Racing the Beam
by Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost · first published 2009
81% recommend19% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Detailed technical and cultural history of Atari 2600 programming, walking through landmark games and the clever tricks programmers used to squeeze out the hardware. Suits retro-game fans and curious programmers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A study of the relationship between platform and creative expression in the Atari VCS.
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Mentions per year
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…it's in the CPU, it's drawn on the screen. The machine only had 1024 bits, not bytes, of RAM. But that's neither here nor there. For more info on the fascinating hardware that was the Atari 2600, read Racing the Beam by Ian Bogost and Nick Montefort. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam Video Olympics could be considered to be the 100-in-1 of Pong games, with dozens of variants on the Pong theme. Combat takes…
on “The man who made 'the worst video game in history'” ↗…Atari VCS's weird hardware works. Perhaps read along with the canonical Stella Programmer's Guide (http://www.alienbill.com/2600/101/docs/stella.html) and the less technical but still informative book Racing the Beam (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/026201257X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...). A minor quibble is that the audio emulation, while accurate from the perspective of what the audio hardware does, produces a bunch of…
on “Javatari - multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in Java with no external libs” ↗…Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Non-fiction: Amusing Ourselves To Death (highly recommended) The Science of Fear The Black Swan Tokyo Vice Racing The Beam (Atari history, very cool) books by Daniel Pink Guns, Germs, and Steel The Prize by Daniel Yergin Fantasy: Anything by Gaiman or China Mieville, pretty much. EDIT: links to previews (legally)…
on “Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?” ↗If you find this interesting, I'd highly recommend "Racing the Beam" by Montfort and Bogost, which talks about Atari development from both a technical and a cultural perspective. It really goes into detail about some of the landmark games that introduced new techniques…
on “Metroid Source Code Expanded” ↗The MIT "platform series" is fascinating - specifically: _Racing The Beam_ (study of the atari 2600 platform) _The Future was Here_ (study of the amiga platform) Best books I've read in the last five years: _Debt: The First 5000 Years_ _Rising Up and Rising Down: Some…
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012” ↗I can personally recommend Montfort & Bogost's book: Racing the Beam for this exact topic :)
on “Show HN: 8bitworkshop IDE for Atari 2600” ↗…intentionally black! Notice the width of the screen in this screenshot compared to other nearby games: https://videogamecritic.com/2600ff.htm#rev203 More crazy tricks like this are described in the excellent "Racing the Beam" book by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost.
on “Zelda Screen Transitions Are Undefined Behaviour” ↗My "field of study" is more like a hobby, but the definitive book is "Racing the Beam" by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort. If you're at all interested in retro game consoles and especially the clever tricks old programmers used to push these systems to their limits, it's an incredibly fun…
on “Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?” ↗I highly recommend the book Racing the Beam by Nick Montfort if you are interested in the development of early Ataris. Also see http://www.bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator.shtml
on “Javatari - multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in Java with no external libs” ↗…http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9895917-enchantment: I like Guy Kawasaki's books. This one is a bit less focused on startup/tech, more on how you interact with people (both as a person and as a brand). Racing the Beam - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5435210-racing-the-beam: A deeeeeeep dive on the atari system. Literally discusses how the controllers manipulate the bits in memory to do different actions. Checklist…
on “Ask HN: Summer reading” ↗I recently read Racing the Beam (Monfort, Bogost), a survey of the defining technical details of the Atari 2600. I've read a number of gaming history books, and RtB was by far the most interesting. It might be better described as a…
on “A single line of Basic sends readers into a labyrinth” ↗Nick Montfort's book, Racing the Beam ( http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam ), goes into more detail.
on “Apple II software still being sold” ↗If anyone is interested in this kind of stuff, there is a fantastic book called Racing the Beam [1] from MIT Press. Here's a bit of the book's description: "Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge,…
on “Sonic the Hedgehog for the Atari 2600” ↗Take a look at Racing the Beam by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, which tells the story of the Atari VCS (2600). While not a book, and quite a bit more technical, there's also Fabien Sanglard's website (http://fabiensanglard.net/).…
on “The making of Elite” ↗Here's a fun video on how a modern 8-bit style game was ported to actually run on an NES. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvx4xXhZMrU You would probably enjoy the book Racing the Beam http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam For a collection of (mostly consumer-oriented) behind-the-scenes material, check out http://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ Or, if you want to get really…
on “Post mortem of my one game a month” ↗