Enjoy fast, FREE delivery, exclusive deals and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV episodes with Prime Video
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$38.32$38.32
FREE delivery:
Saturday, Sep 16
Payment
Secure transaction
Ships from
Amazon
Sold by
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Buy used: $18.00
Other Sellers on Amazon
100% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the Authors
OK
Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (Platform Studies) Hardcover – January 1, 2009
| Price | New from | Used from |
Purchase options and add-ons
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.
- Print length180 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMit Pr
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2009
- Dimensions6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-10026201257X
- ISBN-13978-0262012577
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
Editorial Reviews
Review
Montfort and Bogost's analysis is both technically detailed and historically contextualized, both informative and methodologically instructive. They write with a rigor and grace that future contributors to the series may be at pains to match.
―Seth Perlow, ConvergenceRead it, it will do you good.
―José P. Zagal, Game StudiesRacing the Beam doesn't spare the technical details, but is always accessible and compelling. Downright thrilling at times, in fact, a sort of The Right Stuff of video game development.
―Darren Zenko, thestar.com (Toronto Star)Review
Montfort & Bogost raise the bar on anyone wishing to talk meaningfully about computer culture. Not only must we interpret these machines, we must first know how they work―and yes, sometimes this means knowing assembly code. From chip to controller, the authors lead us with ease through the Atari '2600' Video Computer System, one of the most emblematic devices in recent mass culture.
―Alexander Galloway, Associate Professor of Culture and Communication, New York University, and author of Protocol: How Control Exists After DecentralizationAbout the Author
Nick Montfort is Assistant Professor of Digital Media at MIT. He is the author of Twisty Little Passages: A New Approach to Interactive Fiction and the coeditor of The New Media Reader, both published by The MIT Press. Ian Bogost is Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, at Georgia Institute of Technology and Founding Partner, Persuasive Games LLC. He is the author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogame Criticism and Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, both published by the MIT Press.
Product details
- Publisher : Mit Pr; 2nd ptg edition (January 1, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 180 pages
- ISBN-10 : 026201257X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0262012577
- Item Weight : 15.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #782,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #184 in Computing Industry History
- #492 in Game Programming
- #2,654 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
- Customer Reviews:
Important information
To report an issue with this product, click here.
About the authors

Nick Montfort develops computational art and poetry, often collaboratively, and studies creative computing of all sorts. He is professor of digital media at MIT, also teaches at the School for Poetic Computation, and lives in New York and Boston.
In addition to his books, Montfort has done digital media writing projects including the ppg256 series of 256-character poetry generators; Sea and Spar Between (with Stephanie Strickland); the interactive fiction system Curveship; Ream, a 500-page poem written on one day; the group blog Grand Text Auto; Implementation, a novel on stickers (with Scott Rettberg); The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 (co-edited with three others); and several works of interactive fiction: Book and Volume, Ad Verbum, and Winchester's Nightmare. He directs the lab/studio The Trope Tank.

Dr. Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds an appointment in the Scheller College of Business. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, where he writes regularly about technology and popular culture.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
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!
With that, the book has a few aims. One is to show how the restrictions imposed by the VCS hardware led to extraordinary leaps of creativity to produce playable and, in some instances, graphically impressive games. The authors do a nice job here of balancing the presentation of the dry technical aspects with sheer reverence for the programmers and designers.
Another aim is more long-reaching: showing how some VCS games were the genesis (or an important part) of game genres that still exist today. This might be more of a stretch. There was a lot of arcade video game activity at the same time that the VCS ruled the living room, and many of the VCS titles were ports, i.e. they contributed little to moving the field forward.
The book is part of a series called 'Platform Studies'. I'm not a media type, so I don't really know what this means. There's a fair amount of lip service paid to this concept in the book, but it seems a little contrived, as if the editor insisted that 'Platform Studies' be mentioned a certain number of times. Is the VCS an object lesson in platform studies? I don't know. What I do know is that it is probably the simplest programmable gaming system one could imagine. It's a brilliant design that offloaded all the difficult jobs onto the programmers to keep the hardware cost as low as possible. As such it deserves to be recognized for the milestone that it was, and this book does that, and in an enjoyable way.
