Racing the Beam

<p><b>A study of the relationship between platform and creative expression in the Atari VCS. </b></p><p>The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home video game market so completely that “Atari”… Lue lisää <p><b>A study of the relationship between platform and creative expression in the Atari VCS. </b></p><p>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. </p><p>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: <i>Combat</i>, <i>Adventure</i>, <i>Pac-Man</i>, <i>Yars' Revenge</i>, <i>Pitfall! </i>, and<i> Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back</i>. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. <i>Adventure</i>, 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 <i>World of Warcraft</i> and <i>Grand Theft Auto</i>), by allowing the player to walk off one side into another space; and <i>Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back</i> 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. </p>