I love books! When I have the choice between a book and it’s electronic ersatz, I go for the paper version. Sure, if you do like me, you may need to set up a library at some point. But that makes it even more enjoyable. It has been a while since I have posted here about books. Today, I want to present two beautiful 8-bit artwork coffee table books. The first one, The Art of ATARI by Tim Lapetino (Dynamite Entertainment, 2016), is dedicated to game artworks for ATARI systems. Marginally, it also contains information on the game systems, marketing, and advertisement material. To me, the true value of this 352-page book is the classic games’ artwork reproductions. For the younger crowd, I have to say that there was a time when the actual pixels moved by the games’ code were so primitive that you had to rely upon the box artwork to create the dream. Overall, the quality of the pictures and the illustrations are remarkable. A pure pleasure to browse with a good espresso and the music you love. The second one, 8-bit: Art Book by Stephan Günzel (Earbooks; Har/Pstr B edition, 2016), is more generic and covers multiple 8-bit game systems. This book has 250 pages, and the author dedicated most of them to reproduce the actual pixels of the games. If you look into a few of the earliest games, you will understand my comment about the primitive graphics! I really appreciate this book, because I have spent endless hours to design bitmaps & sprites back in the ’80s. I learned the hard way that suggesting a shape or an object with only a few pixels – and even fewer colors – is indeed an art. Often, picking colors for adjacent pixels could make or break your work! In addition, the technology threw at you some extra challenges. For example, on the DAI, one could only use two colors (among 16) in eight consecutive pixels… When I look at the pixel arts perfectly reproduced in this boo, I know the talent required to design them!
