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What was the crash of 1983 like?


maxellnormalbias

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Being too young to know what happened, what was it like? Were Intellivision or ColecoVision owners affected at all?

 

I always had the cliched viewpoint of "New from All American Video Astrogames, a division of Joe's Plumbing Co, comes Space Revenge! The Blorgzom Blasters from Planet 24 are firing at earth! Help stop them! Available at MTF, your liquidation superstore." But is that true?

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People went back to lawn darts that punched holes in your skull and arcades were stunted to the point of occupying check out lines and bars for a short time. I think it all started when Nintendo saw Donkey Kong for the Colecovision and left the 82 CES put out! They wanted to have Atari make their new system and decided to do it themselves after that. The short pause in video game craziness was enough time for Japan to fortify and take over. This is my opinion based on a lot of study, but I'm pretty sure history will concur.

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People went back to lawn darts that punched holes in your skull and arcades were stunted to the point of occupying check out lines and bars for a short time.

This.

 

Neighborhood kids went back to playing Jailbreak and Bloody Murder outside.

 

One of the local grocery stores had a Star Wars arcade machine by the checkout for a while.

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The crash was horrible.

 

Everyone lost their jobs and many their homes. There was a worldwide economic downturn. Destitute people lined up for bread and soup. Millions of people were homeless. It affected nations and even lead to a second world war.

 

No, wait... that was the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

 

People jumped out of skyscraper windows to commit suicide because they had lost everything. No... wait, that was the 1987 Wall Street Crash.

 

Let's see... 1983.

 

People who were still playing consoles and hadn't moved on to playing games on home computers found games cheap and plentiful. Games that used to be $40 were $5, and even then most people didn't care because they were playing games on home computers or had moved on to playing Trivial Pursuit, Laser Tag, Teddy Ruxpin, and all sorts of other things.

 

Some arcades closed, but many survived. Arcade machines were stil commonly found in bowling alleys, grocery stores, and convenience stores.

 

Neither I nor anyone else I knew heard of a "video game crash" at the time. Everyone knew Atari had problems, but they deserved it from making so many crap games. Mattel stopped making the Intellivision but we didn't care because we were playing much better games on home computers. The death of ColecoVision was a disappointment, but not that big a loss became... wait for it... we were playing games on our home computers.

 

Sure, that's a consumer perspective from someone that was a teenager at the time. Seriously, I didn't hear about "the video game crash" until around 2005.

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I don't really remember things changing much for me at all as far as my gaming habits. I still played the heck out of my 2600, Colecovision, and C64. The big thing I remember were the bins of bargain games everywhere. Grocery stores, drug stores, everywhere. Piles and piles for as little as .99. I wish I had picked up more at the time honestly. I guess I was lucky to at least pick up several tougher Coleco titles for $10 each at KayBee.

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People were just as nuts back then for those Cabbage Patch Kids (which were distributed by Coleco which made the ColecoVision) during Christmas like those Tickle Me Elmos in 1996 and still people go nuts for any new toy while defending their claim. You wonder why sometimes people went for an ugly doll than to spend their money on the ColecoVision?

 

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I was 13 years old (my pre- RUSH days. ;-) ). it sucked. Me and my friends thought video games were dying, but I still loved my Sears Video arcade. :) I remember a couple of years later, a friend talking about an "Atari 7800", and we were thinking wouldn't it be nice of video games made a come back... I hadn't even heard of Nintendo until about 1987 when a saw one over at another friend's house. I was blown away, I thought video games were over and done, and here was a brand new console. I couldn't afford it then or I would have bought one. I finally did get a NES a few years later, which made me want my Atari all the more. :D

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People who were still playing consoles and hadn't moved on to playing games on home computers found games cheap and plentiful. Games that used to be $40 were $5, and even then most people didn't care because they were playing games on home computers or had moved on to playing Trivial Pursuit, Laser Tag, Teddy Ruxpin, and all sorts of other things.

 

 

There are few things to this day as totally awesome, bodacious, or badical as Teddy Ruxpin (saved in the back of my head with lit up red eyes) singing Black Sabbath!!

I'm getting another one, that does it..

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The games were available every where. The new games were few and far between. Many of the advertised games never came out. The prices dropped, Atari games were anywhere from five dollars, to brand new ones for fifteen. The gaming magazines talked about it, how the companies were laying everyone off, the magazines went bi-monthly, then they themselves were cancelled. Colecovision was the only system that seemed to vanish. Toys r us carried Atari and Intellivision product at least until 1992, when I worked there. It was frustrating to me because, if you wanted to play Elevator Action, you had to buy the Nintendo. In 1986 there were not a lot of Nintendo games.

