How did you find out about The Crash(TM)?

[Turbo-Torch]

Like many here, I never knew there was a crash.

 

The first time I knew something wasn't quite right was when I bought 2600 Popeye at Sears for $10 and got a $10 rebate.  The display even had a yellow sign showing it was free after mail in rebate.

Next was 2600 MASH at Camelot Music.  $2.50 and that included a nice MASH T-shirt that was shrink wrapped in with the game.  That one had a $5 rebate.  Free game, shirt and they paid me $2.50.

 

I figured the 5200 and Colecovision were taking over and that was it.  From '84 up I was more into home computers and 2600, 5200, Intellivision and Colecovision games continued to be on store shelves with new titles coming out, so I never gave it a second thought.  NES was released and home video games continued on stronger than ever.

 

I first heard of the term crash in the early 90s when I discovered alt.atari and rec.games.video.collecting.

 

If cheap games and consoles = crash then the 90s was a total disaster.  Jag for $25, Virtual Boy $20, TG16 $20, 7800 with 5 games for $25, Lynx II bundle with like a dozen games and accessories for $70, JVC X'eye $80, 32X $20, Dreamcast $50.

Games for all the above pennies on the dollar.  Good times.

[Keatah]

At the time I would have seen it as a  transition into more capable computers. Leaving behind the incompatible world of 8/16 machines for the IBM PC ecology. A platform that would evolve at a rapid pace, but still let you use some hardware and software across the generations and upgrades. Thus allowing one to take part in the industry at their own pace.

 

It was also a time of consolidation and reckoning. Consumers didn't want loads of low quality crap that just kept coming and coming. And as an avid gamer I couldn't keep up with it all.

 

Never saw any of it as a hard crash. "Crash" is just a sensational news term. It was simply a change into something else.

 

1- The market began filling up with low-quality me too filler games. Seemed everyone who was anyone had to have a game or be involved with games. A consumer didn't know what to do with all the fluff'n'stuff. Too time consuming.

 

2- Local arcades tended to get more bootleg games and weren't maintaining their existing selection. Then they started closing. This was tough because I lost access to Atari vector games, along with many other top hits of the early 80's. Created a void that would not be filled till MAME got underway.

 

3- Discussions at school, on the playground and in the cafeteria, didn't include games as much anymore. No longer was anyone excited about the latest cartridge or system.Girls, cars, jobs, getting drunk and stoned took priority. And we were the first generation games. The industry didn't know how to handle us. But they would learn and do it all over again in the 90's

 

4- Stores that carried higher quality name brand games from like Mattel, Atari, Imagic, Activitision, Coleco, GCE, and others, were now stocking less and less of them.

 

5- The quality of construction was going downhill. Take the VCS as example. After initial introduction, each subsequent model was less substantial. Thinner plastics, one circuit board, fewer chrome switches, cheaper parts, cheaper controllers, smaller size. And so on.

 

6- Boxes were no longer full color. BW manuals and labels too. Gatefolds were long gone. Glorification of the cartridge stopped. All of it was being handled like a snow shoveling contest. Keep piling the stuff up.

 

7- Ports were happening everywhere. Every system seemed to have every other systems' greatest hits in one form or another. No longer was a console unique because of its exclusive titles. One console was like the next. And it holds true today. Maybe more.
 

Overall it wasn't so bad though, because computers were becoming the hot item. It was only natural to want something more capable and powerful. Most 8 and 16 machines of the day were interesting for their varied interpretations of what a home computer should be. Though that caused compatibility issues. Eventually to be solved by the IBM PC ecology.

 

So for me it wasn't a crash, just a transition into real computing. The whole switchover wasn't too rough but it did knock me out of collecting some years later.

 

I had an Apple II early on, so I had certain expectations and requirements. Also learned many concepts that still hold true today. Being duped by Amiga advertisements was one of the few speedbumps I encountered. But it served it's purpose. And maybe even delayed my entry into PC compatibles - to a time when they were becoming adept at gaming. A blessing in disguise.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Keatah

[PressureCooker2600]

Never really noticed it. I just played the games and never took notice of anything else….like prices going down, games being liquidated, etc. Ignorance is bliss when you’re a kid.

[Keatah]

On 12/17/2021 at 1:14 AM, BIGHMW said:

I found out about the crash through Electronic Games magazine as well, but living down in SoCal (in Northridge and in Sepulveda, now known as North Hills), it seemed like it only wiped out the rather bottom-of-the-barrel competitors like Emerson (Arcadia 2001), Magnavox (Odyssey 2), Bally (Astrocade) and Fairchild (Channel F), but Atari, Intellivision and Coleco were still doing quite well at that time.

Lived Northridge and Van Nuys too. Just as the videogame & home computing crazes were getting underway. Right after the Pong & Tank eras. Really need to go back and visit.

