The Art of Atari

As you all pretty much know, when I was just a wee tot living in suburban Wisconsin, milking cows and drinking beer, I spent a lot of cold winters sitting in front of our (alarmingly) warm TV set playing classic Atari games like Missile Command, Adventure and Asteroids. Games that, when played on a home console in 1981, looked pretty much like ass. The graphics, as some of you will recall, were embarrassingly simple -- one game's soccer ball was another game's ICBM missile. The sound of an explosion in a space shooter might double as the sound of a crowd cheering on a football team. What I'm getting at here folks is that the narrative power of these 2-kilobyte game programs was extremely, extremely limited, so we had to actually use our own imaginations while playing our video games back then. Which, ironically, was something that I think was lost on many parents of the time, as they often lashed out against this wicked new video-technology that would most assuredly eat their children's souls and melt their brains.
But how do you market and sell a game that contains only a dot, a line and a wall of bricks to millions of sweaty, greasy teenage kids who can't wait to hop into their station wagons and cruise on over to Kay Bee Toys to pick up the latest radical game cartridge?

Like this:

Not real, but an incredible simulation.

Nope, not what you're thinking about at all when you're eight years old and spinning a paddle in your hand -- sorry, that sounded weird. But believe it or not, this approach ended up working well for Atari and having been initially run by a bunch of stoners and hippies anyway, they were very up on the idea of dedicating a fair amount of cash and resources to art and design right from the start.

So wouldn't you know it, some forty-odd years later and long after the original company imploded, someone has finally put together a book chronicling this hitherto overlooked aspect of our favorite video game behemoth, and it's available today in hardback.

Penned by Chicago-based designer, Tim Lapetino, The Art of Atari gives the reader a comprehensive overview of the various design initiatives employed by Atari over the course of its entire history and reveals the stories behind them as well.

From the official site:

"THE ART OF ATARI is the first official collection of such artwork. Sourced from private collections worldwide, this book spans over 40 years of the company’s unique illustrations used in packaging, advertisements, catalogs, and more.

Includes a comprehensive retrospective collecting game production and concept artwork, photos, marketing art, with insight from key people involved in Atari’s rich history, and behind-the-scenes details on how dozens of games featured within were conceived, illustrated, approved (or rejected), and brought to life!"

Pick up your copy for only $39.99 from their site by clicking the link below!

VISIT THE MAIN ART OF ATARI SITE HERE FOR MORE INFO

BONUS VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR, TIM LAPETINO

Pet Rock: Now With USB

One of the best and possibly the shortest fads of the 1970s was known as streaking the Pet Rock, which lasted for about 6 months. For those of you too young to remember, the Pet Rock was Californian entrepreneur and advertising guru Gary Dahl's answer for people who wanted to care for a subordinate companion but didn't want to bother with feeding it, cleaning up after it, etc.  The "pet" would arrive in a brown cardboard box complete with holes for air, some straw for bedding and a comical 32-page care manual that was replete with puns and jokes and even contained a section dedicated to training your Pet Rock (while the manual stated that tricks like "come here" and "shake hands" were nigh impossible to coax out of a rock, the command "attack" was  noted as being fairly simple to achieve, albeit requiring some assistance from the pet's owner). After the Christmas shopping season of 1975 helped push some 1.5 million units into the shag-carpeted homes of America (making Gary a millionaire in the process) the product experienced a quick decline in sales and was discontinued just a few months later. Gary went on to become a success in the advertising industry and eventually authored Advertising for Dummies in 2001.

If you're feeling especially groovy and have the urge to own a low-maintenance pet, that even your apartment manager won't mind, you can still get one of these amazing "creatures" today including all of the classic packaging accessories. Of course here in the 21st century we do things a little differently so the product has now been upgraded to include USB (I would have added Bluetooth, everything is better with Bluetooth).

CLICK HERE TO PICK UP A USB PET ROCK AT THINKGEEK FOR CHEAP