The Video Game Crash of 1983: myth or truth?
by Vladimir Cole 
{ Jan 26th 2006 at 1:00AM }
Our post about the fictional
unearthing of that awful Atari 2600 game E.T. inspired strong discussion on the topic of just how bad the game
really was, and whether its suckiness triggered the fatal vortex that some say decimated the games industry. But
did that decimation ever happen?
In a post titled, "THERE WAS NOT A "GREAT VIDEO GAME CRASH OF `83," reader ZeroCorpse wrote a forceful rejection of the idea that the crash ever existed. We quote his response with only minor edits after the continue link.
This is a lie. I was around then, and although Atari, Magnavox, Mattel, and Coleco dropped out of the video game biz, the arcades were still jumping, the Commodore 64 hand THOUSANDS of games, and the PC was just coming into its own. Gamers were not without games. Stores were not without product to sell. Just because the CONSOLES hit a wall doesn't mean that there was a gaming crash.
Besides, everybody who was there knows that the Commodore 64 was more gaming console than computer. Who seriously got any work done on the C64?
The 'crash' is a myth. There was no crash. A big video game company died (Atari, and only the first of many times) and the other companies willingly pulled out of the console business because the computers and arcades were kicking their butts. This does not constitute a crash. This is a SHIFT.
I'm so sick of this lie being turned into some sort of legend. It's false. We were playing games EVERY YEAR during the '80s. There wasn't any span of time when you couldn't find any games in stores. There wasn't any span of time when Epyx, Electronic Arts, and Capcom (among others) didn't have a platform to publish for. There wasn't a period of time in the 80s when you couldn't find an Atari 2600/5200/7800 on which to play the hundreds of games, even if the company was dead their consoles were still in stores longer than any other console in history.
And Nintendo/Sega came along real soon after the supposed crash. We didn't have some horrible desert gulch of gamelessness. It didn't happen the way they say it did.
E.T. didn't kill gaming. It only killed Atari.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
zP @ Feb 21st 2006 4:56PM
Great topic, I really liked reading through all the comments... gets me thinking. I was 12 when the crash
happened. I was a lower-middle class kid from WestCoastSmallTown, USA, and I can stand up and testify that the Crash truly did happen. Why? better for someone else to figure, but seemingly overnight things changed. I remember '83, '84 as very good years despite the lack of gaming. But what I mostly remember when thinking on the gaming situation was the sense that I had moved on. My social milieu had changed and I starting thinking of other things... A huge part of the gaming market at the time comprised 10-16 yr olds and it's possible we simply, collectively had a change of attitude toward videogaming. What sparked the change? Many factors I suppose: puberty, same-game-different-wrapper-syndrome, cost, whatever.
My family could never.. ever... have afforded a $500 Commodore64. Gaming for me and my friends was over in '83, period! After '83 we would drag out the ol' colecovision or atari every once in a great while (along with our 10 carts... total!), but mostly it was on those rainy days when all the board games looked boring. In case you're wondering, I was a huge videogamer prior to the crash, had a subscription to Electronic Games and somehow managed to get an atari 2600 AND a colecovision (after a years worth of begging the folks). I remember the early days of owning the atari when we had to wait for Mom and Dad to stop playing so my brothers and I could get a turn. I've been there and I can testify, gaming today is much different than it was prior to '83, mainly as a direct result of the Crash and the reformation that followed.
For those of you posting about your c64s and whatnot, I can only think that you must've been in those big houses up on the hill, cuz it certainly isn't representative of the average joe gamer in '83. We most certainly suffered a Crash and its something that still lingers on my mind today. I'm still not convinced we have enough stability in this industry to stave off another such event. Although I've been feeling much more encouraged by the direction I'm seeing from Nintendo. If anyone can save us, it's them ... again.
dsub @ Jan 26th 2006 1:09AM
I agree, I too was around then, and I don't remember being without games. The arcade were HUGE, and I played the commodore 64 to death, if I remember correctly I was still playing burgertime on intellivision back then...the NES came out in 1985, and from then on nothing's been the same. There was no "crash" in the gaming industry. It was just a drastic change.
Stukodokka @ Jan 26th 2006 1:10AM
He is right. The main console gaming company crashed, that does not mean the whole industry crashed. Gaming never really died, its just that PCs gained popularity for a few years. If you wanted to play games, there were always games available.
