Video Game crash of 1983

[Gray_Area]

I noticed things at that age, but I had no knowledge to comprehend them. I did know quality when I saw it, and instantly panned all the arcade ports - except for Coleco's stuff. When the 5200 came out, I seriously wonderd why the hell they were still pushing games for the 2600. It obviously was an inferior unit. They should've realized that (even recent) 2600 buyers who felt left out/abandoned would've slunk away for a little bit, but would've come back. Following such logic across the board probably would've averted the catastrophe.

[RandyT]

Always cracks me up to see Tele-Games mentioned on those flyers.  When I lived in Dallas county that remains of that company was literally a guy's garage in a house down the street.  Went to school with his daughter.  I have no idea if that was ever truly an actual company or just a dude importing and reselling stuff.  But I about ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- my pants when I saw an ad for them in GamePro and the address on it was 4 blocks away.

   Tele-Games was Sears' re-branded Atari 2600 stuff, because, you know, it's better if Sears makes it.  What company are you talking about?

They should've realized that (even recent) 2600 buyers who felt left out/abandoned would've slunk away for a little bit, but would've come back. Following such logic across the board probably would've averted the catastrophe.

They thought the same way.  The 5200 was not well received and was plagued with controller problems.  They tried again with the 7800, which was an improvement across the board, and offered backward compatibility to the 2600.  And still, consumers didn't come back.   The market was very different 25 years ago.

[ark_ader]

Telegames....

Was that the console with black triangle joysticks?

[Zero_Hour]

Telegames....

Was that the console with black triangle joysticks?

I believe you are thinking of the Fairchild Channel F

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Channel_F

[Gatt]

They should've realized that (even recent) 2600 buyers who felt left out/abandoned would've slunk away for a little bit, but would've come back. Following such logic across the board probably would've averted the catastrophe.

They thought the same way.  The 5200 was not well received and was plagued with controller problems.  They tried again with the 7800, which was an improvement across the board, and offered backward compatibility to the 2600.  And still, consumers didn't come back.   The market was very different 25 years ago.

Keep in mind that a video game back then was a 5 or 10 minute experience with little to no personal involvement,  in contrast to later years where a game could last 40 hours or more,  had narrative,  and often the Player is involved in the game's direction as it plays out.  The games were designed after arcade game design philosophies,  and the result was a experience that failed to cause long-term engagement.

Which,  I'd argue is a lesson we're about to relearn as companies discard narrative and single player games in favor of multiplayer-centric design and free-to-play designed around a business plan instead of a good game idea.  IMO today's market bears more similiarities with the 2600 generation than any other generation.

[DrumAnBass]

The most vivid memory I have of the crash was seeing a clearance bin in the local supermarket, piled high with 3rd party 2600 game carts for $4 each, along with 2600 compatible joysticks for $5... In a SUPERMARKET!  By that time, I had moved on to the C64 and knew that times, they were-a-changin'

[fantoboy]

I moved to Japan in 83 (Air Force brat), when the Famicom (NES) was new and hadn't hit the US yet.  So 83 was actually a great year for video games as far as I was concerned.

[RandyT]

Keep in mind that a video game back then was a 5 or 10 minute experience with little to no personal involvement,  in contrast to later years where a game could last 40 hours or more,  had narrative,  and often the Player is involved in the game's direction as it plays out.  The games were designed after arcade game design philosophies,  and the result was a experience that failed to cause long-term engagement.

I think you are looking at the past through a modern filter.  In those days, that number at the top of the screen reigned supreme.  The score meant something to players, and playing a game for 40 hours was nothing in the quest to get that number higher.  After a friend and I got good at Yar's Revenge, we sat in a room for 24 hours straight and played it until we could roll the score, which we did a did at least twice in the same game.

While games with a narrative are appealing nowadays (they really weren't at first), the fact that they have an end does more to disengage players from the game.  It does, however, keep GameStop in business .

[SavannahLion]

Thanks Randy, what I came up with was a lot less civil.

To put it in perspective.
This ~~> cannot fit into the Atari 2600 6507 RAM space yet every game had to run with 128 bytes of RAM.

This ~~> is too large to fit on an Adventure cartridge, yet Warren Robinett managed to pack an entire adventure game PLUS the first Easter Egg into 4K of ROM space.

Personally, I find Adventure more captivating than staring at .

[DaveMMR]

I wonder how much that ET 2600 cartridge is worth today?

Next to nothing. 

