"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!

lgrsnf/D:\!genesis\library.nu\b2\_50779.b257befad4531debfb0edf1d61e5d0c3.pdf

nexusstc/Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System/b257befad4531debfb0edf1d61e5d0c3.pdf

zlib/Computers/PC & Video Games/Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost/Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (Platform Studies)_927836.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

до 2011-01

lg503255

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

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.

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

Contents......Page 6
Series Foreword......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Timeline......Page 12
1 Stella......Page 14
2 Combat......Page 32
3 Adventure......Page 56
4 Pac-Man......Page 78
5 Yars’ Revenge......Page 94
6 Pitfall!......Page 112
7 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back......Page 132
8 After the Crash......Page 150
Afterword on Platform Studies......Page 158
Notes......Page 164
Bibliography......Page 172
Index......Page 182

This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential videogame console from both computational and cultural perspectives. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. --from publisher description

2011-06-04