EvoG @ Jan 26th 2006 1:22AM
Yep, and at the time, I was already far into the Vic20(programming animation in basic and scott adams adventures) and C64(um, everything else until my very first PC) to even notice...that and I was a bit on the young side.
The "crash" is a misnomer perhaps, and at best a dramatic embellishment, but as he said, "shift" is more appropriate, if less controversial. :)
Probot @ Jan 26th 2006 1:28AM
I don't know when the word "crash" has ever been used to describe the consumer impact. It's meant that video game INVESTORS, that is, the people that fund the games, no longer had the interest to do so. Games became a bad investment, and the funding would have dried up eventually. Whether that's even true, you can debate, but his post is talking about something else entirely.
I think he's right in that most people think the crash had a significant impact on the consumer, but I wouldn't know if that were true.
After Atari fell, video games were just seen as bad investments, so people stopped putting money into them. That's what I always considered to be the "Crash of '83."
Jago @ Jan 26th 2006 1:34AM
If you compare the popularity of gaming after 1983 (and before the NES was released) gaming all but dropped off the map for the vast majority of people.
Computers were still quite expensive and seen by most people at the time as mainly a business device. A small fraction of people used their computers for gaming yea...but those were the "gamers", not the general public.
T.H. @ Jan 26th 2006 1:42AM
I was there too, in fact more so than most of you I'm sure. I worked for such a company that to deal with said crash. The company I worked for also dealt with Arcades. There was indeed a crash, and it hurt all of us. Yes some companies din't make it, but some stood, but not to well. To anyone that said there wasn't a crash...I'm not very wealthy now as proof of it.
mofomojo @ Jan 26th 2006 1:42AM
So, Probot, if that is your real name, we must assume that the stock of Commodore completely plummeted in value during the years of '83 and '84, right?
I can only assume that it was a bit of a shift for investors too.
elle @ Jan 26th 2006 2:05AM
"So, Probot, if that is your real name"
Some of you people take this way too seriously.
Probot @ Jan 26th 2006 2:11AM
Well, did they ever release Commodore 65? I rest my case.
All kidding aside, I do think the "crash" was limited more towards the console makers. Crash is probably a bad word for it. It was more of a shock. A dedicated game-playing machine was still new technology, so when one of the biggest makers pretty much goes under, it is a bit of a hit to the future of the industry.
Like I said, I think Zerocorpse is right that from the consumer standpoint, there was never a real shortage of games. Actually, on the contrary, if I recall my Video Game 101 class* the market was flooded with games.
I think there is a definite myth of this cataclysmic void of video games from 1983-1985. Most of that is because a lot of gamers today weren't alive then. I wasn't. Nintendo certainly shaped the industry for a while, but we, the post-1985 generation, have grown up thinking they single-handedly re-created a dead industry, when in fact all they did was take an already-successful console and market it to a new country.
*class was taught by my own imagination and various websites.
Jago @ Jan 26th 2006 2:35AM
"the market was flooded with games."
Yea...and how many of them were actually worth remembering or playing? If the games coming out were not worth playing...then that to me sounds like a crash. Why would people play games that were crap?
Probot @ Jan 26th 2006 3:10AM
"Why would people play games that were crap?"
You say that as if it isn't true today. Case in point: 50 Cent: Bulletproof sold 1 million copies.
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/50centbulletproof/news.html?sid=6142898
I'm'>http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/50centbulletproof/news.html?sid=6142898I'm'>http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/50centbulletproof/news.html?sid=6142898
I'm not saying '83 was the best year in gaming, I'm saying there was no shortage of games available. Most were probably bad, but that can be said for a lot of years in gaming history. I'd like to see someone
put together an average of review scores for each game released in a year. It'd be nice to see whether most games are considered good or bad. I'm betting the majority would fall under a 7.
SetupWeasel @ Jan 26th 2006 3:17AM
Did the '87 stock market crash mean that every stock lost its value, that every investor was ruined, or that no stocks were traded afterward?
No.
The video game crash had to do with the nearly overnight change in retail confidence in home video game sales. People lost their shirts. Previously premium games were going for pocket change. In short, a major business model collapsed and everyone who had a stake in it was hurt. Some survived. Some fell forever. Video games went on.
It was, however, a crash. You do not need to fall to zero in a crash, you only need to fall far and fall quickly.
SquirrelPhister @ Jan 26th 2006 3:19AM
i like videogames
Nick @ Jan 26th 2006 3:27AM
Yes, there was a crash in 1893.
