摘要：Racing the Beam has two roles, to establish and demonstrate the methodology of 'platform studies'. It is the first of a series on 'platform studies' published by the MIT press, for which Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost are associate series editors. The book is not only a case study of the Atari VCS (commonly known as the Atari 2600), it also sets an agenda for bringing computer hardware into social sciences and humanities discussions of new media. The authors illustrate the practice of platform studies through detailed, yet lucid, technical engagements with key Atari VCS games: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yar's Revenge, Pitfall, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Each chapter is oriented around the issues associated with the development of a particular game, with an emphasis on how the console's hardware shaped the development of the software, and how the creative programming of game designers pushed the technological limits of the platform
