Racing the Beam

The Atari Video Computer System

Bibliographic Data

ID19969142
AuthorsNick Montfort (0000-0001-7558-5160), Ian Bogost (0000-0001-7723-660X)
Year2009
Pages192
Publication date2009-01-09
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueVideo computer system (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherThe MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7551/mitpress/7588.001.0001
OpenAlexW4241639793
Open LibraryOL18733000M
ISBN9780262254939
LanguageEN
Citations received99

A study of the relationship between platform and creative expression in the Atari VCS. The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home video game market so completely that “Atari” became the generic term for a video game 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 video game 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

Beam (structure) · Optics · Physics · Digital Games and Media · Digital Media and Philosophy · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction · Atari 2600 (Video game console) · Atari computer · Computer games · Computer games, design · Computer games, programming · Equipment and supplies · History · Popular Culture · Programming · united states · Video games

Tools

Open DOILibgen