Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Ian Bogost, Nick Montfort

Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System



Download Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System



Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System Ian Bogost, Nick Montfort ebook pdf
Publisher: The MIT Press
Language: English
Page: 193
ISBN: 026201257X, 9780262012577

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. Platform Studies series



MORE EBOOKS:
Download Breakthrough Experience epub
Download Killing Time ebook
Download Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System pdf







Tags: Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System ebook pdf epub djvu mobi rar
Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System pdf epub djvu free download
Download Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System free ebook pdf epub
Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System read online free book
Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System cheap ebook for kindle and nook
Ian Bogost, Nick Montfort ebooks and audio books
Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System download pdf epub rar rapidshare mediafire fileserve 4shared torrent depositfiles scribd