I think you are looking at the past through a modern filter.  In those days, that number at the top of the screen reigned supreme.  The score meant something to players, and playing a game for 40 hours was nothing in the quest to get that number higher.  After a friend and I got good at Yar's Revenge, we sat in a room for 24 hours straight and played it until we could roll the score, which we did a did at least twice in the same game.

While games with a narrative are appealing nowadays (they really weren't at first), the fact that they have an end does more to disengage players from the game.  It does, however, keep GameStop in business .

+1 A lot of people can't believe that people spent so much time playing these archaic games but it definitely wasn't 5-to-10 minute bursts. For me, getting the score to roll was the modern equivalent of "beating a game". And a lot of these old Atari and Coleco games had a large number of difficulty settings to master, so there was more replay value than people think.

As for the crash: I personally didn't realized it happened until years later, though I do remember now that my parents really stocked up on the Colecovision carts Christmas of 1983 and now I know why. And while a lot of people point all the blame at Pacman and E.T. for the 2600, it really was a combination of many factors - one of them being the rise of the affordable home computer. While carts were being tossed into bargain bins, we were booting up our Commodore 64's, etc. and really enjoying advanced games without knowing our favorite console game publishers were hemorrhaging money behind-the-scenes.

The North American Crash really did shape a lot of what gaming eventually became. You can thank that event for Nintendo's "VCR-like" design of the NES (it can't look like a videogame), the ROB (used to convince retailers it's more of a toy), and the lock-out chips and strict licensing agreements that have been put in place to stem the glut of poor quality, unauthorized games.

[Haze]

There seem to be 2 ways of looking at this.

As mentioned, you could be talking about the arcade games, too many new titles being pumped out on expensive one-off boards, at high cost to operators, not making enough money to cover costs and be able to buy more machines, that's one way to look at it.  Secondly there was the home market.

When people talk about crash the most common stories which come to mind aren't the arcade ones, but the home software, the x copies of ET which went unsold.

If you look at it purely from the perspective of the games you'd probably be sat there wondering 'what crash?'  There's no real discernible dip in output (of arcade games) at any point in the 80s, or 90s, sure there were some games which were rough around the edges, but there must have still been enough demand.

For the home markets, yes, there were a lot of awful games produced early on, but there were awful games produced later too, not much has changed.  The whole ET situation is bizzare, because the blame for the crash often gets pinned on cheap startups wanting to make a quick buck out of games and flooding the market with crap.  ET was a first party Atari game, likewise the terrible port of Pacman yet if you look over here at something like Manic Miner (1983) and Jet Set Willy (1984) they're considered classic games but were basically the only thing ever done by that developer.

At the end of the day if you pay your guys in marketing more than your developers can deliver and leave customers and retailers feeling ripped off or otherwise cheated, then yeah, you're going to end up with a lack of trust.  If retailers (and publishers) were stupid enough to believe their own marketing hype, you're going to get a crash.

So over-investing, over-hyping, under-delivering and somehow actually thinking you're doing things right while being undercut by people who do give a damn about quality is a pretty good recipe for things to go boom, although the music industry still seem to be surviving somehow and they're far worse offenders in all areas?

[Haze]

yeah, I think that's probably what it was, a blip, in a relatively new industry, which sent everybody into panic but ended up being 'wisely' manipulated by some.

[DaveMMR]

As mentioned, you could be talking about the arcade games, too many new titles being pumped out on expensive one-off boards, at high cost to operators, not making enough money, and secondly the home market.

The 1983 crash was all about the home market. When Warner sold off Atari to the Tramiels, it retained the arcade division because it was pretty much the only part of the company making money. The arcades, while not at its peak and definitely on a steady decline, still had life left in them.

For the home markets, yes, there were a lot of awful games produced early on, but there were awful games produced later too, not much has changed.  The whole ET situation is bizzare, because the blame for the crash often gets pinned on cheap startups wanting to make a quick buck out of games and flooding the market with crap.

During the second generation, there wasn't just a bunch of crap - there was WALL-TO-WALL crap. Companies that had no business making games (Ralston-Purina?) were flooding the shelves. Then multiply that times the number of available consoles and home computers (back when you'd release a game for every single system - see the image on this page and caption for example) and you'd see how there just too much choice and too many landmines.

Why the failure of E.T. and Pacman was so high profile was because consumers were looking to Atari, a familiar name, to provide a quality product, figuring most of the other lackluster titles were just from two-bit companies anyway. But they quickly found out that Atari was rushing their games through development as well, with little concern for quality. Consumer confidence drops, carts end up in a landfill, industry crashes, Japan swoops in and takes over.

