Book Review – Art of Atari

Art Of Atari by Tim Lapetino
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When video games first hit the market – especially via consoles for home use – their marketing was almost as important as their technology. Often the games themselves were so rudimentary that they weren’t much fun without adding a little imagination. Pictures in ads and on boxes supplied the visual storytelling that could transform a handful of blocky pixels moving around on a screen into space battles, Olympic sports, and a host of other engaging pursuits. Thus the title subject is a particularly interesting point in the history of art and tech, given Atari’s creation of the 2600 cartridge-based game system (among other key moments in the early years of video gaming). Though the pictures are naturally the stars of the show, the text also supplies good background information. I admit I would have liked more specificity about dates and fewer passages devoted to corporate roll calls. Those small problems aside, this is an excellent presentation of the images that made the games worth playing.

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