Why?
Games were being dumped into the market from any company wanting to cash in on the game craze. Some games were being made without regard for quality or playability. It was not unusual to walk into the store and find 10-15-20 new games released in a single week for the then popular Atari 2600.
There were many console manufacturers in the market: Atari, Mattel, Magnavox, Coleco, Milton Bradley (with the Vectrex) all selling systems simultaneously. To some lessor extent you could also find other minor players still kicking around. And that's not counting the rebranded or clone systems from Sears, and others. Coleco sold both an Atari 2600 clone and an attachment that allowed you to play 2600 games on the Colecovision. Likewise, so did Mattel with a 2600 attachment for the Intelivision.
Licensing was becoming cutthroat and ridiculous sums of money were being paid for exclusives.
Meanwhile computers from Texas Instruments, Atari, Radio Shack, Commodore, Apple, and IBM were quickly becoming popular and hosting far more complex games with better graphics and sound.
Even the arcades took a hit, with many disappearing, although arcades did weather the storm a lot better than consoles. Laser games disappeared though.
Finally retail literally got rid of everything, slashes prices down to nothing to liqudate inventory. I remember games selling between $20-40 one day, and then $5-10 the next.
There was really no major console presence for a few years until Nintendo came on the scene in 1985.
Nick @ Jan 26th 2006 3:30AM
(sigh) before anyone jumps on me, I meant to type 1983
Probot @ Jan 26th 2006 3:37AM
"I'd like to see someone put together an average of review scores for each game released in a year. It'd be nice to see whether most games are considered good or bad. I'm betting the majority would fall under a 7."
I'm quoting myself here, but according to GameRankings.com, I'm wrong.
Of the 297 PS2 games listed, 125 (42%) of them had average ratings above 70%. Of the 101 GC games listed, 48 (47%) of them had average ratings above 70%. Of the 231 Xbox games listed, 116 (50%) had average reviews over 70%.
What's my point? I was wrong about my original assertion that most games out today are bad. I think most aren't worth buying, but I guess bad was an overstatment. And this isn't really a test of anything since 70% is a pretty arbitrary number. Not to mention that reivews don't really mean anything outside of themselves. It was such a flawed theory I should flame myself, but I don't know if that would get me in trouble
Captain Obvious @ Jan 26th 2006 3:40AM
The video game crash of 1983 refers to the video game consoles of the time (Atari, Coleco, Mattel, etc) and the games for those consoles losing public interest, not games in general. Games were still being played on computers, which was one of the contributors to the crash. Basically tastes changed. Consoles were no longer popular. And arcades soildered on for a while longer before dying a long, slow death.
Carmine @ Jan 26th 2006 4:00AM
In '83-'84, I remember my parents bringing me into this electronics/game store (that wasn't around in subsequent years) to buy 2600 and Colecovision games. There was a cornucopia of games in large bins. I could pick out any games I wanted. Looking back, I realize that the games must have been very cheap, resting in bargain bins. Also, that store and similar stores went out of business around that time. So, was there a crash? I don't know, I was only 3 years old.
dxtx @ Jan 26th 2006 5:51AM
Yeah, gamers that were gaming in the 80s were far from being left out in the cold. As a little kid all I knew was that consoles started to suck and arcades and computers started to rock. I still had more games than I could play, and damn did I try to play them all.
The various consoles released in the late 70s/early 80s paled in comparison to the computers we were starting to use. Commodores, Apples and Ataris (to name just three) had much better graphics and sound capabilities, and the keyboard interface and increase disk-based storage made for much more diverse and interesting games.
Combined that with the fact that the quality of console games completely nose-dived in the early 80s, it's easy to understand why there was a shift from consoles to computers. Not only that, every single month there would be another ton of really amazing coinops in the local arcade.
It took some fortune and genius on Nintendo's part to get people back into consoles a few years later.
Lou D @ Jan 26th 2006 6:57AM
I used to have a Magnavox console that only play several variations of PONG in 1980, then in Christmas of '81, got me an Odyssey 2 from Magnavox - that thing was neat, then an Atari 5200 Supersystem!
Yeah, I put in about 2 good years on my 5200 then moved on to the C64 in '84. Then upgraded to the C128D...Then in 1994 got me a Commodore CD32 Amiga game console and expanded it into a full Amiga PC and was even surfing the web with it in '95 - '97 not that there was much to surf... Finally switched to PCs in 97/98...