 

Was really too young to know anything about West Coast culture. Little beyond Disneyland and who was beating up who in school.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Keatah

[+neogeo1982]

Was too young to notice. Every time we went to Childrens Palace or KB Toys during those years there were piles of games in bins marked to 50 cent and $1. I was allowed to pick several out on each visit to those stores. Only years later after we got internet did I learn why everything was marked down like that.

[Keatah]

2 minutes ago, neogeo1982 said:

Only years later after we got internet did I learn why everything was marked down like that.

..beginning to believe that the notion of a "crash" is something being amplified by the internet. For all purposes, it was a reorganization/shakeout. A ridding of the excess. A time of (the industry) realizing the customer wanted something better and not the same old same old. A reckoning that excess fluff was not a sustainable business plan.

[+GoldLeader]

Although I don't think I knew of the term "Crash" until later,  what I noticed was there were now more choices than ever, but until they were marked down, they just weren't selling as much.  I saw the shift from games to more of an emphasis on cars, heavy metal, concerts, girls etc.  Yet we were still going (Hell, driving ourselves!) to arcades  (Often somewhat bummed by the lack of classic games, which would have been huge if just one place had brought back some old classics (especially vector games))...And there was  a switch to computers,  myself I chose an ADAM, even as many told me at school I should get a C64.  I saw it as a switch to doing more than just games...But I still bought ADAM super games and also, eventually games on sale,...I only saw a few instances of closeouts and bargain bins though.  I wished I'd paid more attention to those.  And then the NES brought back games in a big way  in 1987-88 and on... (And yes a few,....Very, Tiny, Few people were into NES before then...Not too many)...

[Turbo-Torch]

15 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

Yet we were still going (Hell, driving ourselves!) to arcades  (Often somewhat bummed by the lack of classic games, which would have been huge if just one place had brought back some old classics (especially vector games))

 

So true.  The variety seemed to vanish by the late 80s to the point it was nothing but cheesy fighters and large cockpit racing games that cost as much as $1 a play.  If you walked into a game room and saw a Moon Patrol or Tempest, it was like oh cool! and you'd go right to it.  I'm sure a lot of the older games simply wore out and it wasn't worth it for the operators to keep repairing them...especially the vectors.

I think some arcade owners did catch on because of all those bootleg abortions that were turning up everywhere in the late 80s.  Janky spray painted black cabinets, CRT burn-in from 10 different games, weird ass controls and ROMs that could range from a bit off to wtf were they thinking?  I believe they were getting new boards from China and cobbling together cabinets from whatever they had laying around.

 

[Draxxon]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

..beginning to believe that the notion of a "crash" is something being amplified by the internet. For all purposes, it was a reorganization/shakeout. A ridding of the excess. A time of (the industry) realizing the customer wanted something better and not the same old same old. A reckoning that excess fluff was not a sustainable business plan.

I 100% agree. I have been thinking this for a while now. The Great ShakeOut sounds more exact.

 

Also, a couple years later the NES craze hit. A gamer wouldn't be thinking about a "gaming crash" a couple years before, at all anymore. You really wouldn't be thinking games are doomed while you're losing your mind going nuts playing Super Mario.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Draxxon

[Rodney Hester]

I think the reason it was called a crash was because it gave every indication that video games were a fad like so many that had come before (hula hoops, anyone?) and that it had run its course and was done and left a lot of people who bet big holding the bag.  There was very real and very serious financial implications.

 

Quite honestly, if you'd tried to wager with someone in 1985 that video games would come back and sustainably become the largest industry on the planet eclipsing even movies, you'd have been considered a sucker bet.  *NOBODY* believed it would happen...not even Nintendo, at the time.  Restricting licenses and having some measure of quality control ended up making all the difference in the world...though, ironically, would have killed personal computing if the same model had been followed.  Go figure.

[Draxxon]

It still blows my mind that video games surpassed movies. 

 

I also believe that Arcades didn't have to die, but that's a different discussion.

[Keatah]

5 hours ago, Rodney Hester said:

Restricting licenses and having some measure of quality control ended up making all the difference in the world...though, ironically, would have killed personal computing if the same model had been followed.  Go figure.

Oh sure.. There are reasons why computing had to be much less restrictive. And if it had them, those restrictions would have never stuck around long, so by default they didn't happen. There's more, but it has nothing to do with the crash.

[zzip]

On 12/18/2021 at 5:36 PM, Keatah said:

Never saw any of it as a hard crash. "Crash" is just a sensational news term. It was simply a change into something else

Wikipedia says that Videogame revenues dropped from $3.2 billion in 1983 to $100 million in 1985,  or about a 96% drop.   If that isn't a crash, then what is?   I don't think it's sensational in this case.

 

On 12/18/2021 at 9:04 PM, Rodney Hester said:

I think the reason it was called a crash was because it gave every indication that video games were a fad like so many that had come before (hula hoops, anyone?) and that it had run its course and was done and left a lot of people who bet big holding the bag.  There was very real and very serious financial implications.

