Racing the Beam - The Atari Video Computer System 2009 PDF eBook

Author(s): Nick Montfort; Ian Bogost

The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home videogame market so completely that "Atari" became
the generic term for a videogame console. The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the flexibility of
changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established
new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of
this influential videogame console from both computational and cultural perspectives.

Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms.the systems underlying computing. This
book (the first in a series of Platform Studies) does so, developing a critical approach that examines
the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the
Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge,
Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances
of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure,
for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the
boundless virtual spaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing
the player to walk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early
instance of interaction between media properties and video games.

Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCS.often considered merely a retro fetish object.is an essential
part of the history of video games.

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