ELECTRONIC PLASTIC

editor: J. Gielens, R. Klanten.
designed in büro destruct Bern
published by Die Gestalten Verlag Berlin

features:
176 pages, 24 x 28 cm, full colour, softcover
ISBN: 3-931126-44-7, release: September 2000, USA/CAN: Feb. 2001

Electronic Plastic turns time back to the Stone Age of computer games in the early 80s,
long before Gameboy and Playstation existed. Designer Jaro Gielens collected more than
380 originally wrapped, battery-powered oldschool computer games. The finest and craziest
ones are presented and commented on in Electronic Plastic. The layout is by Lopetz from
"Büro Destruct", a latent computer game addict himself, and author Uwe Schütte putsus in
the mood through his atmospheric introduction about the period end of the 70s - early 80s.
From a cultural point of view, Electronic Plastic documents a bygone era of consumer
electronics.Computer games like Blockbuster, Pinball and Race`n´Chase ruled. Today, the
"Handhelds" and "Tabletops" fascinate through the wonderful retrodesign of the game shells,
packages, logos. Anyone enthusiastic about design, typography and/or computertrash will
even just enjoy the boxes and the typefaces used and will acknowledge how consistently the
game shells and the packaging perfectly match the games´ concept. Besides that, the
manufac-turers - with fine names like Bandai, Bambino, Epoch and Gakken - also managed
to develop highly entertaining games with very simple means: a miniscreen and a few small
buttons. The "oldschool" computer gadgets were superseded by exchangeable cartridge
systems in the middle of the 80s. Handhelds and tabletops disappeared from department
stores. Today they are rare collector items which one usually only still gets to see in dusty
attics, or in Electronic Plastic.