Game Over: The 1983 Video Game Crash | Past Pass

Welcome to Past Pass, your first class pass to anything in the past. In this weekly series we explore all things past tense, from interesting locations, people and historical events from the barely known to the well known.

This episode's narrator: Rustle

Credits:
Video Editor: ChaosCelty
Researcher/Writer: fierymairi (Twitter/Instagram)
Audio Production: G. Thomas Craig

#Thinkology #Atari #VideoGameCrash

[charlessantista]

In Brazil, the crash wasn't felt at all. I won my first Atari in 1985 when in the US the NES was launching. By 1985 millions of Ataris were sold in Brazil as well as due to high taxes the NES was impossible to arrive by then. Therefore, like in Europe, we didn't fell the crash at all. Very cool video by the way. Like others requested, please do one about the comic books crash on the 90s!!!

[Savannah_Simpson]

That Purina game always gets mentioned in videos about the crash, but it was a promotional game. No one was going to the store and buying it off the shelf.

[Aries]

I was 10 when this went down. ET was far from the only culprit. Damn near every company was releasing games that were of dodgy quality, at best.

I swear this guy’s not lying when he tells you there was a game called Chase the Chuckwagon.

You read right. A game based on DOG FOOD!

[RobinMoreOrLess]

Most games based on licensed properties or products were garbage in the 80's and 90's, except one that really surprised me:

Nintendo's Super NES had a game based on the soda 7Up, called Cool Spot. It was so much fun. It gad good graphics with the main character's silly personality, a sense of humor, interesting game mechanics, and the story was kinda wholesome.

I lost the game and the Super NES over 11 years ago, and I've looked for it ever since.

[brandonlyon]

Could be interesting if you also eventually talk about the comics crash in the 1990’s right after the spectator boom which lead to Marvel’s bankruptcy. Even today it's argued the comics industry has never properly recovered since the crash.

[bolladragon]

This poor guy gonna get destroyed by his pronunciations of these old companies and consoles.

[Sinn]

The video game industry is heading for another crash and this time it will be global. Unfortunately, it appears history is indeed repeating itself showing quite succinctly that publishers and console manufacturers have learned nothing....

We have a quality issue in the industry today and it's getting worse. Most AAA games today release with a myriad of bugs and developers don't seem to care as long as they're making money. This is compounded further by industry leaders telling us our full priced games will be fixed in a year. Oh but that's only the beginning. All while quality is dipping industry leaders are claiming that they must charge more for their games because of "rising costs." Let's not forget that despite these "rising costs" the industry has raked in 400% profits year-over-year without any signs of slowing down.

Unfortunately, we have seen so much bad behavior from developers that people are losing faith in the industry. Basically, it's not sustainable and in due course it will crash but when? I believe that answers is...when the industry goes full digital it will be the death knell for gaming as we know it.

Addendum- When the industry goes full digital we as gamers will lose our shared history and our consumer rights at the same time. Essentially after the full digital takeover happens we will cease to own anything. Every game sale will become a glorified rental that can be delisted on a whim without recourse. The industry is devaluing its products for short term gains and it's going to cost them big. There is more...so much more but this is enough for now. I will leave you with this...Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have joined together under Microsoft's Azure Network. This was done to eliminate all competition and in due course price fix all of their games. You will own nothing, you will have no consumer rights, your games will be delisted forever, and you can forget about seeing any game sales in the coming totalitarian future. It was a good run while it lasted.

[sandal_thong]

I would have started a video with Atari getting the license to Space Invaders, a must-have game of 1980. Odyssey² was pretty much dead in 1979 as Atari games on 4K ROM were much better than anything made for that system. Space Invaders sold Atari consoles, making Intellivision D.O.A., though it was supposedly superior (like betamax over VHS?) and tried to get market share with its advertising.

Atari then had a good year in 1981 with Missile Command and Asteroids with only limited competition from Activision. They had expected the Atari VCS/2600/Sears Arcade to be done in a few years, but they kept selling and didn't retire and replace it in 1981. By the end of that year they'd sold 10 million and had 70%+ market share. They then got the license for the must-have game Pac-Man.