Briefly had a Sega Genesis and a PS1 in their time...
Not I'm all about the Gamecube!
Aaron @ Jan 26th 2006 7:45AM
Leading up to 1983: Corner drug stores, Sears, Kmart, TRU, hardware stores... all sold game carts. Arcades were everywhere - 7-11's, grocery stores, strip malls - anywhere someone could shove a pac-man machine they did. Even malls would put in 2 arcades - one at each end. Monthly video game magazines... Pac Man toilet seats... Pac Man carpet... even Starcade!!! Then - the -market- did indeed crash... I was a kid so I don't remeber much. I just remember everything going away. No more game carts, systems, arcades, magazines, Starcade! :( That is a crash... Sure, you could still copy Euro C64 and TRS80 games at your friends house until you were out of tapes... but the videogame -market- in the U.S. did indeed crash.
I remember being at a COOKS (?) department store and seeing a bin full of games wrapped together for 19.99 a bundle - 1000's of IMAGIC carts... My parents buying me a Bally Arcade and like every game ever made for it for $99 at a Zayre's (?) department store. And the day all of the Chuck E Cheese joints closed... Sad year indeed.
Maybe it was 5 years later I was at the mall and noticed a Nintendo NES in the window of a high end stereo/tv shop - I guess that is when it took off again.
32_Footsteps @ Jan 26th 2006 9:46AM
I'm glad other people chimed in and pointed out the very salient facts - despite Zero Corpse's desire to revise history, the Gaming Crash of '83 was very real and did significantly damage the industry.
Did things hit rock bottom for gamers? Of course not. But in terms of solid titles and financial successes, we had some pretty lean years. New business models were created as a result of that crash, and it was more than just one company that lost everything in the deal (and before people go on about how Atari recovered - last I checked, the company never recovered, and just sold the name to other parties to help resolve their debts).
Not only that, but interest in video games sharply dropped along with consumer confidence. If you can find a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records from around 1980-1982, take a peek inside. They actually included video game high scores in those years. Flip ahead to 1984, though, and there are no more scores. You used to trip over video game swag; for years there was almost no new swag (the first I recall after the crash were McDonalds Happy Meal toys to promote Super Mario Bros. 3 - 6 full years after the crash). People actually had professional game competitions with decent prize purses before the crash - that collapsed so hard, people are acting like competitions for serious prize money are new to the past five years or so.
Like others pointed out, things didn't have to hit a zero point in order for there to be a crash. Heck, if the entire video game industry had been wiped out, we'd probably call it the Video Game Apocalypse of 1983. But both interest and profits dramatically fell fast in 1983. That's the very economic definition of a crash.
Matthew @ Jan 26th 2006 9:55AM
I remember this time period, although strangely enough, I never thought of it as a crash. I believe some of the other posters that it might have affected them differently and at that stage of my life, I really wasn't looking at any kind of Investment Capital or Retail impact.
I think it was a lot more transparent for me because this was about the time when I got my first computer. While I did dabble in playing and writing games during that time, I also started getting into more complicated games like King's Quest. With the ability to use the keyboard for input, I found these games much more satisfying than the 'twitch' games found on the consoles.
By the time that my computer had become sorely outdated, that's about when the NES came out so then I switched back to consoles. For me, it truly was transparent, but I CAN remember the consoles sort of dying in that the price of the console games started dropping a lot and you stopped seeing new ones for the systems.
MrTroy @ Jan 26th 2006 9:57AM
Ugh the utter crap that's coming out of the mouths of some of you people. It's not a myth. You can prove that it happened. Know how? It's called research. Hell most of the people here keep saying "Company X,Y,and Z" stopped making video games.
Now... Look up "Crash" in the dictionary. Does it say anywhere that it's over after it happens. No? Didn't think so. That being said, think about a car crash. We have huge pile up of cars. Some people can walk away(Nintendo, Sega) some people limp away (Atari) and some... well they just don't make it.
But... Just like when you crash your car. You get back on your feet. Start over again, and pick up where you left off a little wiser. But some times things are doomed to repeat themselves.
Craig @ Jan 26th 2006 10:09AM
There may not have been a CRASH, but in 1984 there was definitely a revolution. The advent of the Video Rental Store changed the way the home user interacted with consoles, this coinciding with the release of the NES brought video gaming to such a new high that it seemed like we must have experienced a crash in the early 80s.