[Haze]

Why the failure of E.T. and Pacman was so high profile was because consumers were looking to Atari, a familiar name, to provide a quality product, figuring most of the other lackluster titles were just from two-bit companies anyway. But they quickly found out that Atari was rushing their games through development as well, with little concern for quality. Consumer confidence drops, carts end up in a landfill, industry crashes, Japan swoops in and takes over.

but why only in the US?  There was an awful lot of complete crap on the 8-bit systems here too, but most places simply had the sense not to overstock it, and the times the better known publishers did put out a stinker just ended up being soaked up and if a smaller publisher was getting consistently good reviews (at a time when reviews were *honest*) then we saw more of their games on shelves rather than having to be sold direct via mail order.

it worked, and it worked well

[DaveMMR]

but why only in the us?

Simple. Atari, Coleco, Mattel, et al. are American companies. Video games in general were an American industry until we crashed. I'm not familiar with the European market but I am simply guessing less money was at stake. Atari lost billions - with a B.

And it was not only bad software. It was bad software Atari was NOT making money on. Anyone can and did make a cart for Atari and didn't have to give them a dime. There weren't making money on the consoles either until the 2600 jr.

 

[Haze]

but why only in the us?

Simple. Atari, Coleco, Mattel, et al. are American companies. Video games in general were an American industry until we crashed. I'm not familiar with the European market but I am simply guessing less money was at stake. Atari lost billions - with a B.

And it was not only bad software. It was bad software Atari was NOT making money on. Anyone can and did make a cart for Atari and didn't have to give them a dime. There weren't making money on the consoles either until the 2600 jr.

So basically less money was involved, less liability, yet we still had better games in the 8-bit era?

I guess it's true that the likes of Sinclair and Amstrad never pitched themselves as first party developers beyond making the machines although Commodore were popular enough and they weren't based here (but I get the impression they had little impact in the US?).  It was only really in the later days of the Amiga I'd say everything really fell apart here and that again came to technology not living up to hype, reviews which were so paid-for it wasn't even funny (completely broken games getting 90% scores...) etc.

Atari never really made an impact here, apart from the ST, which the majority of people just considered inferior to the Amiga anyway.

I think the diversity is something I miss

[yotsuya]

I think you are looking at the past through a modern filter.  In those days, that number at the top of the screen reigned supreme.  The score meant something to players, and playing a game for 40 hours was nothing in the quest to get that number higher.  After a friend and I got good at Yar's Revenge, we sat in a room for 24 hours straight and played it until we could roll the score, which we did a did at least twice in the same game.

Two of my favorite accomplishments as a kid: flipping the score in Space Invaders from 9999 back to 0000+ (took me what seemed like an hour to do it), and playing long enough to run out the clock in Pitfall!. I later learned that running out the clock didn't actually mean I beat the game.

[SavannahLion]

.....yet we still had better games in the 8-bit era?

There was never a 4-bit era. The 6507 in the Atari is just a crippled version of the 6502, variations of which also found itself in the NES' 2A03 and the Commodore's 6510.

[DaveMMR]

So basically less money was involved, less liability, yet we still had better games in the 8-bit era?

Essentially. But don't forget the "8-bit era" covers the generations before the crash as well as after the crash (i.e. the NES, SMS, etc.) And while you can definitely make a case for the games of that second generation (the 2600, etc.) being better, there was definitely a lack of quality control in place that ruined many a good title. Also, it's easy to think of that era as a golden time - but flip through a VCS price guide or cart list and you'll see pages of WTF entries like "Tooth Protectors", "I Want My Mommy", "Kool-Aid Man" and "Name This Game". (Although ironically enough - some of those titles go for a lot of money today because nobody bought them originally and are rare.)

I guess it's true that the likes of Sinclair and Amstrad never pitched themselves as first party developers beyond making the machines although Commodore were popular enough and they weren't based here (but I get the impression they had little impact in the US?).  It was only really in the later days of the Amiga I'd say everything really fell apart here and that again came to technology not living up to hype, reviews which were so paid-for it wasn't even funny (completely broken games getting 90% scores...) etc.

Those home computers were partially responsible for the crash (the crash refers specifically to home video game console manufactures and publishers.) Before we had the NES, et. al., console manufacturers were trying to turn all their consoles into home computers because that was the next logical step at the time. Mattel released a home computer component as well as Coleco (the ill-fated Adam - which routinely erased the users software due to poor shielding of internal magnetic interference.) Atari also had a line of home computers. But they couldn't compete with the likes of Commodore - that was more powerful and designed as a computer from the get-go and not just a weak console with a keyboard slapped to it. 

