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tadpoleon's review against another edition
2.0
Some interesting bits but I was left very confused as to the target audience.
willia4's review against another edition
4.0
I was non-existent to being in diapers during the days of this story, so I can't speak to the historical accuracy or the even just the feels of the time. But my parents had an Atari 2600 and this book accurately captures the wonder caused the little colored boxes that would appear on their big wooden console television when it was plugged in.
As a professional programmer, I was particularly fascinated by the technical details of this little machine. In my world, displays are driven by framebuffers and backed by rectangular arrays of RAM. The idea of lighting up a point on the screen is, at its heart, synonymous with writing some bytes to the correct memory location. Turning the bytes in RAM into glowing points on the screen is handled by dedicated hardware that is mostly abstracted away for today's programmer.
But the 2600 doesn't have anything like that. It was designed in concert with the display hardware of its day: an electron beam that scans back and forth, back and forth. To draw on the screen, the programmer has to carefully turn the beam on and off timed precisely with each cycle of the CPU.
I am an Apple fan. I believe that the best software is written in concert with the hardware it will be running on so that each can take advantage of the other. The 2600 completely embodies that philosophy: its software is completely harmonized with the way that television and video signals worked at the time. So much so, that it's basically impossible to completely emulate the experience on modern displays. Our screens just don't allow for pixels bleeding in to one another or for phosphors to slowly dim once the beam has been turned off.
There's more to this story, of course. The way that most games were written by a single developer who owned every aspect of it (from concept to playability to music and art) is an interesting contrast to today's multi-million dollar development teams. The rivalry between Atari and Activision, whose original logo is still recognizable to all gamers today, is of note. And, of course, there's the way that women's struggle to gain respect in the industry is basically mirrored in today's software industry.
This book checked several boxes for me: as a modern programmer who enjoys history, I enjoyed reading the accounts of this pivotal project. As a lover of quality products, I enjoyed reading about the development of this seminal consumer offering. And as a gamer, I loved the nostalgic look at the console I first started growing up with.
And ultimately, as a reader, I enjoyed a well-written account of days of long ago.
As a professional programmer, I was particularly fascinated by the technical details of this little machine. In my world, displays are driven by framebuffers and backed by rectangular arrays of RAM. The idea of lighting up a point on the screen is, at its heart, synonymous with writing some bytes to the correct memory location. Turning the bytes in RAM into glowing points on the screen is handled by dedicated hardware that is mostly abstracted away for today's programmer.
But the 2600 doesn't have anything like that. It was designed in concert with the display hardware of its day: an electron beam that scans back and forth, back and forth. To draw on the screen, the programmer has to carefully turn the beam on and off timed precisely with each cycle of the CPU.
I am an Apple fan. I believe that the best software is written in concert with the hardware it will be running on so that each can take advantage of the other. The 2600 completely embodies that philosophy: its software is completely harmonized with the way that television and video signals worked at the time. So much so, that it's basically impossible to completely emulate the experience on modern displays. Our screens just don't allow for pixels bleeding in to one another or for phosphors to slowly dim once the beam has been turned off.
There's more to this story, of course. The way that most games were written by a single developer who owned every aspect of it (from concept to playability to music and art) is an interesting contrast to today's multi-million dollar development teams. The rivalry between Atari and Activision, whose original logo is still recognizable to all gamers today, is of note. And, of course, there's the way that women's struggle to gain respect in the industry is basically mirrored in today's software industry.
This book checked several boxes for me: as a modern programmer who enjoys history, I enjoyed reading the accounts of this pivotal project. As a lover of quality products, I enjoyed reading about the development of this seminal consumer offering. And as a gamer, I loved the nostalgic look at the console I first started growing up with.
And ultimately, as a reader, I enjoyed a well-written account of days of long ago.
ninj's review against another edition
4.0
More technical than I was expecting. At times, that made it a little dry, but it was definitely enriching, and seeing how the technical limitations in the system translated into design, gameplay and graphical choices was quite interesting. That explanation also means you get a deeper appreciation for the latter games explored in the book as they pushed beyond the obstacles earlier games halted at.
The book's authors themselves are not above sliding in passing references to classics in computing fiction, with lines such as "This sometimes allowed dramatic effects to be displayed to viewers who, plugging in a joystick, found the television above the port to be the color of sky"
And the heroics - David Crane crammed 255 screens of jungle for Pitfall! in 50 bytes, and went from single-life-single-try to 3 lives with display, "For the 'lives' indicator I added vertical tally marks to the timer display. That probably only cost 24 bytes, and with another 20 hours of 'scrunching' the code I could fit that in"
The book's authors themselves are not above sliding in passing references to classics in computing fiction, with lines such as "This sometimes allowed dramatic effects to be displayed to viewers who, plugging in a joystick, found the television above the port to be the color of sky"
And the heroics - David Crane crammed 255 screens of jungle for Pitfall! in 50 bytes, and went from single-life-single-try to 3 lives with display, "For the 'lives' indicator I added vertical tally marks to the timer display. That probably only cost 24 bytes, and with another 20 hours of 'scrunching' the code I could fit that in"
thirtytwobirds's review against another edition
4.0
A great little tale of six Atari games (and many more are mentioned briefly). It's fairly technical, so if you're not a programmer you won't like it much, but if you are it's a really fun read. It doesn't have that ugly social science smell that 10 PRINT has, it digs into the tech quite a bit.
enno's review against another edition
4.0
Even though I did not grow up with a VCS, this book triggers in me nostalgia for early computer games and systems. Good to see a reflection on the early days of our industry like this.
thomcat's review against another edition
5.0
This was a very good breakdown of the Atari VCS (2600) platform, along with in-depth description of some key cartridges. I learned a lot about the subject, and look forward to other books in the Platform line.
sbossen's review against another edition
3.0
This was a neat book to read. It was particularly interesting to me because of my strong programming background and fond memories of the system. With today's programs it's hard to imaging fitting any thing playable into a cram packed 4k bytes of program ROM space and a measly 128 bytes RAM. This book details the technical challenge of the system and several of the top selling programs. I'm not sure that this book will be for someone who is not very technical.
neven's review against another edition
3.0
A curious history of the Atari 2600 - highly technical at times, rather light on the surrounding history and drama.
nv6acaat's review against another edition
4.0
5 stars if you love(d) the 2600. 1 star if you don't. Can't imagine anyone being in-between on this one. Will be interesting to see if MIT really carries this forward as a series on 'Platform Studies,' or if that's just a hook.