The Computer games were cheap, but not as good as the Nintendo or Atari ones. Atari only sold something like 12 million computers from 1979 until 1991, and commodore only sold about 16 million, so everyone didn't move on to computers, maybe the rich kids.

Nintendo didn't take over instantaneously like people seem to think. It took about two or three years, and then the platform games took over, for probably the next ten years. I did like the Sierra-On-Line games like King's Quest, but only because I didn't have much of a choice, because arcade games were in decline. I bought Tetris, Gauntlet, and Elevator Action for Nintendo, because they weren't available on Atari, and they were arcade games. I didn't like the Platformers.. The Nes era was not my favorite, I really didn't get into games again until the Genesis took off.

 

So for the consumer, it wasn't a bad time. In 1983-1985, games were plentiful, and cheap, and in all sorts of stores. They just made too many of them, they couldn't possibly sell them all. You can still buy new sealed Atari games today, for like ten dollars.

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I didn't know anything happened until this article about the big shake-out in Electronic Games magazine:

 

archive.org/stream/Electronic_Games_Volume_02_Number_12_1984-03_Reese_Communications_US#page/n21/mode/2up

 

Looks like the only use of the word crash was in this sentence:

 

"In truth, the climate was much like the period just before the stock market crash of 1929."

 

Kay Bee (or whatever spelling was used) had cheaper and cheaper games. Drug stores and grocery stores were also selling cheap Atari 2600 games. I don't know much about the other consoles because most of my attention was focused on buying cheap Atari 2600 games (and making my own games on my VIC-20).

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I was able to buy a couple Intellivision 2's for $60. bucks on clearance at Toys R Us when the crash happened and and give them to my sisters with Treasure of Tarmin for Christmas! Great purchase. They loved them.

 

And then I just moved forward to the Commodore 64 which bridged me through to the Nintendo. I missed nothing, there was always something else to play including the old stuff I still had.

 

The worst part was not following through with the Intellivision: all the Intv Corp. games were on display and for sale weekly at a Swap Meet near me, Spiker! and all the rest. I would stop and look at them, but I thought :ah! I am done with that old system. ;-)

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The crash was horrible.

 

Everyone lost their jobs and many their homes. There was a worldwide economic downturn. Destitute people lined up for bread and soup. Millions of people were homeless. It affected nations and even lead to a second world war.

 

No, wait... that was the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

 

People jumped out of skyscraper windows to commit suicide because they had lost everything. No... wait, that was the 1987 Wall Street Crash.

 

Let's see... 1983.

 

People who were still playing consoles and hadn't moved on to playing games on home computers found games cheap and plentiful. Games that used to be $40 were $5, and even then most people didn't care because they were playing games on home computers or had moved on to playing Trivial Pursuit, Laser Tag, Teddy Ruxpin, and all sorts of other things.

 

Some arcades closed, but many survived. Arcade machines were stil commonly found in bowling alleys, grocery stores, and convenience stores.

 

Neither I nor anyone else I knew heard of a "video game crash" at the time. Everyone knew Atari had problems, but they deserved it from making so many crap games. Mattel stopped making the Intellivision but we didn't care because we were playing much better games on home computers. The death of ColecoVision was a disappointment, but not that big a loss became... wait for it... we were playing games on our home computers.

 

Sure, that's a consumer perspective from someone that was a teenager at the time. Seriously, I didn't hear about "the video game crash" until around 2005.

Oh man what a spot on analysis of what actually happened! I just found the next thing or went back to the Arcade! There was plenty still available and going on. I spent way too much money on my Commodore 64 stuff, and most of the games were pretty bad. A couple of games were gems as well too!

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At the flea market, piles of carts started showing up, people couldn't GIVE consoles away. You could find bins of new games for $3 at department stores. I remember when all the kids started screaming for Tendos.

 

Mostly though, I lost interest in consoles and focused on computer technology during the daytime as it leap frogged every few months, and spent my nights drinking beer and watching other people get drunk, while playing the latest (and the classic) coin ops, pinball, and fooseball, in game bars.

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You're gonna get a crapload of answers from AtariAge members, including some more knowledgeable than me, so I'll just offer my personal perspective on the crash. I was nine, and ten the following year. I didn't stop playing video games, but I did notice that the massive displays for Atari, ColecoVision, etc. at retail stores were downscaled or had vanished completely. I also noticed that the games in those displays had been moved to clearance bins. Other people must have been playing video games too, because the clearance priced games didn't stick around for very long.