Of particular interest (to myself) were the hardware design choices made that confound and make you cringe by today's standards. 'Racing the Beam' gives you the insight to understand these choices by providing the financial limits, competitive landscape, design goals, and technological context present at Atari's release. It is still hard to believe that developing back then was more than just heavy hardware and software constraints (128 *bytes of RAM* and this review is well over 1500 bytes)... The developers were often a one-man team juggling programming, art direction, UX/UI, screenwriting, sound design, and project management while devising logic tricks for precious source compression. No physics APIs or game platform builder or asset store to save the day, oops, I meant deadline. This is real insight on the Pioneering spirit.
There is a whole chapter dedicated to Adventure. Very cool! Would be a good primer for those eagerly waiting to read Warren Robinett's Annotated Adventure. Yars Revenge (my favorite) and Pitfall is in there too. This was my first taste of a platform studies book and I look forward to picking up I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform (Platform Studies) despite never owning an NES.
Also, it's nice to see more of these titles covering the "golden days" of personal computing when the hardware and software were much more integrated, and things felt more... ummm... well... personal.
I thought the author did a good job of covering quite a range of technology on the Atari system, without getting bogged down in the details too often. He provided lots of technical detail which I liked, although some folks who are not programmers or technically-oriented would probably lose interest.
If you are a fan of 8-bit personal computers and video games, I recommend reading this book. If you are somewhat interested in the era, but not of a very technical bent, you may be overwhelmed (or just bored) by the technical depth of the book. Regardless, the book is a good reference to provide perspective of the time and various technical challenges at that time.
I am very excited about the Platform Studies series and look forward to other titles in the future. Being an avid Commodore 64 fan, I'll put my plug in for that being the next title... ;-)
If you can set aside the school paper quality writing you'll find a book full of fascinating technical details about the video game industry's early life. You'll quickly learn that just about every Atari 2600 game is a major hack and required multiple clever tricks just to get anything working at all.
I would still recommend reading this book if you are interested in video game history, but be ready for some confusing trains of thought. I am eagerly awaiting the next book in the Platform Series but hope a little more consideration is given to the writing.
After reading this book -- a book I plan to read cover-to-cover again, to refresh my memory -- I gained incredible respect for what 2600 programmers were (and still are) capable of eeking out of the machine. Coming from the relative luxurious comfort of the 8-bit computer, with a real framebuffer, character/tile graphics, etc., it's amazing that games like Pitfall! exist at all, let alone are fast, fun, and highly playable!
If you're interested in retrocomputing or retrogaming, computer & video game history, or just enjoy learning about how technology works, this book is a must.
From the nitty-gritty of the processors used and details about the assembler language from the code of some games to a amazing description of the cultural (and technological) scene of the late 70s and early 80s, this book managed to awe and impress me as no other book about videogames ever could. Actually I had to refrain my impulses to NOT gather more information about the system and to become part of the homebrew scene for the 2600. Just of the sheer pleasure of handling so simple yet versatile machine.
Another aspect of the book that amazed me was the description of the design and economic issues that affected both the machine engineering and the launch titles programming. An example is that the machine was hardwired to work with "sprites" for the ball, missile, player 1 and player 2, leading to an easy implementation of pong, but making seemingly hard to program anything else besides these lines.
In short, a must have for designers, programmers, engineers and the technical oriented fan.
As a retro enthusiast, I really appreciate the study of technologies impact on culture. In fact, I didn't even connect the two before I read this.
I heard about the book from a presentation by David Crane on youtube. It was this same presentation that convinced me to make the switch from developing NES homebrew games to the VCS. So far, I have enjoyed every minute of it. This book gives a great overview for anyone aspiring to 'race the beam'.
as much as I love the detail gone into, I would have preferred something either more superficial or more in-depth. there are fascinating technical comments which are not followed up on (such as how to add sound to an Atari game).
I know some people have complained that the connections made between modern gaming and the ones in the book are tenuous. I disagree. the authors choose well-founded examples but they could have used more explanation to assist those who are not life-long gamer trivia buffs to make connections firmer.
They take a look at 10 games that are what they view as the best examples of games the 2600 platform. There is so much interesting information in this book on how and why so many of these classic games were produced that it is a must have for any retro gamer. For example, the author's discussion of how 2600 sprites were built with scan lines instead of pixels was something I was totally unaware of and found very intriguing. This book is well written and informative. I hope its the first in a long line of such books on Platform Studies
I thoroughly enjoyed the read as the history was there in spades.
This book describes the platform, delving heavily into the software development process. Very interesting and a must-read for anybody interested in computer science, software development or designing/programming very small-scale systems.