In many ways it was a fad.   It roped in a lot of people who weren't natural gamers because it was the cool thing of the moment,  they were among the first people to drop out of gaming when the next big 80s fad came along.  It took many years for gaming to climb back to where it was and become a ingrained lifestyle thing and not a fad.   Now we have fads within gaming-  Things like Pokemon Go, Fortnite, etc that gain tons of hype but lose most of their player base within a year or two,  but not the entire industry itself anymore.

 

On 12/18/2021 at 9:04 PM, Rodney Hester said:

Restricting licenses and having some measure of quality control ended up making all the difference in the world...though, ironically, would have killed personal computing if the same model had been followed.  Go figure.

I don't think the strict Nintendo restrictions were really necessary because I don't think the problem was too many games in the first place,  it was more failure to innovate.   The industry at the time was dependent on the "arcade to home port" pipeline, and by 83 most of the big-name games had gotten ported,  and the next big thing in arcades, laserdisc games,  didn't translate well to the home market and player interest in them dropped off fast because they mostly consisted of what we now call Quick-Time Events rather than real gameplay. 

 

It didn't help that some of the biggest games got terrible home ports.   So by 83/84 there wasn't much to hold console players interest.     There was much more innovation happening on the computer gaming side, but must console players didn't make the jump to computers.   So for console players the most exciting games were behind them, there wasn't a whole lot to look forward to, so no wonder so many dropped out!

 

These days there is a far greater ratio of shovelware on modern consoles than there ever was on 2600, INTV or Colecovision, and it doesn't harm the market because now as then,  gamers know what games they want-- the big name games with all the hype.   Buying an unknown game was always a risk.   It's the role retail to figure out what games they can sell and stock accordingly.  Nintendo's restrictions were anti-competitive and probably did more harm to third parties than good.

[Draxxon]

I can tell you that in my small bubble of reality, in 1984 no one we knew gave 2 shits about home computers. They didn't do anything. Print a happy birthday banner in dot matirx or some other goofy shit, maybe. Both of my parents worked for the post office, so we were middle class all the way. But they said computers are super over priced and had no real value. And they were mostly correct.

I went to private schools and we had computer access. There were basically only two kids who cared. One kid that knew how to write basic programs of "print" and "run" type of stuff, and me, who sifted through the learning game software and found the actually fun to play games with fun mechanics.

People we did know with computers weren't in to playing games on them. They didn't even have joysticks for them. Just keyboards. Like I said, they either printed shit in B&W on paper, or they wrote silly basic programs. Regular people didn't know how to use them, or what to even do with them yet.

 

We never stopped playing Kaboom, Warlords, River Raid, etc. at home on 2600 until the NES came out. Plenty of arcades still existed to tide us over.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Draxxon

[atarifan88]

On 12/16/2021 at 2:55 PM, Rodney Hester said:

I know a lot of folks (particularly in Europe, where home computers dominated at the time) weren't even *aware* there was a video game market crash in 1983...but for those who lived through it, how did you become aware?

 

There was no Internet or the like back then, and my local 6 o'clock news was as likely to cover a pumpkin chucking contest as anything noteworthy, so I was actually rather blindsided by the whole thing.

 

There was once (and sort of still is, in an incredibly limited capacity) a US department store chain called K-Mart, and they were sort of the Walmart of their day - bigger, brighter, and cheaper than anybody else who came before.  (They also had a signature thing called the Blue Light Special, but that'd be a post/novel/rant unto itself...)

 

Like most department stores of the era, they had an electronics section, and that's where you'd find the wall o'games...behind locked glass, of course.  Budget titles were often hung on the wall across the aisle, but the AAA titles of their day - Atari, Activision, Imagic, Mattel - were locked safely away from us nefarious youngsters.  Not without reason, mind you - new releases prior to the crash topped out around $30 US (that's $83.72 today!), making them MORE expensive (relatively speaking) than the premium Xbox and PS4/5 titles of the modern gaming era.  As a result, my very poor self had a VERY small collection of games going into 1983...Combat came with it, I had Asteroids that I picked up on sale from Roses (another failed local department store chain in my area at the time), and Donkey Kong was a (major) Christmas present.  Playing games at other neighborhood kids' houses (there were a LOT of them!) was popular as a result, and it's how I got my first exposure to Defender on the 2600...probably my fondest gaming memory ever (well, that, and watching James Bond on laserdisc while playing it - that family LOVED tech!).

 

I didn't mind having a very small games collection since such a variety of games was so readily available only a few minutes walk in any given direction.  Sure, I'd have loved more, but I barely had enough to even warrant a very small cartridge case...if anything, it made my stash look smaller.  But that was all about to change...

