8-Bit Apocalypse

The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command

Alex Rubens, Jeff Gerstmann

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English

Overlook Press
16 December 2018

Popular culture

"Before

Call of Duty, before World of Warcraft, before even Super

Mario Bros., the video game industry exploded in the late 1970s with the

advent of the video arcade. Leading the charge was Atari Inc., the creator of,

among others, the iconic game Missile

Command. The first game to double as a commentary on culture, Missile Command put the players' fingers

on ""the button,"" making them responsible for the fate of civilization in a

no-win scenario, all for the price of a quarter. The game was marvel of modern

culture, helping usher in both the age of the video game and the video game

lifestyle. Its groundbreaking implications inspired a fanatical culture that

persists to this day.

As fascinating as the cultural reaction to Missile Command were the programmers

behind it. Before the era of massive development teams and worship of figures

like Steve Jobs, Atari was manufacturing arcade machines designed, written, and

coded by individual designers. As earnings from their games entered the

millions, these creators were celebrated as geniuses in their time; once dismissed

as nerds and fanatics, they were now being interviewed for major publications,

and partied like Wall Street traders. However, the toll on these programmers

was high: developers worked 120-hour weeks, often opting to stay in the office

for days on end while under a deadline. Missile

Command creator David Theurer threw himself particularly fervently into his

work, prompting not only declining health and a suffering relationship with his

family, but frequent nightmares about nuclear annihilation. To truly tell the story from the inside, tech insider and

writer Alex Rubens has interviewed numerous major figures from this time: Nolan

Bushnell, founder of Atari; David Theurer, the creator of Missile Command; and Phil Klemmer, writer for the NBC series Chuck, who wrote an entire episode for

the show about Missile Command and

its mythical ""kill screen."" Taking readers back to the days of TaB cola, dot

matrix printers, and digging through the couch for just one more quarter, Alex

Rubens combines his knowledge of the tech industry and experience as a gaming

journalist to conjure the wild silicon frontier of the 8-bit '80s. 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command offers the first in-depth, personal history of an era

for which fans have a lot of nostalgia."

By: Alex Rubens
Foreword by: Jeff Gerstmann
Imprint: Overlook Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 237mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 510g
ISBN: 9781468316445
ISBN 10: 1468316443
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 16 December 2018
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Alex Rubens is a strategic partner manager at Google, managing content partnerships for YouTube’s eSports division. He has written articles on video game culture and development for outlets such as Complex and HuffPost, and for video game websites Polygon and IGN. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command

This book brought back the sinking feeling of seeing THE END with that slow closing circle--followed by the sinking of more quarters. An amazing look into the human toll of creating one of the greatest video games of all time.--Josh Tsui, executive producer of Insert Coin: Inside Midway's '90s Revolution