Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

try again. (The relative safety of high-speed collisions, moreover, turns most racing videogames further into digital versions of the fairground dodgems.) So the rollercoaster and the videogame both offer the pleasurable, adrenaline-surging experience of danger, with none of the risk.

Other technologies have enhanced (or at least changed) games and sports, and videogames have enhanced (or at least built upon) the basic concepts of board games and fairground attractions. But though you can play chess with bits of mud, or soccer with scrunched-up newspaper and a few sweaters, you cannot play a modern videogame except by means of a machine.

It can be argued that all art forms are dependent on a certain level of technology. Writing in English, for instance, cannot take place without an alphabet, which is itself literally a technology (the word comes from the Greek meaning “knowledge of a skill”). But in the modern sense of technology as a physical device or gadget, videogames clearly belong in the lineage that was started only relatively recently, with photography, in which the execution of the artwork (or form of entertainment) is impossible without certain complex apparatus.

281