What 3rd party games caused the crash?

[Gregory DG]

You always hear this stuff about the "glut of low quality games from third parties caused the crash." But exactly what games are they talking about? I mean, games for the 2600 were simplistic anyway. What did they expect, NES quality from a third party?

 

The games that are held responsible for the crash are mostly Atari's own: Raiders, ET, Pac-Man, etc. So, what 3rd party games contibuted??

[AtariDude]

This would be an extremely long list but games made by Mythicon and Ultravision are just to name a few. Atari itself was to blame with the bad conversion of Pac Man and E.T. added insult to injury.

[tiggerthehun]

Ah, like the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back... which straw is responsible? The last one? Nah, I'd say it's the collective weight of the whole lot.

 

 

But if you're looking for programmers we might hunt down and kill, I'd like to start with the mythicon lot.

[MegaManFan]

As I started to write my response, I came to a startling realization - there really is no ONE company to blame. Even companies like Parker Brothers, Spectravision and Xonox that each had at least a dozen titles didn't release them all to stores simultaneously. What killed it was not one company making bad games, it was dozens of companies making mediocre games that sold for high prices. Yes, even Activision and Atari share some of the blame; though they have some of the all-time classics in their libraries there are some big duds too (more for the latter than the former). There are by most estimates 500 (*cough*) UNIQUE titles. Sure at .50 to $5.00 we want a lot of them now, especially since it's even cheaper in today's dollars than it was in 1980's dollars. How many people wanted them at $20-$50 each though? How many people bought several duds, whether Atari, Apollo, US Games, or whoever and decided NO MAS? And the precipitous price drop to clear out excess inventory may have actually made it worse psychologically to the consumer, who didn't want to buy them when they were cheap because he/she already thought they were crap, and now believed they were being sold cheap BECAUSE they were crap and not because there was too much inventory. The excess of titles for Atari VCS was not the only factor of course - the glut of Atari knockoffs alone besides the other competing consoles on the market was just too much for the relatively new industry to bear and it all collapsed under it's own weight.

[Room 34]

It would certainly be easier to list the games that DIDN'T cause the crash than to catalog the massive quantities thar DID, and there's the problem.

 

Like some others have said, it wasn't a few particularly bad games that killed an industry... it was the mountain of mediocre, hastily churned-out games that, over a period of 2 years or so finally just made everyone start to question what all the fuss over these video games was in the first place.

 

Of course, at the time, where I lived, I never really perceived any sort of "crash." I was just as into the 2600 in '85 as in '82, and the games never really went away. But by '86 I started seeing 2600 titles in closeout bins for $1.99. I don't remember NES getting big until about '87 or '88.

[Gregory DG]

I guess my question is (since the topic seems to be diverting), were those games REALLY that bad considering the hardware they were on?

[Room 34]

Yes, they were.

 

Sure the 2600's hardware is limited, but people have been able to put together some really AMAZING games for the system, with some talent, skill, and effort.

 

A lot of the games from the era just before the crash -- and that's from ALL manufacturers, not just ones like Mythicon and Ultravision -- were rushed out the door. Pac-Man and E.T. are a couple of the best examples (and, if you were to cite specific games that caused the crash, could be likely culprits, since Atari hyped them SO much and they sucked SO bad).

 

Remember though, it wasn't just Atari that caused, or suffered, the crash. Intellivision and ColecoVision, two (arguably) superior systems, were also fairly big at the time and suffered even more than the 2600 did.

[Pitfall Harry]

Even though it was released three years ahead of The Crash, I point the finger of blame squarely at Skeet Shoot. Apollo's first offering taught the emerging market of third party game makers that vomit-in-a-box could turn a profit, so long as it ran on an Atari.

 

 

Ben

[Room 34]

Ha! It's funny that you mention that, because all while I was writing my post, trying not to single any game out, I just had Skeet Shoot going through my mind...

[Brad2600]

And to think I almost traded for a copy of Skeet Shoot..LOL.

 

Thank goodness I didn't!

[Room 34]

I think Skeet Shoot is worth having merely as an artifact...

 

...or as a doorstop...