 

I no longer remember the month, much less the date, but I know it was a Saturday in 1983 when my parents hauled me off to K-Mart for the weekly shopping pilgrimage (a sacred capitalist tradition!).  As usual, we went our separate ways - my parents to clothing, home goods, maybe the sporting section (camping was a big thing!)...and me to electronics, every single time.

 

Something was clearly different even as I turned the corner to head down the game aisle.  It was more crowded than I'd ever seen it, and an absolute MESS...cartridges and crushed boxes littered the floor, the wall of budget titles was completely empty, a large bin was in the middle of the aisle with what looked like the budget games having literally been shoveled into it, and the glass display case was...open.  Every door unlocked and slid open, like the end of the world had come and even the gaming gods had forsaken us.  What on earth was going on?!?

 

I soon found out.  Prices weren't scanned by bar code then...they were emblazoned directly on boxes with paper tags and glue backing, with the price hammered out in ink on the sticky tag (that NEVER came off the box cleanly!).  A few boxes - particularly new ones from major publishers - had pre-printed (and honored!) MSRPs on the box and thus were generally untagged, but everywhere I looked, boxes were now *double* tagged...the updated price tag being haphazardly slapped on top of the old one (frequently so much so that the original price was still clearly visible).  The *very first* box I looked at - Adventures of Tron - had such a double label.  It was *one US dollar*.

 

I knew it had to be wrong, and I knew if I tried to buy it I'd be challenged by the store clerk, with a wary manager stomping over to declare it was a mistake and take it away forever (they didn't have to honor ANYTHING back then - if the price was wrong and they knew it, you paid what they said the price should be or you did without!  Or you tried again at a different register...).  I looked at another box next to it (whose title I don't even remember)...$1.  Not even $0.99 (yes, it was a custom even then to make things look "cheaper" that way)...$1 even.  As my eyes scanned across the sea of shiny boxes in the now-wide-open glass fortress, I realized EVERY SINGLE TITLE said $1.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that I set a land speed record that morning getting from the back of the store where electronics was situated to the front where the shopping carts were.  I'm sure I clipped the ankles of 3 or 4 adult shoppers who were silly or suicidal enough to stand in the aisles between me and my destination with my rattling, creaky shopping cart that I was about to make good use of.  I didn't care.  The race was on.

 

The way I saw it, it's easier to put things back later than try to find them when they're gone, so I proceeded to very quickly and methodically grab one of EVERY game in the coveted glass case into the cart (and there were still quite a lot - my parents were early risers, thank God!), then deftly moved to the (now very literal) bargain bin, to be shocked once again to see that the lesser titles had also been discounted...to a _dime_.  Yes, $0.10 per game...titles that the day before had cost between $9.99 and $14.99.  I didn't even bother with decorum - I literally shoved both arms into the bin, and whatever I pulled out with my makeshift body-shovel, down it went into the gaping maw of the cart until it was full, duplicates be damned.

 

I made one last pass down the aisle, slightly more relaxed and willing to be a little more choosy in my inspection to see if there was anything I'd missed in my 11-year-old-powered haul, spotting a huge box of Indy 500 with controllers included that was so large I'd mistaken it for something other than a game.  Finally, satisfied that I'd done all I could to maximize my gaming glee, I headed off with my unwieldy cart to find my parents...and on the way realized I was going to have some SERIOUS explaining to do.

 

Having found them wandering amongst round swinging racks of identical jeans, I breathlessly explained what I'd seen to my wide-eyed parents who were still staring in disbelief at the cart that looked like an Atari warehouse had vomited into it.  My mother's reaction, of course, was that there was NO WAY the games were priced correctly and that someone must be trying to get away with something, so I confidently assured my father that it was all true (because...it had to be, right?  This wasn't a cruel joke, was it?) and drug him and my Mom back to electronics to seek out the department manager (a friend of the family, no less!) for confirmation.

 

He'd wisely taken the day off after having spent the evening before with his crew marking down all the boxes, as were were assured by a team member who seemed to want to stay as far as possible for the pandemonium getting ever louder only a few aisles over.  They'd received word from the district boss the evening prior to do the markdowns with no explanation given, just instruction to do it as quickly as possible, which they had.  The sale was real.  The games, one way or another, would be mine.

 

I worked with my parents to weed out all the duplicates from the budget titles (requiring yet another cart as a reject bin, which I unceremoniously parked in the middle of the game aisle once done), and still had a staggering close to 80 games in my cart, all unique.  All brand-new, in box, and the only thing standing between me and gaming bliss now was the matter of around $24 to pay for it all.  I promised my parents the world.  Birthday?  Check.  Christmas?  Check.  Both covered.  Mowing the lawn without allowance for a year?  Done.  At some point I probably also negotiated away my soul and firstborn, but I didn't care.  I'd just scored more games in under half an hour than I'd ever seen in my life combined.

