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Lädt ... Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer Systemvon Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost (Autor)
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Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. A decent early effort in the platform studies genre, this book suffers a touch due to a disorganized feel and shortage of content. While there's a good mix of both technical and contextual/historical information, I believe this book could've easily been at least twice the length, going deeper into the technical details of the VCS platform. Organization of the content into an initial technical deep dive before a discussion of the impacts the platform's limitations and unique characteristics had on game programming and design might've helped the book seem less scattered. Regardless, it's a very interesting and worthwhile read on the Atari VCS, an iconic video gaming platform and one that really stretched its capabilities both over its commercial life and into the present through the retro, vintage and homebrew communities. I'm looking forward to reading other entries in the Platform Studies series. keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Gehört zur ReihePlatform Studies (1)
Literaturhinweise zu diesem Werk aus externen Quellen. Wikipedia auf Englisch (17)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. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)794.8The arts Recreational and performing arts Indoor games of skill; board games Electronic and video gamesKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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I know very little about computer games, and still less about the early history of the Atari system; but sometimes it does you good to read about a field of human endeavour with which you are completely unfamiliar. This is a tremendous analysis of how coding is affected by external factors, especially the way in which the business of game development is financed and structured, but also from learning about player preferences and making crazy bets about game features which turn out to pay off (or not).
This slim volume looks in depth at six games, only one of which I had heard of – Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars’ Revenge, Pitfall and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, but also in passing at the other games developed before or at the same time in each case, to paint a picture of the intellectual moment in which the writing of the game took place. There is a modest amount of machine code, but a lot of analysis of how ideas get turned into player experience. I don’t think I have retained very much of the information, but I come away struck by the cultural profundity of the whole enterprise. Recommended even for those like me who are not immersed in the subject. ( )