Glorious. That's the first thing I thought when I opened this carefully packaged tome from Greyfox Books. The black and purple cover shot through with vivid neon wallops your eyes as you take in this well crafted book. This 229 x 152 x 30mm celebration of the Atari 8-bit range of computers is both stylish and hefty, tipping the scales at 1.23kg, but what a book it is. Over four hundred pages covering 162 third-party games, with artwork, interviews and features galore, reading it made me realise that, as a child in the 1980's, I had missed out on a computing legend.
You see, the first computer my parents ever bought was a Commodore VIC-20. The was replaced by an Amstrad CPC 464 before that too became destined for the back of the cupboard due to the rise of the 16-bit generation. During that time, I experienced the Spectrum (via friends) and the BBC Micro (via school), but Atari's range passed me by. This book, in its own way, remedies that.
Its heart lies in the games and each one is treat fairly and with love. A two-page entry per title, one whole page in dedicated to the box art, with the other split between a quarter page of text and a monitor-boxed screenshot. The background of the pages is formed from another, magnified, screenshot. Doyle provides most of the text, although some is provided by the developers themselves, courtesy of interviews contributed by others. Each entry is easy to read and detailed, providing insights and recommendations as to whether you should play each game. Even where the game has a poor reputation, it is still given respect here. The paper stock is perfect for showing off the imagery and yes, as you can see below, it is a tad shiny!
Interspacing the groups of entries are in-depth interviews with developers of the time, profiles on software houses and features on the actual hardware. Each covers unique areas of the Atari 8-bit era and gives greater meaning to what it was like to be an owner of these not-quite mainstream machines (from a UK market perspective at least). At the back of the book is a section on emulation and how you can sample these games today on modern hardware. I have had a bit of a dabble myself and I know there are quite a few games mentioned in here that I'll certainly be playing in the future.
As this is a visual history, alongside the game art and screenshots, you'll also find period advertising and some frankly gorgeous hardware photography. True, a lot of the kit was beige, but as I have said before, there is something about 1980's computer hardware design that is both dated and timeless, and that is never more clear here. I love it.
Greyfox Books is a small operation but there is no question as to the quality of the publication you are buying. If you're an Atari fan then this must be an essential purchase for you. I know my copy will sit beside the two volume "We Love Atari" set from Zafinn Books that I reviewed here.
Much like idesine's Acorn: A World in Pixels (reviewed here), Unofficial Atari is a love letter to a long vanished era of home computing and computer gaming. A chunky love letter, to be sure, but one that, much like the BBC Micro in idesine's book, the Atari 8-bit range deserves. Check out Greyfox Books here and, if you can, pick of a copy of Unofficial Atari. I highly doubt you'll be disappointed.
P.S. It was announced a few days ago that Greyfox are to launch a Kickstarter for the Mega Book Collection, a visual history of the Sega Mega Drive, 32X and Mega CD. That should be something impressive to keep an eye out for when it goes live.
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