 

That was exactly how I learned about The Crash.  Granted, even in that moment (and in the days to follow), the true import of it failed to dawn on me.  I didn't appreciate that an industry had just almost breathed its last.  I didn't understand that hundreds of loyal Atari (and other) employees were about to lose their livelihoods, that careers would be destroyed, that reputations would be tattered.  No...at that age, what I understood was that I now had a very serious problem the likes of which I'd never encountered before...where was I going to put all of these games?!?

 

The next day, I dragged my father to Roses again, this time to buy REAL cartridge cases - you know, like Richie Rich must have for his collection - and came away with not one, but TWO giant cases that still somehow failed to contain them all.  The irony is that I paid half as much for the cases as I did for the entire games haul the prior day!

 

I still remember the wonder and awe of being SURROUNDED by brand-new games, still in sealed boxes, in disarray around me on my bedroom floor as I excitedly and eagerly went from one to another, barely able to even choose what to play next from the smorgasbord of options now available to me.  This went on for an entire day and a half before my frustrated mother finally decreed that I'd either clean up the increasingly distressing cardboard mess building in my room or she'd throw it all away, games included.  It was tidy in ten minutes...but the memories lasted a lifetime.

 

That's how I found out.  How did you?

I found out decades later when the internet went live.  Of course, you don't believe everything that was on the internet, so I did some major research and found it to be true.  I will say, your story is the best one I have read so far.  I could only wish I found out the way you did!  Seriously, you could probably flesh that story out more and write a short book about it.  I would definitely buy that one! ?

[Jasonhrb]

On 12/17/2021 at 8:34 AM, juansolo said:

Just to put in a European perspective. The first time I learned about the crash was American YouTubers going on about the dark times and how Nintendo saved the video gaming industry. I remember thinking at the time, dark times? It was the golden age of computing! Sinclair, Commodore and Atari were kings. I think it was because many of us naturally moved on to computers as they just had so much more potential than consoles. Sure consoles came back eventually, but it'd not be until the Megadrive and Super Nintendo came along that they gained any real traction.

This is very much my experience as a UK user as well. I was very young at the time (about 10 when it was all going on), but there was no sense of a crash in the UK as I remember it. More a sense of the market just moving on. The 2600 was king of that generation of consoles, and other than that only the intellivison (and perhaps briefly the colecovision to a limited extent) ever gained any real traction. And of course, we never had the 5200 in the UK at all (perhaps because of the crash, but it didn't register as such with most users at the time)

 

And then in hat period 83-85, pretty much everyone I knew just moved on to computers (usually a c64 or a Spectrum, although some who came later went for an Amstrad). There were other machines that came and went in those early 80s years, but that was seen more as a case of the market "picking the winners" from a crowded field.

 

Yes the 2600 faded from view in this period. In the UK it was still a very big thing in '83, and had all but disappeared by late '85 (before returning from the dead not long after as a bargain basement special after the arrival of the NES and SMS). But that was seen as a sign of progress, rather than a crash. People were playing games more than ever, but they had moved on to better machines that could play better games and do other stuff as well. The reaction to Sega and Nintendo entering the market with their 8 bit consoles was almost one of bemusement at first, as the sense was that consoles were something the market had moved on from. And while they both found a steady market in the UK (as, almost inexplicably,  did the relaunched and very cheap 2600), i would agree with juansolo that it was only when the 16 bit consoles turned up that they became a really big thing again. 

[Keatah]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Wikipedia says that Videogame revenues dropped from $3.2 billion in 1983 to $100 million in 1985,  or about a 96% drop.   If that isn't a crash, then what is?   I don't think it's sensational in this case.

I can agree dollar and accounting wise, sure. As end users most of us just saw firesale prices and wildly varying availability, with computers becoming more interesting by the day.

 

Quote

In many ways it was a fad.

I recall many news broadcasts saying exactly that. A fad. And it was unsustainable anyways. All that time spent putting quarters into a machine and pushing buttons. To what end?

 

Quote

Things like Pokemon Go, Fortnite, etc that gain tons of hype but lose most of their player base within a year or two,  but not the entire industry itself anymore.

I hate those kinds of games today. Too intense. Too much of that online internet stuff involved. I'm a slower paced gamer. Also like to revisit games over time. Sometimes years.

 

Quote

I don't think the strict Nintendo restrictions were really necessary because I don't think the problem was too many games in the first place,  it was more failure to innovate. 

Failing to innovate was mentioned in the making of Liberator. The industry was amping up movie tie-ins, comics, complex story lines, and other gimmicks to try and make up for it all. Too much of the wrong stuff.

 

Quote

The industry at the time was dependent on the "arcade to home port" pipeline, and by 83 most of the big-name games had gotten ported,  and the next big thing in arcades, laserdisc games,  didn't translate well to the home market and player interest in them dropped off fast because they mostly consisted of what we now call Quick-Time Events rather than real gameplay.