 

I was pretty young and not very lucid, so I was blissfully unaware that there was anything wrong. I was just happy that people were in a rush to sell all their games and hardware at yard sales. I snapped up whatever I could, and to this day still start every garage sale visit with the question "Got any computer or video game stuff?" The answer these days is quite often "no," but back in the mid 1980s, ordinary folks were quite eager to unload their games on anyone who was interested in them. Garage sales were a healthy source of classic video games, from 1984 to, uh... 1996, I think. My last great score was a white Astrocade for a few dollars in 2003... it's been all downhill from there.

 

I don't clearly recall the crash while it was happening, but I was quite aware of gaming's comeback. I recall going into a Toys 'R Us in 1986 and seeing black boxes lining the wall with curiously pixelated artwork, which nevertheless looked better than the graphics in previous game systems. (Those games were launch titles for the NES, of course.) I also recall that both the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision had both risen from the dead, with their games being sold alongside NES titles. I was grateful for this, because I had commandeered my stepbrother's 2600 when he went to college and it gave me a steady supply of fresh titles to play. I didn't get an NES until the summer of 1988, and the 2600 kept me quite happy with Crystal Castles, Ms. Pac-Man, and Winter Games until I could afford a more advanced console.

 

I guess the academic answer was that the industry grew too quickly and there were too many people trying to take advantage of that growth. As you astutely observed, there were companies from other industries (toys, films, even breakfast cereals!) that had no business getting involved with video games, but did anyway because they thought it was the next wave of entertainment, or just a way to make a lot of money with little effort. That gold rush ultimately sabotaged the industry, because everyone was pushing out crap (even big companies that really should have known better) and selling it at increasingly low prices. The quality games at $30 just couldn't compete against Mythicon's Firefly for $10, so the prices for everything dropped and lots of companies starved. I imagine it was a little like the internet bubble that happened a couple of decades later.

 

There was also a degree of stagnation involved, with lots of people cashing in on the latest craze. There were who knows how many Pac-Man clones available in the early 1980s... if it tells you anything, even the Atari 2600 adaptation of the Ridley Scott film Alien was redressed Pac-Man, with a little Frogger thrown in for good measure. Developers like Howard Scott Warshaw tried to offer something fresh and new, but the dated technology of the Atari 2600 just couldn't handle it, making games like Swordquest, Indiana Jones, and E.T. confusing and obtuse. I'm sure some folks here will disagree, but it's my view that sprawling adventures weren't done particularly well until the NES arrived... and looking back, even some of THOSE games suffer from a lack of narrative and direction.

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At that time, I was working for Atari at their German headquarters in Hamburg. I was maybe 14 years old, and they had invited me to stay there for 1 week programming some music for their Globetrotter game. I noticed that at one day, the whole atmosphere was very bad, everyone was in bad mood and I soon discovered that some (a lot) of them had been fired. Of course they didn't want to bother me and I went back home after finishing my work. Next thing I remember is that some of the former employees had founded Abraxas, which was renamed to Axis later and I then worked for them, releasing my "Zielpunkt Null Grad Nord" German adventure game.

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Many years later we visited the German warehouse of Atari, and had a talk with the CEO. That guy told us that he still has lots of inventory for XL/XE and he would sell the cartridges to us for very cheap prices (like $2 per boxed cart) - but we had to take at least 1000 carts. Oh my god! But we talked him into mixing 10 different titles, so we had 100 each. That was something we could sell. And there we games like Crossbow, Crystal Castles and other interesting titles, as well as the big boxed Asteroids and Spave Invaders boxes.

 

When the truck arrived at my house, I was shocked, because there was no way to fit all those bix boxes in my room(s). So they unloaded everything in front of the door and we had to unpack everything, folding the boxes flat (fortunately possible) to shrink everything down in size.

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What was the crash like?

 

Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!

Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!

Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!

Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!

Edited by Master Phruby
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I didn't notice. Was too young to care. My attention turned to GI Joes and Transformers. When the late-80s came around and my interest in the Atari was renewed, I bought a bunch of games at K-Bee for around $2 a pop. Didn't hear about a crash until the turn of the century. Was like, "Huh, really?".

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What was the crash like?

 

Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!

Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!

Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!

Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!

 

Winston: RAAAAY! When someone asks you if you're a god..you say..YES!!!

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In the UK the crash happened in 1984. 1983 there was no sign of any impending doom for that Christmas the shops were full of the big 4 consoles and possessed walls full of games. By the summer of 1984 the number of shops that stocked any console plummeted to a tiny handful and of those every one was desperate to shift what remaining stock they had. I had no idea what had happened until a great many years later when the crash was explained in full ;)

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