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Video Game crash of 1983

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Haze:

--- Quote from: DaveMMR on September 01, 2012, 05:26:12 pm ---
--- Quote from: Haze on September 01, 2012, 02:42:41 pm ---but why only in the us?

--- End quote ---

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.

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: RandyT on September 01, 2012, 02:58:05 am ---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.
--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: Haze on September 01, 2012, 10:56:00 pm ---.....yet we still had better games in the 8-bit era?

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: Haze on September 01, 2012, 10:56:00 pm ---So basically less money was involved, less liability, yet we still had better games in the 8-bit era?

--- End quote ---

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.)


--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: DaveMMR on September 02, 2012, 11:27:10 am ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.

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