In 1982, instead of just releasing Pac-Man on their home computers, or using it to launch a new system like the 5200, they put out a lame version in March. However due to Pac-Man fever it was a top seller all year, eventually selling 8 million and helping sell 2-5 million more consoles in 1982 (that they figured out how to produce more cheaply in Taiwan or Hong Kong). But if they'd released a better version on a more-expensive 8K ROM than what they did, would it have sold another 2-4 million copies? It's rumored they produced 10-12 million copies, but that's not confirmed, even though they ended up bundling 1-2 million with new consoles in 1983.

Donkey Kong by Coleco for the 2600 was also a must-have game, but their decision to go for the cheaper 4K ROM too means it lacked a level or two. They say making the first level with diagonal floors was an impressive achievement on the Atari, and it sold over 4 million, being a best-seller like Pac-Man through the end of the year. But again, it was disappointing to some.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was another disappointing "adventure"-type game rather than an action one, and hardly any kids could win it without calling for the walk-through. Yet for some reason it doesn't get the disdain that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial would get. The latter was playable by adolescents, teens and adults who could figure out what to do and how to get out of the pits. But parents of little kids returned this adventure game to stores since it was unplayable and unwinnable for them. Perhaps if both had been action games, like a truck chase and bicycle chase, respectively they'd have been less disappointing?

Atari released 15 games in 1982 and some games didn't sell: like Realsports Volleyball, Football and Baseball, as well as Swordquest: Earthworld and others. They then would release 33 (!) in 1983, so if there were a glut of games, Atari was partly to blame as well. But loss of investor confidence came first, followed by loss of retail confidence with games not selling, followed by loss of consumer confidence.

However, whatever the cause it should be worth noting that Europe didn't have a video game crash. Whether that was because they were a year behind and didn't get a glut of third-party and Atari games that didn't sell or some other reason, bears investigating.

[psyeu]

Response to comment below.... Iwouldnt say incorrect, just a different perspective. Usually you hear the top down story, in which Nintendo is the savior. With the crash representing the total sales, etc. Not the small developer bonanza that it allowed. Id be interested to see a video from the other viewpoint though.

[nicholastosoni]

"What are you going to do [in a _Marathon Man_ video game]--give a video-game root canal?"
I wonder what he had to say at the height of the "Perform unlicensed dentistry on Princess Elsa" video-game fad.

[ComradeCorvus]

My friends family is a bunch of geeks, and they actually have one of the infamous ET cartridges lmao

[Fykis]

I feel like another crash is on the horizon unfortunatly. With oversaturation, no new ideas and the online community filled with cheaters it may deter people from gaming completly.

[robertskitch]

9:22 "this resulted in dozens of game developers, including Atari and Activision who collectively held a big chunk of the market, competing against each other with hundreds of poorly made games"

That's a tad poorly worded. I don't know that all of OG Activision's games were classics, but I'm hard pressed to say that a single one of them was poorly made.

[stevemena]

Did this guy just say “Colayco”? As in Colaycovision? Wtf?

[zxdeopl]

Well done, I was 9 when the crash happened

[TheMahayanist]

Known correctly in Japan as the "Atari Crash"

[KattMurr]

Yes PacMan and E.T. were awful. And I wasn't really into games. A friend had the 2600, so that was my extent of playing games...

[hblackburn]

Rusty Futures... my past, present and future are all not just rusty, but corrosive and have infected me with their tetanus

[VegasD]

Atari tried to what Bally's did...

[lovemadeinjapan]

Why does nobody tell the correct story? SIGH! This was mostly Atari's pain in the US. And it is historically INCORRECT to show Ninendo as saviour. The first year that the NES was succesful in the US was holiday season 1987, but that was nothing near the sales in 1988. So basically there is a 5 year GAP between the not-so-much-of-a-crash in 1983 and the NES gathering succes.
The gaming industry in between (1983-1985) is maybe THE MOST EXCITING time in game history as small companies took over and indy development became mature thanks to the DIY attitude promoted by the C64, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and all other early eighties home computers. In 1990 Nintedo basically came to ruin it all again, as game development had become to complex, and they tightened the market and went into a lock-and-protect war with SEGA. The real saviour from that was Sony, which finally started to open things and let anybody develop for the Playstation 1, and started the very rich gaming industry we see today.