The
Atari 2600 Encyclopedia Volume 1
Author:
Derek Slaton
Publisher:
The VGA
Hardcover,
410 pages, full color, $50
Also
available via PDF ($9.99) and Apple iBooks ($12.99, both iPad and desktop Macs),
the latter of which includes gameplay footage
www.thevgatv.com
Gamers
have been cataloguing the 
library since at least the early 1980s.
This phenomenon kicked into overdrive during the video game fanzine explosion
of the early 1990s and the proliferation of the Internet during the mid-1990s.
Things got especially serious in 1996, when historian Leonard Herman
self-published 
: A
Directory of Software for the Atari 2600, a labor of love that describes
every release in encyclopedia-style form.
Now,
thanks to such platforms as Lulu and Amazon CreateSpace, self-publishing is
easier than ever, resulting in such titles as Classic 80s Home Video Games Identification & Value Guide (2008)
by Robert P. Wicker and Jason W. Brassard and The A-Z of the Atari 2600 (2013) by Justin Kyle. Works backed by
professional publishers have hit the market as well, such as my own Classic Home Video Games: 1972-1984: A
Complete Reference Guide, released by McFarland Publishers in 2007.
Enter
Derek Slaton’s The Atari 2600
Encyclopedia Volume 1, the first of a proposed four-volume series. Slaton’s
massive tome, which has the heft and binding of an oversized text book, is
gorgeous at first glance. It has a tastefully designed, shiny black cover and
is fully illustrated throughout in full color. Each game, from Activision Decathlon to Double Dragon, has a description/review
with data (publisher, release date, etc.), complemented by such tasty visuals
as box scans, screen shots, catalogue pages, cartridges, and manuals (though
you might need a magnifying glass to read the interiors of said manuals).
Unfortunately,
upon closer inspection, the paper and printing quality come up lacking. The
book is generous in its use of colorful screenshots, but they would benefit
from glossy paper, as would the rest of the images. I assume glossy paper would
have made the book cost-prohibitive (it’s already $50 as is), so it’s hard to
blame Slaton for wanting to keep the price down to an affordable level. There
are cropping issues as well, as the text edges up too closely to the left side
on several pages.
Speaking
of the text, Slaton describes and reviews each game in a breezy, informal,
readable style and oftentimes includes humor, which is a little odd for
something called an “encyclopedia.” Slaton writes to entertain, which is fine,
but there are times when he uses humor and vague information in place of detailed
history, such as in the entry for 
, a.k.a. Pelé's Soccer.
Instead of explaining that 
was one of the first celebrities to endorse a
video game, or that most previous soccer video games were 
clones, Slaton writes that “there weren’t a lot of soccer
video games on the market and Pelé really wanted to endorse something, or Atari
drove up to Pelé’s front door with a dump truck full of cash.”
Each
game catalogued in The Atari 2600
Encyclopedia Volume 1 is given four pages, which is more than enough room
to include information about sequels, arcade originals, and the like, but much
of this type of history is missing. For example, nowhere in the 
review does it say anything
about the cartridge being a clone of Exidy’s Circus (1977) arcade game. Worse, the 
entry doesn’t mention Millipede
(1982), the Centipede sequel that was
ported to the Atari 2600 in 1984. Further, the 
chapter doesn’t mention Stargate…well, you get the idea—the book simply needs more detailed
information about each game.
Another
problem with the book is that Slaton is repetitious in expressing his opinions.
There’s an old joke about the movie reviewer who quit because he ran out of
adjectives. It appears that the same thing has happened to Slaton. For example,
he uses the word “solid” and the phrase “worth a look” way too much, sometimes
in back-to-back reviews. In addition, he should have trimmed an adverb here and
there, such as when he called Crackpots
“very solid” and the graphics for Centipede
“very underwhelming.” There’s no need for “very” in either case.
Along
the bottom first two pages of each game entry, Slaton lists such data as
publisher, release date, and genre. He also includes alternate titles. In his
review of Dark Cavern, he says that
the alternate title is Night Stalker,
but he doesn’t explain that Dark Cavern
was adapted from Night Stalker for
the Intellivision. In the Astroblast
entry, the book fails to mention that Astroblast
was adapted from Astrosmash for the
Intellivision.
On
a more nitpicky note, Slaton ends the Custer’s
Revenge (1982) chapter with: “While this is an absolutely terrible game in
terms of content and gameplay, it must be played by everyone at least once. If
for no other reason than to see the beginnings of controversy-causing video
games.” While Custer’s Revenge did
indeed raise a stink (as a pixelated General Custer, you rape an Indian woman),
“controversy-causing video games” go back at least as far as Exidy’s Death Race (1976) arcade game, which was
vilified on such programs as 60 Minutes
and in such publications as The National
Enquirer.
So
far I’ve dwelt mostly on the negatives, but there are some things I like about
the book, such as Slaton crediting obscure programmers for their work, such as
Mike Schwartz, who developed Chase the
Chuckwagon, and Robert Weatherby, who developed Chuck Norris Superkicks. Slaton also nails the appeal of certain
games, such as the “mano-a-mano” action of Combat,
which he correctly calls “one of the earliest death match games” (Midway’s Gun Fight predates Combat by two years, but the latter game is nevertheless an early
example of the genre). And, yes, I did chuckle on occasion while reading the
book.
Full
disclosure: I’ve spoken with Derek Slaton in person several times—he’s a super
nice guy with a sincere appreciation for playing classic video games, and for writing
about classic video games (he’s also the author of The Sega Master System Encyclopedia). I truly wanted to love this
book, especially when I saw the full color sample pages online. Unfortunately, it
just doesn’t merit the $50 cover price, and the title is a little deceiving. I
can live with the visuals, but there’s just not enough raw data and history,
especially given the ample space given to each game.
If
you decide to purchase the The Atari 2600
Encyclopedia Volume 1, skip the expensive hardcover version and download a
digital copy—you’ll get more value for your hard-earned dollar.
