Book Review - Video Game Art, Nic Kelman

http://www.assoulineusa.com/video_game_art.html
http://www.amazon.com/Video-Game-Art-Nic-Kelman/dp/2843237297

A couple of months ago I found this book was in the local library catalogue. So, I decided to loan it and see if there is anything worth taking into consideration for this project. Following is a brief overview of the book.

On the whole the book is quite disappointing, especially with regards to my project, devoting a whole four of its 350 pages to the development of video games pre-1993, the very era I would be looking to for inspiration and information regarding my project.

Nevertheless, it was a satisfactory lengthy essay on why video games could be considered 'art', concentrating on the development of characters, storylines and advanced CG graphics in modern video games. Some eye-catching images and demonstrations of the capabilities of video game graphics, in fact the book is very image-heavy. All very well and good for its target audience but not massively relevant to what I am looking into.

At the end of the book is a brief timeline of video game landmarks, with some references to three button controllers and simple dial interfaces maybe worth looking into and making parallels with remote control handsets. Also included is a two page spread explaining in simple terms the video game design process.

Further reading on this subject:

> 8-Bit - Video Game Art

> Video Game Box Art

Digital Teletext on ITV

The above screens are taken from the current Teletext service on ITV, page 104.

Some relevant links:

Britain's first analogue switch-off

Beating the Target - Guardian.co.uk

A blatant advert

Teletext lives on

Comparison of Internet based teletext viewers

Thanks to some hard core fans, elements of Teletext and Viewdata survive on the Internet today.

http://www.heaven.affection.net/
http://www.ccl4.org/viewdata/

This service brings together the Internet-only feature of bulletin boards and merges it with Teletext elements:

The Great Internet Viewdata Revival is an attempt to bring the days of Viewdata back; not for commercial purposes, just for fun. All the features are still there, multi user chat, user to user messaging, discussion groups - and fast colourful graphics. Try it! Heaven is just the first... we hope many other old bulletin boards will come back and start a new life on the net.
http://www.heaven.affection.net/what.html

http://www.svt.se/svttext/web/pages/305.html

This site, meanwhile, broadcasts live teletext much like the one at Ceefax.com. However, this one seems to convert the data in a slightly different way. Instead of sticking rigidly to the 80x80 pixel grid format, this method is looser and more computer-orientated in that it concentrates on ease of viewing on an Internet browser rather than TV/Minitel system.

http://www.mtv3tekstikanava.fi/

The above links to an Internet version of MTV3, a Finnish teletext service. Staying (relatively) faithful to the original format, this method retains the regular coloured text on black background within the Internet browser. To add to the overall aesthetic there is also a skin of a Television, in which the data service can be viewed, and a remote control that takes the form of a text-based (rather than number based) links menu more akin to the modern Internet site. There are still clickable links on the 'screen' itself but I have yet to find the'reveal' function.

Links here taken from http://www.iol.ie/~rclapham/teletext.html. Unfortunately most of the links are now dead. Indeed, the last update was 1997.