Book Review: Art of Atari

This book is amazing. The first thing that ran through my mind was how on earth did they manage to find all the old artworks used by the games.

This book's a thick 352-page hardcover. The book traces the history of Atari, looks at its origins, consoles, games produced, artists and other people who have worked in the company.

This book is important in the sense that Atari pioneered video games technology and this was where history was made. It's incredible reading the history, understanding the significance of what Atari has done to influence the industry, and also market the video game as a product. I've only known Pac-Mac but this book introduced me to so many other games that I've not heard of. It's truly an eye opener.

There are many photos and artworks featured. The highlight to me would be the detailed illustrations which are sourced from museums and private collections. Many of the artworks are fantastic even by today's standards.

Another interesting thing for me is to learn about the different models of consoles that were actually released, and also other related products like keyboards, remotes, music system and VR, yes Virtual Reality headsets from 1995, two decades ago before we have this VR popularity again now.

If you want to learn about video game history, this is a book not to be missed. Highly recommended. Well worth the price.

Now I wish there are books for the history of XBox, Playstation, Nintendo and PC gaming.

If you like video game history, check out An Illustrated History of 151 Video Games too.

Art of Atari is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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