Mister Falcon @ Jan 26th 2006 10:13AM
I remember that Atari, Intellivision, and the like all but disappeared from the households of my friends during the mid 80s. My friends and I played games on the Apple IIe and in the arcade, but the home console market was dead to us at that time. The Atari 2600 was derided as "sucking".
It was not until 1986 or so that the NES started showing up in the homes of my friends. I remember thinking at the time "maybe consoles can be cool again". That was a prophetic statement for me, as I play only consoles now.
portnoy @ Jan 26th 2006 10:39AM
Setupweasle is exactly right. I was around and I was old enough to understand what was happening as it appears zerocorpse was not. There were many little kids hooked on their C64s so they didnt notice what happened to the industry. I think it would be interesting for zerocorpse to try to explain to all the thousands of people and corporations who lost their asses/went out of business that there was no crash. That it was only in their minds because some kids were still playing with the c64s throughout 83-84. I could name 50 stores/companies that were heavily involved in gaming that either ceased to exist or left the industry completely. If thats not a crash I dont know what is and neither does zerocorpse.
portnoy @ Jan 26th 2006 10:43AM
Would it be a crash now if Sony went out of business 6 months after it released the PS3 and then shortly after that, Nintendo went back to making playing cards, and then MS pulled out of video gaming completely leaving no major consoles on the market? Following that, half the console games makers quit making games altogether? For those too young to remember, thats essentially what happened back then.
Edmund @ Jan 26th 2006 11:13AM
I can't believe how stupid some people are. The industry crashed, end of story. The number of gamers dropped dramatically, the sales figures plummeted, and video games in general just weren't very popular from about 1983 to 1986. That's all factual. I mean AOL is still around, so I guess that means their busines is as strong as it was in 1994, right? Of course not. Seriously, you people are completely absurd. This moron has "proven" that video games still existed, could still be found, and he thinks that supports some claim he has that the industry never took a dive. Hey, Paul McCartney is still recording albums. That must be proof that they are as good and sell as well as the Beatles' albums, right? Wrong.
Edmund @ Jan 26th 2006 11:18AM
An industry crash doesn't mean we were without games, or that even some excellent games didn't come out. And it doesn't mean YOU didn't play games. I can't believe how many idiots are posting here that "Oh well I was playing games then so I guess the industry was just fine." Yeah, right. Are joystiq readers really this stupid? I hope not.
jabbertrack @ Jan 26th 2006 12:00PM
One guy on the net claimed it was a myth, so I guess he is right...
Joystiq... wtf?
calthaer @ Jan 26th 2006 12:11PM
I think the real point of the post is that whether or not the "crash" can be considered some sort of crisis is largely dependent on whether or not you have a consoliocentric view of the gaming world, just like some people once held a geocentric view of the universe.
Some people would surely say that the rise in popularity of "twitch" console games hasn't been entirely beneficial for the games industry as a whole. I play consoles and PC games fairly equally, but (IMO) on the whole, the best games in the console world are on status only with the "middle-quality" games on the PC. Non-EA Ultima games spank Final Fantasy any day of the week. Console games overall tend to lack the depth of their PC counterparts, focusing instead on eye-candy and other flash to keep people engaged.
One could see the 80s "crash" as the only thing that saved true gaming, and the current high interest in consoles alone (at the expense of PC gaming) as the thing that is killing it.
Of course, there are lots of other factors, and PC gaming is doing a good job of killing itself (game makers trying to "out-do" consoles with flash, and subsequently making games that only run on the top 15-20% of computers, severely limiting their market and, in effect, digging their own grave).
TK00 @ Jan 26th 2006 12:23PM
I was around then. I had a C64 and about 1,000 games. I think I paid for 5 or 6 of them :-)
Side note: This site has been slow as snail shit lately; takes forEVER for comments to go through!!
JB @ Jan 26th 2006 12:54PM
@ Probot & everyone else
Commodore 65 = Amiga
nuff said
SuicideNinja @ Jan 26th 2006 1:18PM
"Well, did they ever release Commodore 65? I rest my case."
Yes, it was called a Commodore 128. It looked like an Amiga 500. In any case, games for the C64 were being made even after the Nintendo came out. Ever played TMNT on the Commodore? It's like the Nintendo version.
