Atari Design: A Design History of Atari Arcade Game Cabinets

by Raiford Guins, Grace Lees-Maffei (Editor), Kjetil Fallan (Editor)

Atari Design is a rich, visual history of Atari's coin-operated arcade video game cabinets. It looks at everything, from the early success of Pong, to the changes wrought by the arrival of the personal computer and the dominance of science fiction imagery inspired by Space Invaders and Star Wars.

Guins' study situates the graphic and industrial design of Atari's games hardware within its design and cultural context, making links to the modernist aesthetic of the Bauhaus in the clean lines and simple colors of the 'Pong' cabinet, and tracing the connections between the graphic designs of Atari designers such as George Opperman and contemporary visual cultural movements and styles. Guins draws on archival research and interviews with Atari designers to provide a multi-layered design history of a key period in gaming culture.

256 pages, Hardcover

Published November 12, 2020

About the author

Raiford Guins is Professor of Culture and Technology at Stony Brook University and the author of Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (MIT Press).