I played Dragon's Lair exactly 1 time. I was so worried about losing tokens. Tough decision one game of this, two games of that. The whole experience didn't seem interactive enough. Lost interest so quickly I didn't even read articles about it or watch other players.

 

Quote

It didn't help that some of the biggest games got terrible home ports.   So by 83/84 there wasn't much to hold console players interest. 

To me it seemed like console hardware was lagging more and more behind what was being done in the arcade. I remember playing I'Robot and Discs Of Tron. Later S.T.U.N. Runner and Blasteroids and Assault. Thinking we're never going to see this level of graphic fidelity on consoles. Ever ever ever. Certainly my pile of (beginning to rot) 8-bit home consoles was never going cut it. I couldn't even entertain the notion a 386 would cut the mustard. Contradictorily I knew PCs were the way forward and could get there.

 

Quote

There was much more innovation happening on the computer gaming side, but must console players didn't make the jump to computers.   So for console players the most exciting games were behind them, there wasn't a whole lot to look forward to, so no wonder so many dropped out!

I don't know about that. Many of my buddies were getting into computers at the time. All kinds ranging from the sunsetting Atari 8 bit machines, Macs, C128s, and PCs. Especially PCs and the IIgs. Yes. The IIgs was lusted after pretty enthusiastically. Everyone cited they more than just games.

 

Others I knew said they weren't into the consoles that much to begin with, but went straight to PC. Tandy and Packard Bell systems were staples in my town.

 

I guess one other first sign of the crash was none of my buddies wanted to come over and "play Atari" as much anymore. Some of us were actually grown up. The fledgling industry had seemed to tie itself to our demographics with no consideration of us maturing. Today the industry has games & simulations for every age range, ability, and interest.

 

Quote

These days there is a far greater ratio of shovelware on modern consoles than there ever was on 2600, INTV or Colecovision, and it doesn't harm the market because now as then,  gamers know what games they want-- the big name games with all the hype.   Buying an unknown game was always a risk.   It's the role retail to figure out what games they can sell and stock accordingly.  Nintendo's restrictions were anti-competitive and probably did more harm to third parties than good.

These past 5 or 10 years we've had youtube and forums to help weed out the garbage. I cannot count how many instances watching a review or reading about gameplay has turned me away from an arbitrary title.

 

And in the crash back then we only had EGM and brethren to guide us. Games were coming out faster than they could be reviewed.

 

I don't recall anything "Atarisoft" being on Nintendo. It might have piqued my interest and kept me in console gaming had there been such releases.

[Keatah]

3 hours ago, Draxxon said:

I can tell you that in my small bubble of reality, in 1984 no one we knew gave 2 shits about home computers. They didn't do anything. Print a happy birthday banner in dot matirx or some other goofy shit, maybe. Both of my parents worked for the post office, so we were middle class all the way. But they said computers are super over priced and had no real value. And they were mostly correct.

My old fart said the same thing at the same time. "But what can you do with it??" was the response every time I found some new game or technical utility. The idea of an intellectual playground flew right over without notice.

 

Much of my activity on the Apple II in the very early days was indeed PrintShop and printing general stuff for neighbors and stuff. You know. The other part was technical learning. And of course figuring out how to get moar games and hoard'em all! A real big deal!

 

3 hours ago, Draxxon said:

I went to private schools and we had computer access. There were basically only two kids who cared. One kid that knew how to write basic programs of "print" and "run" type of stuff, and me, who sifted through the learning game software and found the actually fun to play games with fun mechanics.

My math grades were not B+ or higher, therefore not allowed in the computer room.

 

3 hours ago, Draxxon said:

People we did know with computers weren't in to playing games on them. They didn't even have joysticks for them. Just keyboards. Like I said, they either printed shit in B&W on paper, or they wrote silly basic programs. Regular people didn't know how to use them, or what to even do with them yet.

There wasn't much TO do with them. Entering recipes was beyond tedious and pointless. Home budgeting was done faster with pencil and calculator. Auto maintenance records better kept in a folder or baggie in the trunk.

 

All the tasks the industry said you could do, wanted you to do, took way more time than traditional time-honored methods. Mostly because of input/output issues.

 

Cataloging a record or VHS collection might have worked. I tried making a database of all my games, console and computer, and was discouraged once I reached about 400 entries. The program slowed down significantly during searches. And was even slower when searching by anything other than the first indexing field.

 

My anal attention to detail didn't help much either. And getting an Applesoft BASIC compilation disk meant at least 1/2 hour of tediousness entering it all. Sure I realized I would fill the database, then stored on one side of one floppy, but kept going anyways - with the plan to make a part 2 and part 3.

 

Today it's radically different. It's no problem to find a certain title, or drill down to find a BASIC program, or text within any file.

 

3 hours ago, Draxxon said:

We never stopped playing Kaboom, Warlords, River Raid, etc. at home on 2600 until the NES came out. Plenty of arcades still existed to tide us over.