[Ravenger]

Atari also had a line of home computers. But they couldn't compete with the likes of Commodore - that was more powerful and designed as a computer from the get-go and not just a weak console with a keyboard slapped to it.

The Atari 8-Bit range were in many ways superior to the C64 - and I say that as someone who is a big C64 fan, and my career started off on the C64.

They had faster processors, more colours (128), better display control hardware - they could change screen modes without the flickering raster lines you got on the C64. Arcade conversions on the Atari tended to be more faithful than the C64 versions. However they were incredibly expensive compared to the Commodore machines, as were the Apple machines of the time. Commodore in the US and Sinclair in Europe pioneered cheap, high volume computers to the masses. They weren't the most powerful or capable, but they were affordable.

[alfonzotan]

Atari also had a line of home computers. But they couldn't compete with the likes of Commodore - that was more powerful and designed as a computer from the get-go and not just a weak console with a keyboard slapped to it.

The Atari 8-Bit range were in many ways superior to the C64 - and I say that as someone who is a big C64 fan, and my career started off on the C64.

They had faster processors, more colours (128), better display control hardware - they could change screen modes without the flickering raster lines you got on the C64. Arcade conversions on the Atari tended to be more faithful than the C64 versions. However they were incredibly expensive compared to the Commodore machines, as were the Apple machines of the time. Commodore in the US and Sinclair in Europe pioneered cheap, high volume computers to the masses. They weren't the most powerful or capable, but they were affordable.

Yep.  Atari never got the price down to the consumer level (as opposed to the enthusiast level) until after Tramiel bought the company and slashed the 800XL down to $99.  By then the C64 had already been selling for $99 for quite a while, and Commodore owned the market.

The original Atari 800 (all the subsequent 8-bit models were just variants of that original design) was a fantastic computer for its time.  The ability to add expansion cartridges for RAM and such by just flipping up a panel was way beyond anything anybody was selling in the consumer market back then.  It just wasn't priced to sell, and the company had a bad "Atari is an island" policy of not dealing with either software or hardware peripheral developers.

[ark_ader]

Atari also had a line of home computers. But they couldn't compete with the likes of Commodore - that was more powerful and designed as a computer from the get-go and not just a weak console with a keyboard slapped to it.

The Atari 8-Bit range were in many ways superior to the C64 - and I say that as someone who is a big C64 fan, and my career started off on the C64.

They had faster processors, more colours (128), better display control hardware - they could change screen modes without the flickering raster lines you got on the C64. Arcade conversions on the Atari tended to be more faithful than the C64 versions. However they were incredibly expensive compared to the Commodore machines, as were the Apple machines of the time. Commodore in the US and Sinclair in Europe pioneered cheap, high volume computers to the masses. They weren't the most powerful or capable, but they were affordable.

Yep.  Atari never got the price down to the consumer level (as opposed to the enthusiast level) until after Tramiel bought the company and slashed the 800XL down to $99.  By then the C64 had already been selling for $99 for quite a while, and Commodore owned the market.

The original Atari 800 (all the subsequent 8-bit models were just variants of that original design) was a fantastic computer for its time.  The ability to add expansion cartridges for RAM and such by just flipping up a panel was way beyond anything anybody was selling in the consumer market back then.  It just wasn't priced to sell, and the company had a bad "Atari is an island" policy of not dealing with either software or hardware peripheral developers.

I felt sorry for those kids who got an Atari 400 for Christmas.  Membrane keyboards were never in fashion.



And you had to swap out the BASIC cartridge all the time.....

[alfonzotan]

Atari also had a line of home computers. But they couldn't compete with the likes of Commodore - that was more powerful and designed as a computer from the get-go and not just a weak console with a keyboard slapped to it.

The Atari 8-Bit range were in many ways superior to the C64 - and I say that as someone who is a big C64 fan, and my career started off on the C64.

They had faster processors, more colours (128), better display control hardware - they could change screen modes without the flickering raster lines you got on the C64. Arcade conversions on the Atari tended to be more faithful than the C64 versions. However they were incredibly expensive compared to the Commodore machines, as were the Apple machines of the time. Commodore in the US and Sinclair in Europe pioneered cheap, high volume computers to the masses. They weren't the most powerful or capable, but they were affordable.

