Pac Man, Space Invaders, Tetris, and Super Mario Bros. are video game veterans and more than just reminiscences of an untroubled childhood. Challenging stories and characters, visual quality, and aesthetic experience make them successful examples of popular interaction design. They have become more than a mere video game and can be regarded as a multimedia art form. "Push Start" outlines the graphical evolution from its beginnings, through the golden age of arcade video games, to the latest generation of game consoles. Fascinating artwork and screenshot prints of the most famous video games and the corresponding cult sounds on a ten-inch vinyl create an expanding universe of game culture in which the worlds of emotion, reality, and art collide.

Author Biography

Stephan Guenzel is professor of media theory at the Berlin Technical Art School. He previously taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin and at the universities of Jena, Klagenfurt, and Trier. From 2008 to 2010 he was coordinator of the Center for Computer Game Research (DIGAREC) and researcher at the institute for arts and media at the University of Potsdam.