As I study game programming and programming in general, I run across many instances of Win32 syntax references that are complete new to me as I see them. I don't really know much of the API, but its kinda scary as its seems like a necessity for any kind of Windows programming and I'm unfamiliar with it. I recently read "Beginning Game Programming" by Michael Morrison and i'm currently reading Game Coding Complete, 2nd Edition my Mike McShaffrey and both authors make references to Win32 syntax/function calls/etc and i'm just like ??? So like I said, I guess if I want to be able to do any kind of commercial Windows programming, including Windows game programming, I guess I need to learn at least some fundamental Win32? What are some effective ways/resources that you guys recommend I go about doing that? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Petzold's "Programming Windows 5th Ed" is generally considered the book to have if you're learning Win32.

For a quick primer, however, I recommend WinProg.

Thanks! I'll look into them!