"Racing The Beam" is a book on a delicious subject that suffers from serving multiple masters. Who is the target demographic here - is it the technogeek enthusiast? Or the Wired cultural sociologist? Maybe it's the Retro Gamer reader who has fond memories of the VCS platform and is looking for a bit of behind-the-scenes action. Authors Nick Monforst and Ian Bogost, whom seem to be hewing to the publisher's adage that every equation cuts your book sales in half, do the reader no favors by leaving out such appendix gold as a memory/register map of the VCS and something along the lines of a brief "Hello World" code example. Sound, which is the other half of the equation, gets even shorter shrift - if the hardware supposedly can't synthesize a chromatic scale in tune, how did later programmers like Synthcart's Paul Slocum get around this? One of the book's problems is that the authors try to make the book seem timely by trying to force connections between its vintage software biopics and such breathtakingly unrelated modern titles as World Of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater. It's almost like the publisher was feeling nervous that nobody of college age could relate to such early games, which is a shame given that the stories are all fascinating in their own right. And on the hardware side, while the Apple II and C-64 get brief nods why are no comparisons drawn between the Atari VCS and Jay Miner's later designs incl. the Atari 400, 800 and Amiga? And what were the specs of the Mattel Intellivision anyway, seeing as how it gets mentioned so often as the VCS's main rival? Any reader old enough to remember this hardware as a wood-grain box is probably going to have a few comments bordering on the personal, but let's keep things short. Am I the only person wondering why the rather staid VCS game "Adventure" got such over-the-top respect while Exidy's more refined (and clearly related) 1981 arcade game "Venture" goes unmentioned? How was Video Chess able to perform move lookahead with nearly no stack? And why was the story behind the most important sidescroller ever to be ported, Defender, ignored almost entirely? That said, I loved very minute spent reading this and look forward to seeing more from the "Platform Studies" series. And I bet you will too. Only next time around - more pictures!

upload/motw_a1d_2025_10/a1d/anybody/Nick Montfort/Racing the Beam_ The Atari Video Computer System (Platform Studies) (348)/Racing the Beam_ The Atari Video Computer - Nick Montfort.pdf

upload/aaaaarg/part_008/nick-montfort-racing-the-beam-the-atari-video-computer-system.pdf

upload/motw_shc_2025_10/shc/Racing the Beam_ The Atari Video Computer - Nick Montfort.pdf

motw/Racing the Beam_ The Atari Video Computer - Nick Montfort.pdf

lgli/R:\!fiction\0day\eng\_IRC\2019\IRC bookz 2019-n057-069\2019\2019-n063/Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost - Racing the Beam- The Atari Video Computer System (pdf).pdf

nexusstc/Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System/a44ea9d20c75155cec85cdf3d2de7bf0.pdf

lgli/Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost - Racing the Beam- The Atari Video Computer System (pdf)

zlib/Computers/PC & Video Games/Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost/Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System_684435.pdf

Video computer system: the Atari 2600 platform

Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost, Nick Montfort

Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost

Montfort, Nick, Bogost, Ian

AAAI Press

Platform studies, Cambridge Mass. ; London, ©2009

Platform studies, Cambridge, Mass, c2009

United States, United States of America

MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2009

2nd ptg, FR, 2009

2018

0

lg256694

producers:
Acrobat Distiller 8.1.0 (Windows)

{"isbns":["026201257X","026225493X","9780262012577","9780262254939"],"last_page":193,"publisher":"The MIT Press","series":"Platform Studies"}

Memory of the World Librarian: Quintus

Memory of the World Librarian: any body

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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.
Review "Montfort & Bogost raise the bar on anyone wishing to talk meaningfully about computer culture. Not only must we interpret these machines, we must first know how they work--and yes, sometimes this means knowing assembly code. From chip to controller, the authors lead us with ease through the Atari "2600" Video Computer System, one of the most emblematic devices in recent mass culture."--Alexander Galloway, Associate Professor of Culture and Communication, New York University, and author of Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization
(Alexander Galloway)
"Montfort and Bogost's analysis is both technically detailed and historically contextualized, both informative and methodologically instructive. They write with a rigor and grace that future contributors to the series may be at pains to match." -- Seth Perlow , Convergence
(Seth Perlow, Convergence)
"Read it, it will do you good." -- José P. Zagal , Game Studies
" Racing the Beam doesn"t spare the technical details, but is always accessible and compelling. Downright thrilling at times, in fact, a sort of The Right Stuff of video game development." Darren Zenko thestar.com (Toronto Star)
"Montfort and Bogost raise the bar on anyone wishing to talk meaningfully about computer culture. Not only must we interpret these machines, we must first know how they work -- and yes, sometimes this means knowing assembly code. From chip to controller, the authors lead us with ease through the Atari 2600 Video Computer System, one of the most emblematic devices in recent mass culture." Alexander Galloway , Associate Professor of Culture and Communication, New York University, and author of Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization
About the Author Nick Montfort is Associate Professor of Digital Media at MIT and the coauthor of * Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System* (MIT Press, 2009).
Ian Bogost is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, and the coauthor of Newsgames: Journalism at Play (MIT Press, 2010).

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.

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 platformsthe 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 Combat , Adventure , Pac-Man , Yars' Revenge , Pitfall! , and Star 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 The Empire Strikes Back was an early instance of interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCSoften considered merely a retro fetish objectis an essential part of the history of video games.

2010-05-17