I may have been too young at the time to think about a "crash", but I ALWAYS had games. My parents bought the C64 for Word Processing (yeah...something you never want to do on a C64), and I ended up programming, animating, and gaming on it.
Jack @ Jan 26th 2006 1:56PM
I'm surprised how many people haven't figured out that Probot was being sarcastic when referring to the "Commodore 65". Perhaps its the interwebs inability to convey emotional context, but personally, I blame video games. (I'm being sarcastic)
And on-topic, I agree with #12 and his analogy of a stock market crash to this one - you don't hear of people referring to Black Monday (the stock market crash of 1929) as a "stock market shift".
Kent @ Jan 26th 2006 2:14PM
About the few that are claiming we have horrible games today like in the 80s. I know you have found out that is not true. But do you understand how?
Programming for these early systems didn't require huge investments by companies and could be done by one person (of course everytime there was a huge investment it was because a company made a awful choice. ET, Atari's pac man).
What this means is there were a LOT more people that could make games back then. A kid could program one over a few weeks and send it to a company and get "recruited". While this wasn't the standard (I think), this was entirely possible. The consoles also had no quality control. What this lead to were games that probably couldn't be considered games imo. Some so horrendous that you might have a hard time just figuring out what is going on. The game might be incredibly hard or way too easy. Either way the games were simple.
I am trying to think of a NES game that could fit this category. But I can't. Because all NES games had a main goal and at least a half-ass way of reaching that goal. Now imagine some of your favorite games that didn't have that? Can you? I can't. The lowest standard for a game today compared to other games today is a LOT higher than the lowest standard of games back then compared to others. There wasn't a standard. There was NOTHING keeping some companies from releasing whatever games for a quick buck.
Today we are suffering from a problem that happened back then too. Back then there were a LOT of people capable of making games(Like I already said). Which a lot of games were made. A lot of ideas for simple systems. How long did it take before pretty much most concepts you see for a game were covered and copied a dozen times?? We are definately seeing that today. But probably not even close to the extent it was happening back then.
Then theres the cut-throat market. Smaller companies were trying to undercut the larger companies and big time. So for every game done by Atari (which were usually decent) you'd see at least a few cheap rip offs for a fraction of the price. Doing business like this isn't really legal anymore I don't believe. I know now and then there are incredibly cheap games released (like Pryzm for PS2) but you can tell it is not on par with everything else. The buyer is definately more informed than back then.
I dunno. My 2 cents.
The ZeroCorpse @ Jan 26th 2006 3:00PM
First of all, I'm flattered that you'd make an article of my post. Thanks.
Second, let me say that there's a huge difference between companies losing their shirts, and consumers being without games. The way some industry insiders describe it, we were all sitting around twiddling our thumbs with nothing to play. That's just not true.
I'm most upset by the most recent issue of "Game Informer" in which the editor-in-chief, Andy McNamara, revises history himself: "I remember the time of nothing during the crash. It's weird when I think about it; gaming literally fell off the face of the earth. Then all of a sudden one day, out of the blue, there was Mario." And he finishes his article by saying, "Find games you like, and play them. Because if you don't you could wake up one day like I did and find them gone."
Now, I can't speak to his personal experience, but I wonder about his age and experience as a gamer. I don't remember a SINGLE DAY between 1980 and 1990 that I wasn't able to walk into a store and buy a video game. I don't remember a time in the 80s when arcades weren't doing great business.
Did a bunch of developers and corporations get hosed? Yes. In that sense, I'll accept that there was a crash, but you know what: We gamers didn't feel it. We didn't see it. We didn't suffer from it (and in fact, I'd argue that the financial woes of certain companies was ultimately a good thing for gamers).
During this so-called crash, the only companies that went out of business completely were console developers like Atari, or non-licensed third party software developers who swamped the market and ruined the party for themselves. As I said in my original post, the big boys were still making games for other platforms: Electronic Arts, Epyx, Activision, Infocom, et. al. did not suffer all that much. They cut loose some crap developers, perhaps, but games like Impossible Mission, Castles of Dr. Creep, Beach Head, Castle Wolfenstein (not the 3D one, kiddies), Mail Order Monsters, Archon, Jumpman, Racing Destruction Set, Adventure Construction Set, Law of the West, Way of the Exploding Fist, Rogue, and many, many more were out there, published in 1983, 1984, 1985, and onward.
