8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari’s Missile Command Audiobook (Free)

The first history of Atari’s Missile Command, and its unforeseen effects on its creators as well as the culture

Before Contact of Duty, before Wow, before also Super Mario Bros., the gaming market exploded in the later 1970s using the introduction of the video arcade. Leading the charge was Atari Inc., the inventor of, amongst others, the iconic video game Missile Order. The first game to double like a commentary on culture, Missile Command place the players’ fingers on “the switch,” making them about 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Tale of Atari’s Missile Order in charge of the fate of civilization inside a no-win situation, all for the price of a quarter. The game was marvel of contemporary culture, assisting usher in both age of the video game and the gaming way of living. Its groundbreaking implications inspired a fanatical culture that persists even today.

As fascinating simply because the cultural a reaction to Missile Command were the programmers behind it. Prior to the period of massive development teams and worship of figures like Steve Careers, Atari was production arcade machines designed, written, and coded by individual designers. As revenue from their video games entered the thousands, these creators had been celebrated as geniuses in their time; once dismissed as nerds and fanatics, they were today getting interviewed for main publications, and partied like Wall Street traders. Nevertheless, the toll on these programmers was high: developers worked 120-hour weeks, often opting in which to stay any office for times on end while under a deadline. Missile Control originator David Theurer threw himself particularly fervently into his function, prompting not only declining health insurance and a struggling relationship along with his family, but regular nightmares about nuclear annihilation.

To truly inform the storyplot from the within, tech insider and writer Alex Rubens has interviewed numerous major figures from this time: Nolan Bushnell, creator of Atari; David Theurer, the creator of Missile Control; and Phil Klemmer, writer for the NBC series Chuck, who wrote a whole event for the present about Missile Order and its mythical “get rid of screen.” Taking readers back again to the times 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 like a video gaming journalist to conjure the outrageous silicon frontier of the 8-bit ’80s. 8-Little bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari’s Missile Control offers the initial in-depth, personal history of a time for which supporters have a whole lot of nostalgia.