 

Wait, I have it! The CARTRIDGE is actually intended to be used as a clay for REAL skeet shooting!

 

Of course!

[Pitfall Harry]

Are we having fun yet?

 

Ben

[Room 34]

Very nice!

 

You know, I think the best thing about that game is the score font. It reminds me of some of Atari's '78-era games.

 

What, you say the score font sucks?

 

Exactly.

[Brad2600]

I'd say the entire game sucks..judging by screenshots.

 

And to believe that SOMEONE wanted to trade it for my copy of Fathom?

 

 

Not bloody likely!

[MegaManFan]

It's a turd, but it's a collectable turd. After all I know someone who paid me $10 for one.

[Mendon]

It's a turd, but it's a collectable turd. After all I know someone who paid me $10 for one.

 

GASP........ how do you sleep at night???????

 

 

Mendon

[Room 34]

GASP........ how do you sleep at night???????

 

On a pile of $10 bills collected from unsuspecting chumps...

[AtariDude]

Skeet shoot was an experiment by Ed Salvo if I remember the name correctly. He was in high school at the time and decided to make a game for the Atari 2600.

 

Pat Roper who founded Apollo had put an ad in a couple of different newspapers looking for a programmer and Ed Salvo applied by sending him a copy of the game. Ed was hired and proceeded to write several other games.

 

Believe it or not, I actually like the Mythicon games and some of the Apollo games but I realize that they are not the best games ever made and a vast majority of people would probably not like them which is why the crash occured.

 

People did not like spending $30-40 just to be disappointed.

[Brad2600]

I'd still like to collect Skeet Shoot though.

 

I have plenty of games in my collection that I don't like. However, Atari carts are like children. You take care of them and give them a nice place to stay no matter how badly behaving they are. LOL.

[ApolloBoy]

Now Mythicon games... God, those are bad.

[+DamonicFury]

I actually traded to get a Skeet Shoot by giving up a Private Eye. But it was for the very good cause of completing my Apollo collection. (I was VERY lucky at picking up a Guardian in the wild, and I don't count Lochjaw as a separate game.) It is just about the least fun thing available for the Atari though... a collector's ONLY cart if there ever was one. But it's especially collectable as one of the very earliest 3rd party carts... I'm pretty sure they beat Imagic to the punch, (but definetly NOT Activision.)

[broncoman]

and im looking at my skeet shoot and thinking the labels brown what a "crappy" looking color for a game !!!!

[Godzilla]

yes, but skeet shoot is a very poor scape goat for this topic, since it was one of the very first 3rd party games ever, and WELL before the glut that signaled the end. I find it very ironic that companies like u.s. games and data age, that put out a bunch of fair to middling games to get their companies going, actually started making really good games towards the end, (entombed, towering inferno, bermuda triangle, frankenstein's monster,) but by then it was already too late...

 

shovelware like the mythicon stuff that had a RETAIL of $9.99 (even tho a strange bird like me actually thinks mythicon games are ok,) i can see what that $9.99 price mentality did to things. Heck, I can remember NOT buying subterrania for $19.99 because I could get TWO mythicon games for that price! THE PAIN!

[Zeus]

I must use this forum to state that I find Infiltrate to be a really crappy game. Thank You.

[moycon]

I think another thing to consider is that the companies putting out new games at the time were losing their ass. The reason? By that point the bargin bins were full of games. I never saw the Mythicon games for 9.99 in Ohio, they were .99 in the bargin bin at K-Bee's. I also picked up Krull for 4.99 and Private Eye for 4.99 that day. The cheapest game I can remember was Defender for .50!!! Now who at that time was gonna plunk down 24.99 for Q*Bert Qubes??? You could literally get 4 or 5 or more games for the same price. The same thing happened to the NES at the end. Almost all the games at T R Us were 19.99 or less. Many were $9.99. The new games coming out still had $30-$40+ price tags. No one bought them...Why would they??? The companies releasing the games couldn't compete with the glut of cheapys overflowing in the bargin bins. And it wasn't like today where the price was reduced because the game had sold so many copies, in fact many of them were titles that I had never even heard of until I saw them in the bargin bin.