Yep.  Atari never got the price down to the consumer level (as opposed to the enthusiast level) until after Tramiel bought the company and slashed the 800XL down to $99.  By then the C64 had already been selling for $99 for quite a while, and Commodore owned the market.

The original Atari 800 (all the subsequent 8-bit models were just variants of that original design) was a fantastic computer for its time.  The ability to add expansion cartridges for RAM and such by just flipping up a panel was way beyond anything anybody was selling in the consumer market back then.  It just wasn't priced to sell, and the company had a bad "Atari is an island" policy of not dealing with either software or hardware peripheral developers.

I felt sorry for those kids who got an Atari 400 for Christmas.  Membrane keyboards were never in fashion.



And you had to swap out the BASIC cartridge all the time.....

Yeah, that was me.  But I didn't know any better, so it worked out okay...

[Ravenger]

One of the best selling upgrades for the 400 was a full moving key keyboard replacement. It was nowhere near a nice as the 800's keyboard though. That was wonderful to type on.

The Atari floppy disk drives were excellent - very fast, if limited in capacity, but the tape drives were terrible. Very slow, and used only one channel of the tape stereo track so it could play audio whilst loading (which was rarely done). Because of that they were very unreliable.

I did have an Atari 800 at one point, but I must have sold it (I can't remember what happened to it). I wish I'd kept it now. I still have my 30 year old Commodore 64, and it works, but the disc drive doesn't read disks any more.

[vanrose72]

An interesting Alamogordo Daily News article from September 1983:

[alfonzotan]

Ever been to Alamogordo?  Trust me, it was well-chosen for that particular job.  That place IS a dump...

[RandyT]

I felt sorry for those kids who got an Atari 400 for Christmas.  Membrane keyboards were never in fashion.

And you had to swap out the BASIC cartridge all the time.....

Yeah, the 400 keyboard wasn't fun.  The system was really aimed at gamers, and to provide an introduction to computing.  It was still a darn sight better than the Odyssey2.

When you had to save your nickels to get one, you were happy to have had the lower cost option.  It was a good move by Atari, in those days, to make the 400 in the form it took.

They had faster processors, more colours (128).....

The problem with the Atari was the odd shaped pixels.  More colors, yes, but the aspect ratio of the pixels in that mode made for some challenges in the graphic design department.  It really cut down on the usability of those modes.  Atari 400/800 didn't have a 16 simultaneous colors mode which was greater than 80 x 192.  The C64 had a pretty major advantage there.

[Gray_Area]

They thought the same way.  The 5200 was not well received and was plagued with controller problems.  They tried again with the 7800, which was an improvement across the board, and offered backward compatibility to the 2600.  And still, consumers didn't come back.   The market was very different 25 years ago.

Yeah, I guess the public (read: men of the household) were still of the 'it should last ten years' generation. That changed very soon, though.

but why only in the US? 

Um.....McDonald's, Booger Sling, etc......in essence, gluttony. Capitalism, yo.

I think you are looking at the past through a modern filter.  In those days, that number at the top of the screen reigned supreme.  The score meant something to players, and playing a game for 40 hours was nothing in the quest to get that number higher.  After a friend and I got good at Yar's Revenge, we sat in a room for 24 hours straight and played it until we could roll the score, which we did a did at least twice in the same game.

Two of my favorite accomplishments as a kid: flipping the score in Space Invaders from 9999 back to 0000+ (took me what seemed like an hour to do it), and playing long enough to run out the clock in Pitfall!. I later learned that running out the clock didn't actually mean I beat the game.

Hell, we'd just let it sit and come back in a while. We got bored playing games that long, and just HAD to go outside and play.

The only game I [cared to play long enough] to get very high - like 1000 pts - was Pick Axe Pete, Odyssey2. God that game bores me to death now. Cover art on the box was great, though. That might be a killer game to re-make, with modern 2D graphics and better AI.


Thinking about it, though, I remember the Vectrex went way down in price. I'd been asking for one, and the crash made it feasible - especially as it was christmas, so I got even more games with it!


Yeah, membrane keyboards blew.  We didn't use our Odyssey2's keyboard that much, and it had problems registering.

[vanrose72]

Ever been to Alamogordo?  Trust me, it was well-chosen for that particular job.  That place IS a dump...

I hear a lot of extra-terrestrials vacation there, so at least someone finds it appealing. 

[vanrose72]

Friend of mine is stationed there, I got the impression it's pretty rural.  Drove through it once and didn't get much of an impression.