Arcades were a big tie-in to home systems for us. And as the local ones closed up, as we grew up, the only ones left remaining were pretty far away. Far away as in no more BMX'ing there. Needed a car. And that cost money. And I thankfully stopped with the advent of those dumb-ass fighting games.

 

When NES came out I was already around the block with cartridges. Didn't go any further than SMS. Computers full time after.

[Draxxon]

I agree. When I said mostly correct, it was the "learning" part of those early PCs that no one understood yet.

 

Like I said we did have apple IIs and later stuff at school. Apple II had a game where letters dropped and you caught them to build target words on screen in a basket like Kaboom, using the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard. Once I found that "game" thats all I played when I used it. They taught us simple basic programming stuff, but Im not sure even the teachers knew how to do more than simple stuff with it.

NES was like magic. Punch-Out was another of those games that really tested you like Kaboom. Games like Super Mario and Mega Man were great.

 

Arcades got the Double Dragon and Final Fight Quarter Munchers that evolved into Fighters. In my humble opinion, 90s fighters were the pinnacle of Arcade gaming. 1 Player, high scoring, 2 player turn based games none of them can compete with Simultaneous Multiplayer Versus games. Probably why I love Warlords, Combat, Pong, etc so much.

Thats also why I think no one really gives a shit about perfect games of pac-man when you have stuff like EVO moment #37.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Draxxon

[zzip]

33 minutes ago, Keatah said:

As end users most of us just saw firesale prices and wildly varying availability, with computers becoming more interesting by the day.

The varying availability was a nuisance though, and it spilled over into computer software.  There was a lot more retail stores back then, and a lot in my area,  but when I went into them, if they still carried games at all they had a weird selection of titles and systems.    I remember having to take a bus to a downtown department store to find a particular game that nobody in my area seemed to bother stocking it (was a little too young to drive), this is something I never needed to do for anything else, but I really wanted that game!

 

43 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I don't know about that. Many of my buddies were getting into computers at the time. All kinds ranging from the sunsetting Atari 8 bit machines, Macs, C128s, and PCs. Especially PCs and the IIgs. Yes. The IIgs was lusted after pretty enthusiastically. Everyone cited they more than just games.

I had groups of friends who made the jump to computers and groups of friends who didn't, and there seemed to be many more of the latter.  A lot of them just moved onto other things and didn't care about games so much anymore.  A lot of them only got back into gaming in the late 80s when NES became big.

 

53 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I guess one other first sign of the crash was none of my buddies wanted to come over and "play Atari" as much anymore. Some of us were actually grown up. The fledgling industry had seemed to tie itself to our demographics with no consideration of us maturing. Today the industry has games & simulations for every age range, ability, and interest.

yes this is true.   "Let's hang out and play Atari" seemed to disappear in 83 or 84.   But it returned around 88 or 89 except this time with NES.   Only it was worse because there was always one kid who took advantage of the near endless continues in super mario and hogged the console.

 

Although I do remember kids coming to my house some times to play Spy Hunter or Hardball on my Atari 8-bit,  and one kid who kept dropping in unannounced to play Alternate Reality or some other RPG.   That got old fast :)    But In general my friend group replaced video games with things like D&D, MTV,  Hacky Sack and just general teenage havoc-wreaking.    I was surprised when NES made games popular again because it seemed like they had become rather uncool.   Obviously as mentioned above kids came to my house to play on my computer, but they would never admit in school to being a gamer!  Hell, I wouldn't admit that either at the time ?

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

And in the crash back then we only had EGM and brethren to guide us. Games were coming out faster than they could be reviewed.

Word-of-mouth was big then.  I remember lots of people being excited for home versions of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Pitfall.    No one ever talked about how much they wanted to play "Lost Luggage" or "Entombed" or whatever.  We cared about some games and knew nothing about others.

 

I knew some kids who got a new cartridge what seemed like every weekend, and if they bought a stinker, we'd play it a day or two and it didn't matter because they'd get another next weekend. 

 

Others would be more careful with their money and wouldn't bother buying any game they knew nothing about.

 

But of course once the bargain bins appeared, it was only then that we'd buy the games from those "shady" companies.   Some of them were actually not bad,  but even if it was, it was only $5!

 

The point is, I never encountered people who bought those fly by night games at full price, and felt burned enough that they swore off videogames completely.   But that's what many articles claimed happened.   It was more that gradually people got weary of the same old, and there were other exciting non-gaming pastimes that stole their attention away from games.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

I don't recall anything "Atarisoft" being on Nintendo. It might have piqued my interest and kept me in console gaming had there been such releases.

Atarisoft died in 84 when Jack took over, before Nintendo entered the US market.   But really, Tengen was the new Atarisoft, since they were published by the half of Atari that still had the arcade licenses!

