{"product_id":"8-bit-apocalypse","title":"8-Bit Apocalypse","description":"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.","brand":"ABRAMS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42663872495652,"sku":"9781468316445","price":39.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0725\/9734\/0196\/files\/9781468316445.jpg?v=1779479402","url":"https:\/\/thamesandhudson.com.au\/products\/8-bit-apocalypse","provider":"Thames \u0026 Hudson Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}