Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

Racing the beam started mit press platform series in the best possible way covering all the fundamentals of the first great videogame console the atari vcs

Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

Maybe its the retro gamer reader who has fond memories of the vcs platform and is looking for a bit of behindthescenes action

Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

Authors nick monforst and ian bogost whom seem to be hewing to the publishers adage that every equation cuts your book sales in half do the reader no favors by leaving out such appendix gold as a memoryregister map of the vcs and something along the lines of a brief hello world code example

Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

Its 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

Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

And on the hardware side while the apple ii and c64 get brief nods why are no comparisons drawn between the atari vcs and jay miners later designs incl

Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

There are fascinating technical comments which are not followed up on such as how to add sound to an atari game

Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

Note that it profiles some of ataris more popular games pitfall adventure yars revenge

Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

Seriously i read this book and all of a sudden its 1982 again