 

 

[Draxxon]

Tengen games were a big deal to kids back then. Most likely because the carts were different. I don't think my age group knew what it was all about at the time.

 

I also remember that not everyone had a TV in every room in those days like now. When the NES came, people started getting multiple TVs and putting them in other rooms than the main living room. Ataris would get moved to those. We had an NES in the living room and the Atari moved to my room on a small B&W TV.

 

The way the video connects made them ideal for old B&Ws TVs that got kept. Plus, we had a stereo setup. Other forms of entertainment never really stopped 2600 play at our house. You could watch MTV, play NES on Picture in a Picture, listen to the radio, and play D&D while the bedroom TV played 2600. I was the right age to "inherit" the family's Atari right when adults stop caring. When it became mine, well, thats when I truly started to care about it. and collect for it. (Actually D&D is something else no one I know ever got into. We had a game called Dark Tower that we played the shit out of.)

Its strange that before the internet, and when you're a small child. The world is such a small bubble of your family, friends and school. For me it was Pong (sears telegames and odyssey 1/yellow)/Arcades/2600/7800/NES/GB/SNES....and on and on. The Crash, Vintage PCs, Coleco, Intellivision, Master System, Tandy, Apple II, Commodore, Amiga, etc. etc. never was on our radars. I saw all of those systems back then, but people just didnt have the games for them to properly showcase them to me at that time.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Draxxon

[zzip]

18 hours ago, Draxxon said:

I also remember that not everyone had a TV in every room in those days like now. When the NES came, people started getting multiple TVs and putting them in other rooms than the main living room. Ataris would get moved to those. We had an NES in the living room and the Atari moved to my room on a small B&W TV.

Exactly.  Seemed like most families had one or two TVs in the 80s.   Handheld LCD TVs didn't start showing up until the late 80s, and as I recall they only had antenna service (no coax connector for cable/videogames)

 

18 hours ago, Draxxon said:

The way the video connects made them ideal for old B&Ws TVs that got kept. Plus, we had a stereo setup. Other forms of entertainment never really stopped 2600 play at our house. You could watch MTV, play NES on Picture in a Picture, listen to the radio, and play D&D while the bedroom TV played 2600. I was the right age to "inherit" the family's Atari right when adults stop caring. When it became mine, well, thats when I truly started to care about it. and collect for it. (Actually D&D is something else no one I know ever got into. We had a game called Dark Tower that we played the shit out of.)

I remember only high-end TVs had Picture-in-Picture.   It was a feature I always wanted but never had,  I also didn't know anybody with it.

 

D&D was a very social game,  if someone was playing 2600 while playing D&D they would likely be distracted and irritate the other players.

 

Even watching MTV was a social activity,  I remember we'd watch with friends after school and wait for our favorite videos to come on.   This was the same time we used to use for playing video games together a year or two prior.   And everybody in school was talking about MTV and their favorite bands artists instead of talking about games like they used to.    It's not that people stopped playing games completely,  but we were playing them a lot less than in the boom years of 81-83, and buying fewer of them as a result (not to mention the rampant piracy the jump to computers enabled).  There were more things competing for our TV time.  Multiply that in aggregate and I can see why game revenue dropped so dramatically.

[Draxxon]

While my father could care less about home computers, he needed that picture in a picture to watch multiple sports games. I figured out you could watch tv and play NES on the PIP. There was no sound for whatever was on the PIP so you had to play NES tiny and w/o sound. you could move the PIP window to any of the four corners of the screen. I used bottom right, becauase thats where I laid at on the floor and so not to cover any scoreboards or timers graphics for the big game. During commercials Dad would hit a button on a remote and swap the "pictures". So for a couple mins NES was the main and commercials played in the window. we had it down pat, lol.

To this day I refuse to watch any traditional sports on TV. I hate it. Thank God Dad never liked boxing and wrestling (and there was no UFC.)

What I meant about D&D and board games was, Dad could be on the TV, the rest of the family had the whole dining room table to play at (which was also where the stereo setup was located) and I could be in my room playing 2600 by myself.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Draxxon

[Flojomojo]

I'm finding that unless you follow the business side of things, it's easy to ignore signs of trouble in an "industry" -- for example, I knew Atari was in a weak position with the Jaguar, but I didn't know that they were in various stages of money trouble since the Warner days. I was only interested in the products, the games and consoles. 

[Draxxon]

9 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

I'm finding that unless you follow the business side of things, it's easy to ignore signs of trouble in an "industry" -- for example, I knew Atari was in a weak position with the Jaguar, but I didn't know that they were in various stages of money trouble since the Warner days. I was only interested in the products, the games and consoles. 

absolutely, and part of it is age, I think. For instance, when Midway Games was dying some of us watched it unfold. When the crash happened, I was too young to comprehend what it actually meant on the whole. I only noticed the sale bins was all.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Draxxon