He managed to gain 15lbs in 2 months in San Antonio.  Apparently the food choices are pretty miserable, too

My brother and I served in the Air Force in the mid-'90s. He was temporarily stationed at Holloman AFB at one point and didn't mention much about it. 

I had always heard the food in the USAF was better than throughout the rest of the military. It was good to a fault, apparently.

[alfonzotan]

Friend of mine is stationed there, I got the impression it's pretty rural.  Drove through it once and didn't get much of an impression.

He managed to gain 15lbs in 2 months in San Antonio.  Apparently the food choices are pretty miserable, too

My brother and I served in the Air Force in the mid-'90s. He was temporarily stationed at Holloman AFB at one point and didn't mention much about it. 

I had always heard the food in the USAF was better than throughout the rest of the military. It was good to a fault, apparently.

I've spent time at Holloman.  Alamagordo is a typical crappy military small town (disclaimer: I was born and raised in  typical crappy military small town) surrounded by... nothing.  The closest anything (and I mean ANYTHING, as in "other than one gas station") to Alamagordo is an hour and a half's drive away.

There was a good reason why they set off the first atomic bomb there.  Nobody around to notice!

[Mysterioii]

I'm old enough that I really should remember more about the crash, but for some reason I don't.  I remember standing in line waiting for a now-nonexistent department store to open so I could buy a new copy of pacman for about $50 I think, only to find out that it sucked, and then playing the hell out of it anyway because $50 was a hell of a lot of money to my brother and I back then...  I don't recall loading up on tons of cheap games...  maybe we did, or maybe we had worn out our interest in things before the prices dropped, but man I don't think so.  We played the heck out of that 2600.

I remember on a few games like defender and missile command we would play them starting out on the "teddy bear" level just to make fun of how easy they were, then play them until they got hard...  You all remember that?  Certain games had a little teddy bear head icon in the instruction manual to indicate the "kiddie difficulty" setting that was rediculously easy.  They would GRADUALLY get harder, I think I played defender starting on the teddy bear level until I finally lost all my lives, and I was actually kinda spaced out and sick to my stomach when I finally crawled my way back up into the sunlight...

If nobody else remembers the teddy bear levels then, um, I was just kidding about all that... 

[yotsuya]

I remember the teddy bear levels!

Remember Atari's marketing on games? ZOMG 62 VARIATIONS OF ASTEROIDS ON ONE CARTRIDGE! Then you find out half of those are two player versions, half of those are speed variations, and maybe there are really only 4 ACTUAL variations on game play. It was so awesome.

[Mysterioii]

Haha I give them credit because at least there were some variations...  especially things like air/sea battle and combat...  If I recall correctly, another element with Asteroids was "what happens when you pull back on they joystick" since the controls were so limited...  I think some variations had a shield, some had a "hyperspace" thing where you just jumped to a random area of the screen, and I believe some had a "flip" feature where your ship would instantly do a 180 so you could shoot behind you... not sure if there were any other "events tied to pulling back on the stick" variations there...

I think Breakout had some pretty significant variations too, but man it's been a while...

[yotsuya]

I actually prefered shield on Asteroids as opposed to the default hyperspace.

[alfonzotan]

"Maze Craze" was one of the better examples of the Atari "multiple games" schtick. 

[SavannahLion]

I remember the teddy bear levels!

Remember Atari's marketing on games? ZOMG 62 VARIATIONS OF ASTEROIDS ON ONE CARTRIDGE! Then you find out half of those are two player versions, half of those are speed variations, and maybe there are really only 4 ACTUAL variations on game play. It was so awesome.

Air Sea Battle probably had the worst.  Bomber vs three jets?

What sucked ass was having to "flip" through n variations before getting to the n+1th. And if you went too fast you'd have to cycle through again.

Of course, which was worse? That or Cheetahman?

[ahofle]

Air Sea Battle probably had the worst.  Bomber vs three jets?

That was Combat thank you very much.  I actually found that bomber vs 3 jets to be useful as a handicap when playing against your parents or some other unskilled adversary.

[PL1]

Two Dig Dug screenshots for anyone wondering about the teddy bear levels.

The first with the bear (bottom, just right of center) and easier opponents.

The second without the bear and normal opponents.


Scott

[SavannahLion]

Air Sea Battle probably had the worst.  Bomber vs three jets?

That was Combat thank you very much.  I actually found that bomber vs 3 jets to be useful as a handicap when playing against your parents or some other unskilled adversary.

I stand corrected and it was still crap