Before the Crash: Early Video Game History (Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Studies)

Contributors examine the early days of video game history before the industry crash of 1983 that ended the medium's golden age. 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 Notes 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 Notes Ball-and-Paddle Consoles Notes Channel F for Forgotten: The Fairchild Video Entertainment System History Channel F, From the Bottom Up Paradigms of Control Easter Eggs Conclusion Notes The Video Game Industry Crash of 1977 Early Rapid Growth A System on a Chip The Crash The Industry Bounces Back Notes 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 Notes Every Which Way But . . . : Reading the Atari Catalog Nostalgia, Ephemera, and the Cultures of Gaming Digital Nostalgia Input Codes . . . But Loose? Notes 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 Conclusion Notes 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 Notes Color-Cycled Space Fumes in the Pixel Particle Shockwave: The Technical Aesthetics of Defender and the Williams Arcade Platform, 1980–82 Notes 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 Conclusion Notes Early Online Gaming: BBSs and MUDs Bulletin Board Systems Multi-User Dungeons BBSs, MUDs, and Economics Notes 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 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 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 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 periodfrom 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.