And I'm sorry, but anybody who says the C64 was more expensive than the consoles at the time just wasn't there. The C64 was relatively cheap and in large supply (and yes, they made a C64, then a 64C, then a C128. This platform lived through the 80s with gusto) and it wasn't the only one. The other "computers" of the time (TI-99/4A, Tandy CoCo, IBM PC Jr., etc.) were all marketed more as gaming platforms than ways to do word processing. If you went into any store in the 80s you'd see a Commodore or Texas Instruments computer (or Tandy, if in Radio Shack) demonstrating a game. Not tax software. Games.
I know that the Atari 2600 VCS was originally $199.99 and the Commodore 64 was going for about $300 mere months after it launched (although launch was a pricey $595 for the system). On top of that, the "crash" led Commodore to offer people a $100 rebate in exchange for their old video game console, so even the launch price wasn't that bad. Few people used the C64 for productivity (although it did OK once GEOS came along) but for gaming it was the cat's pajamas. It was the place to be in the mid-80s.
The big difference between the C64 and the Atari 2600 VCS was that the C64 was the start of bigtime piracy, and most kids knew that they could get "free games" on the C64. I'd be surprised if there was anybody out there who didn't have a few hundred pirated games for the C64.
So in that sense, the industry DID suffer.
But again, let me point out that I'm not talking as an industry person, but as a gamer, and as a gamer I saw no lapse, no loss, and no problems with my ability to get games and play them. EA and Epyx did get some of my money.
So hey, OK, I'll give it to the industry people that they may have lost jobs and lost money. I just want the myth that there was (as I put it) a "horrible desert gulch of gamelessness" to be ended. Game Informer isn't helping much by perpetuating the myth that there were no games. Gaming historians who claim they weren't gaming in the mid-80s either lived in the middle of nowhere and couldn't find a retail store or arcade, or they are remembering things incorrectly.
And comparisons to Black Monday just aren't realistic. I don't know of any game designers who jumped out of windows because they were ruined. I don't know of any gamers who were driven to a "great gaming depression" afterward.
So fine- There was a financial "crash" for the gaming industry insiders. Just please stop telling us we gamers didn't have anything new to play for five years. It just isn't true!
The ZeroCorpse @ Jan 26th 2006 3:06PM
Oops:
Re: C64 price.
I forgot to mention that C64s could be had for around $150 if you looked around at the discount appliance stores (and KMart) about a year after the system launched.
So yes, the C64 was more expensive at launch, but the market whittled it down quite a bit. It had to compete with PC, TI-99/4A, and Tandy, to name a few, and I know I got my C64 for about $175 (including the floppy drive) in the mid-80s.
Sorry I missed that in my main post.
The ZeroCorpse @ Jan 26th 2006 3:09PM
"weren't gaming"
hyuck hyuck.
"weren't games"
Kent @ Jan 26th 2006 3:10PM
I forgot to mention that back then Computers were not seen as any kind of competition. If they were, business models didn't account for this. I have no sources for that yet. But considering that is when computers got their gaming foothold...
Also, first post was written in a hurry. I noticed errors in it. Peice it together and I apologize.
oldfart @ Jan 26th 2006 8:55PM
I was 10 at that time. But being from Europe I did not notice the crash. Gaming was not big in Europe until the release of the home computers in the '80 used mainly for gaming: Commodore VC-20, C64, C128, Amiga. The Amstrad CPC 464, 664, etc. The ZX 81, Spectrum and Spectrum+, the MSX and MSX2 standard by Panasonic, Toshiba, Philips, Sony etc.TI-99/4A, the Apple II, Atari 520ST and 1040ST and I am probably forgetting some. The most popular was the C64: from '82 and was made until '92. You could obtain games from various sources. Unlike consoles, anybody could just program some simple game and sell it, publish the source code in a magazine or hand it out to friends on tape or floppy. That made the demo scene possible.
In other words what some in the US remember as crash of '84, I remember as the explosion in computing platforms, software and games.
Jago @ Jan 27th 2006 1:05AM
"Just please stop telling us we gamers didn't have anything new to play for five years. It just isn't true!"
Who is saying that? Sure there were games but like others have said, alot of them were crap and the arcades were closing left and right.
therabidcow @ Jan 27th 2006 4:09AM
It's kind of funny that this debate is happening now. I happen to be taking a course on game programming right now. We're into the second week, and one of the introductory topics was the crash of '83. So I look in my book and find this:
"...In early 1983, with Atari still struggling to recover from E.T., a crash occurred in the video game market. Retailers had tons of unsold games on store shelves, and many of them offered very low quality. Game prices dropped sharply. Titles that previously sold for $40 were selling for 99 cents, which resulted in many companies going out of business. Others would survive, but would never quite recover from the hit."
