Before the crash : early video game history / edited by Mark J. P. Wolf.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Wolf, Mark J. P.

Series:

Contemporary approaches to film and television series.

Contemporary approaches to film and media series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Video games--History.

Video games.

Video games--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 255 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Detroit : Wayne State University Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Following the first appearance of arcade video games in 1971 and home video game systems in 1972, the commercial video game market was exuberant with fast-paced innovation and profit. New games, gaming systems, and technologies flooded into the market until around 1983, when sales of home game systems dropped, thousands of arcades closed, and major video game makers suffered steep losses or left the market altogether. In Before the Crash: Early Video Game History, editor Mark J. P. Wolf assembles essays that examine the fleeting golden age of video games, an era sometimes overlooked for older games' lack of availability or their perceived "primitiveness" when compared to contemporary video games. In twelve chapters, contributors consider much of what was going on during the pre-crash era: arcade games, home game consoles, home computer games, handheld games, and even early online games. The technologies of early video games are investigated, as well as the cultural context of the early period-from aesthetic, economic, industrial, and legal perspectives. Since the video game industry and culture got their start and found their form in this era, these years shaped much of what video games would come to be. This volume of early history, then, not only helps readers to understand the pre-crash era, but also reveals much about the present state of the industry. Before the Crash will give readers a thorough overview of the early days of video games along with a sense of the optimism, enthusiasm, and excitement of those times. Students and teachers of media studies will enjoy this compelling volume.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Title

Copyright

Contents

Foreword by Ed Rotberg

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Notes

Video Games Caught Up in History: Accessibility, Teleological Distortion, and Other Methodological Issues

Look Back in Anger: Accessibility Issues in the Computer Age

Emulation and Technical Proficiency

The Incomplete Object

Teleological Illusion: From Early Cinema to Early Video Games

Reconfiguring History

What's Victoria Got To Do with It? Toward an Archaeology of Domestic Video Gaming

Back to the Future, or Pre-Positioning the Video Game Console

The Home and the Media: Early Connections

The Stereoscope: The First True Domestic Media Device

A Tactile and Interactive Relationship with Domestic Media Develops

The Boy Showman Entertains the Family

Do It Yourself-In Good and In Bad

Conclusion: Playing Pranks on Winky

Ball-and-Paddle Consoles

Channel F for Forgotten: The Fairchild Video Entertainment System

History

Channel F, From the Bottom Up

Paradigms of Control

Easter Eggs

Conclusion

The Video Game Industry Crash of 1977

Early Rapid Growth

A System on a Chip

The Crash

The Industry Bounces Back

A Question of Character: Transmediation, Abstraction, and Identification in Early Games Licensed from Movies

Early Adventures in Movie-Game Convergence

A Question of Character: Abstraction and Identification

Conclusion: A Question of Character, After the Crash and Beyond

Every Which Way But . . . : Reading the Atari Catalog

Nostalgia, Ephemera, and the Cultures of Gaming

Digital Nostalgia

Input Codes

. . . But Loose?

One-Bit Wonders: Video Game Sound before the Crash

How Sound Was Made

How Sound Was Used.

Key Influential Games for Sound up to 1983: A Series of Firsts

The Rise and Fall of Cinematronics

A Quick Buck

Space Wars, or Is It War?

Vectorbeam and Me

Crossed Swords

Vectorbeam

Crossover

Late Nights at Cinematronics

Last Gasps

Another Grab Bag of Games and Legal Entanglements

WMS Wins the Games, I Sign the Papers

PGD, Trivia Master, and the Real End of Cinematronics

Color-Cycled Space Fumes in the Pixel Particle Shockwave: The Technical Aesthetics of Defender and the Williams Arcade Platform, 1980-82

Coin-Drop Capitalism: Economic Lessons from the Video Game Arcade

Sight

Sound

Play

Reflect

The Cost of Play

Arcade as Deviant Site

Arcades in Economic Context

Pinball and Modernity

Play As Training

Computerization and Economic Upheaval

Early Online Gaming: BBSs and MUDs

Bulletin Board Systems

Multi-User Dungeons

BBSs, MUDs, and Economics

Appendix A: Video Game History: Getting Things Straight

Appendix B: The Magnavox Co. v. Activision, Inc.: 1985 WL 9469 (N.D. Cal. 1985)

Contributors

Index

BackCover.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8143-3722-8

OCLC:

794667914