#oneaday Day 1127: Problem solved

After mulling all that over in the previous post, I just thought "fuck it" and downloaded a couple of books to my Kindle, which has been sitting in a bedside drawer in complete disuse for the last six years. Specifically, I downloaded the second volume of My Friend's Little Sister Has It In For Me! and Once Upon Atari, Howard Scott Warshaw's memoirs of his years at Atari.

I promptly read half of My Friend's Little Sister Has It In For Me! in a single sitting, and have been working my way through Once Upon Atari every time I need a poo. So I guess I don't really have a problem with reading on the Kindle. I do still like owning physical books and having them on my shelf though, so as inefficient as it might be, what I may end up doing is buying digital books to read immediately then adding the ones I particularly enjoy to my physical collection.

Anyway, while My Friend's Little Sister Has It In For Me! will doubtless only appeal to a subset of you reading this, I do want to give a specific recommendation for Once Upon Atari, because so far it's been an absolutely wonderful read. Howard Scott Warshaw is, it turns out, an incredible storyteller with a delightful sense of humour, and it's fascinating to read all his first-hand accounts of his time at Atari.

For me, it's a highly enjoyable opportunity to hear a bit more about some of the names that came up while I was researching Atari A to Z Flashback. Because while some things made their way into commonly recognised history — Yars' Revenge's graphical effects being made from raw computer code, for example — there are some absolutely wonderful other stories that, I guess, haven't been chronicled before for one reason or another.

My favourite parts so far are the stories about Tod Frye. Previously, I knew absolutely nothing about Tod Frye, other than the fact he made some of the absolute worst video games for the Atari 2600 (Pac-Man and SwordQuest: FireWorld) as well as some actually good ones, like Asteroids. After reading just some of Warshaw's book, I now know that Tod Frye was absolutely bonkers — with probably the best story being the one about how he discovered he could not only leap into the air and support himself with one foot on each wall in Atari's corridors, he eventually figured out how it was possible to actually run along the walls while suspended five feet off the ground with nothing more than the power of his own legs.

This continued until he bashed his head rather violently on a fire sprinkler while attempting to avoid an opening doorway, and naturally the hospital staff were hesitant to believe the story they were told.

Anyway, that's just one of many wonderful stories Warshaw has to tell in his book, so if you're at all interested in the history of the video game medium, I highly recommend giving it a look. I've certainly been loving it.