Co-authored with Nick Montfort. Forthcoming 2008.
Video Computer System is a detailed and accessible study of the most important early videogame console, the Atari Video Computer System (also known as the Atari VCS or the Atari 2600). Through its main example, the book will provide unique insight into the role of underlying hardware and software systems in new media. It will be the first extensive application of the platform studies approach to a single computing system.
We develop the original approach of platform studies by drawing on textual studies, computer programming and engineering, and computer game studies. We consider the VCS console with its Stella chipset, along with cartridges and controllers, as evidence of human work, decisions, and processes. Our approach traces this material history while exploring the formal workings of the VCS and its early games, revealing the technological and cultural contexts in which the system and its games were developed. This study of the VCS is technically informed, explaining the operation and implications of the MOS Technologies 6507, the Television Interface Adapter, and cartridge ROM.
The book covers the ancestry of the VCS (including Pong and the Atari Home Pong systems), the hardware design of the machine and its implications for creativity, and discusses many influential VCS games (Combat, Adventure, Pitfall, Pac-Man, and others). It is illustrated throught, and written to appeal to technically inclined general readers as well academics studying all sorts of creative work in digital media.
Video Computer System is a collaborative work by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost. It will be published by The MIT Press.
The image above (created thanks to Label Maker 2600) is not an image of the book's cover. That will be shown here as soon as it is available.
Contents
- Series Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Timeline
- Stella
- Combat
- Adventure
- Pac-Man
- Yars' Revenge
- Pitfall!
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
- After the Crash
- Beyond the Atari VCS
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index