dxtx

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.