPG - lacking real human elements, motivations and containing erratic behavior. Pennyman's Polish girlfriend is especially weak and poorly constructed - thrown in there as a cursorary guilt technique. The courting period Weiss details is virtually non-existant, lacking any rapture or infatuation and quickly moves into the hate & spite phase. Their relationship feels glued together, as do many in the book.

Some of Pennyman's later introspective moments are simiply insipid. For instance, in one scene we see Pennyman masterbating with one hand while playing Adventure with the other, all done staring at a picture of the creator of Lucky Wander Boy. Needless to say, these scenes come across at best as pathetic - at worst, just shameful. The narrative stumbles along in this manner, held only together by the Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainment. Unfortunately, the Catalogue is by far one of the weaker points of Lucky Wander Boy. Imagine a stoned philosophy major rambling about his favorite 2600 games and you essentially have the Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainment. Insisting that Pac-Man represents a "corporate anti-hero in a utopian fantasy" does not make it so. While it speaks volumes of the lead character, it is insufferable to read most of the Catalogue entires for more than several paragraphs.

Not all of the entries are intellectually convoluted though. Weiss uses Microsurgeon to ease into a touching story of his experiences playing this classic Intellivision game, where the new mission of the game is to keep his grandmother from succumbing to cancer. Unfortunately, this poignant and innocent tale is a bit dampered by a multitude of coincidences, such as the timing of receiving a new Intellivison versus the timing of his grandmother's death. Similar details and devices are littered throughout the book, but in much less of a forgiving manner - specific books and games pop up at the right time with the right characters, monumental events occur that are just a little too convenient and feel executed in a rather hackish manner.

Ultimately, Lucky Wander Boy has it's strengths - it does tell the story of a disturbed geek, and it executes it well. Unfortunately, the events leading up to the culmination of Pennyman's character are shallow and ring hollow. Some classic gamers or those that enjoy nostalgia may enjoy some of Weiss' descriptions of older games, but will probably end up being frustrated by the depicition of fictious games such as Eviscerator and Lucky Wander Boy itself (especially laughable are some of Weiss' theories on vector graphics displays.) Casual readers might enjoy the relatively quickly-paced narrative, but will more than likely feel alienated by the third act. However, if you can trudge through some of the more over-analytic Catalogue entries and disjointed characters, you will find a smattering of interesting ideas and memorable scenes that will linger in the back of your mind long after you've put Lucky Wander Boy down.