Researchers have long studied specific cultural artifacts, such as particular books and paintings, to try to better understand creativity, expression, and our world. In recent years, this consideration has extended to digital media, where scholars have focused on particular programs at the interfaces and rule level as well as different styles of interaction and play. In Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (MIT Press, 2009), Ian Bogost and Nick Monfort provide the first humanistic study, not of a video game, but of a computer platform — the first consideration of how a particular computing system relates to creativity and the creative work done upon it. We offer a detailed and accessible study of the most important early videogame console. Bogost and I developed the original approach of platform studies by drawing on textual studies, computer programming and engineering, and videogame studies. We consider the Atari VCS hardware as evidence of human work, decisions, and processes, tracing a material history while exploring the formal workings of the VCS and its games to reveal the technological and cultural contexts of the time. This study of the VCS is technically informed, explaining the implications of components, including the unusual Television Interface Adapter. The development of and aesthetic qualities of many influential VCS games (Combat, Adventure, Pitfall, Yars’ Revenge, Pac-Man, and others) are discussed in detail in relation to the VCS platform.
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