That's from Daniel Sanchez-Crespo Dalmau's Core Techniques and Algorithms In Game Programming.
And for those of you who are curious, I'm taking the course at Case Western Reserve University.
Guy @ Jan 27th 2006 11:46AM
Is ZeroCorpse really Mel Gibson's dad?
I bet he is, the ol'bigot.
Y'know there was never a man on the moon either.
Brent D @ Jan 27th 2006 3:58PM
I began my video game work in early 1984. To call what happened in 1983 a "crash" is innacurate--it really was a market shift that many industry players failed to pick up on.
Here's some history: The 2600 had only 128 bytes of RAM. The Commodore 64, which debuted in the spring of '83, changed the video gaming world--but only after the price dropped from $599 to $199 in the fall of 1983. 128 bytes versus 64K bytes. No match. And the games for the 2600 were running for $29 each in early '83. Think of that in today's dollars (easily over $100 for each crapola, tiny little game).
I worked on several major titles for the Commodore 64, and sales were booming. Invariably, the games each hit the top of the Softsell charts in Billboard magazine literally days after we released them. The 2600 had just worn out its welcome, at least as far as the big bucks were concerned.
The C64 similarly outmuscled ColecoVision and Intellivision, with better graphics and sound, but reliability is another issue...
The C64 reigned in gaming right up until the NES was released in late 1985, yet still had a popular following until about 1988 in the U.S. (longer in Europe). To call the period from 1983 to 1985 a crash is to ignore a major player in the industry.
stonic @ Jan 27th 2006 4:21PM
@zerocorpse
How is it your definition of the crash is different from just about everyone elses? Yes, there was a crash, in everyone's perspective. Gamers suffered to some extent being that 90% of the companies went out of business (and not "willingly" either). No, of course video games never disappeared completely, and I can't believe anyone would be dumb enough to argue otherwise. No, E.T. is not the "worst" game ever made, or even the worst 2600 game. And NO, E.T. did not cause the crash. It was a contributing factor -nothing more. If anyone believes just one single game can effectively wipe out an ENTIRE industry, what can I say? You're an idiot.
Here's HOW it crashed. A lot of software companies started up in 1982. So many in fact that there was a glut of product on shelves- most of it being awful. Atari didn't help matters with inferior ports like Defender and esp Pac-Man. At the end of 82 Atari announced their 4th Quarter sales estimates were to be a 10-15% increase, instead of the 50% they orginally predicted. It's important to note that they weren't losing money at that point; they just weren't going to make enough (!). Warner's stock took a big hit after that. Atari ended the year by releasing E.T. By the following year sales for everything plummeted. Nearly all of the 82 start-up companies closed down in 83, but instead of throwing out their product (Atari had the right idea, but for the wrong reasons), they gave it retailers for practically next-to-nothing. People may be dumb, but they're not going to spend $25 for Atari's new game when they can buy one for $2, no matter how many great reviews it gets. By the end of 83 Warner was looking at half a BILLION in losses. If all those 3rd-party companies hadn't dumped their stock on the market, Atari (and stable companies like Mattel or Imagic) could have easily recovered from mistakes like Pac-Man and E.T. Instead, much like E.T.'s ending, the whole industry went into hibernation until someone came along to revive it.
Arcade earnings were but a fraction of home sales but were still far above what they had been. Like home games, operators saw the same drop in 82-83. Laserdisc games were the last-ditch efforts to sustain their earnings growth, and when that failed, most arcades closed, and operators sent many an arcade game to the dumpster.
As for Atari making more E.T. then there were systems for, that's been a rumor for many years, but there's NEVER been any evidence to back it up. There *is* evidence however Atari did that with Pac-Man (as quoted right from Atari's former CEO, Ray Kassar). Atari made 12 million Pac-Man carts in 82 and sold just over 7 million. Best estimates are that there were close to 10 million 2600 systems by the end of 82. It's thought that Atari made around 5 million E.T. carts (nobody knows exactly how many- yet), selling 2.5 that Christmas, and another half a million in 83. Guess what other game ended up in the desert, and most likely in greater numbers?