Art of Atari

Me: Hey, you can't keep reviewing just books you like all the time. You've got to show them you've got range; that you can review lots of different stuff. Remember how you were going to start that YA novel...?

Also Me: Ooo, look, it's Art of Atari! We haven't read that yet!

Me: Okay...the novel can wait.

Grown-up facts often fly in the face of childhood memories. Apparently, Atari did bonzo-well financially for just one magic year and then struggled the rest of the time, but I remember them lasting my entire childhood. Apparently, their Pac-Man game for the 2600 console was not well-received, but I remember being frustrated with how hard the arcade version was -- I was lucky if I could get to stage 3 -- but my sister and I could set the home version on low difficulty and play the same game for an hour.

This book does an admirable job of filling us in on all the adult facts, but also explains for younger people why our nostalgia value for 1-bit video games still runs so high. I always loved the packing on those old Atari boxes, but I never thought about the importance of the packaging and how the artwork bridged the gap between what was possible to display on a video game screen and what we could visualize in our imaginations. They say the magic in a comic book is what happens between the panels, but apparently this was also true between opening an Atari package and plugging in that cartridge for the first time.