GAME OVER, PETE WATSON

An adventure of video games and spies.

On “Brawl-A-Thon 3000 XL” release day, Pete Watson makes a terrible discovery: His mother’s borrowed his savings, leaving him without enough cash to buy the greatest video game of all time. To raise the money, he hosts an impromptu, unsanctioned garage sale. Desperate Pete puts out his dad’s ancient game console, a CommandRoid 85. The mysterious Bug Man quickly purchases it, and Pete is all set to buy his own game. But then his dad shows up at the video game store, upset about the sold console, but before he can question Pete as to its whereabouts, he is abducted by suit-clad goons. Shortly after this, the president of the United States holds a press conference, spouting gibberish. To find out how the president, his father and the CommandRoid are connected, Pete reunites with ex–best friend Wesley and Wesley’s sister, Callie. They’ve been on the outs since he catastrophically mishandled her discovery of his crush on her. Of course, by the time the conspiracy is unraveled, the only way to save the world is for Pete to win an epic, multilevel video game boss battle. The illustrations range from cartoons to heavily pixelated images, suited to the pseudo-multimedia book’s hilarious references to the special features the digital edition will have.

A progressively silly, retro-geeky action story for the YOLO generation.