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Video Game crash of 1983

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

RandyT:

--- Quote from: ark_ader on September 02, 2012, 01:05:41 pm ---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.....

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote from: Ravenger on September 02, 2012, 12:40:19 pm ---They had faster processors, more colours (128).....

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: RandyT on August 31, 2012, 05:26:23 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.



--- Quote from: Haze on September 01, 2012, 02:42:41 pm ---
but why only in the US? 
--- End quote ---

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



--- Quote from: yotsuya on September 02, 2012, 12:18:04 am ---
--- 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.

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: alfonzotan on September 03, 2012, 10:37:38 am ---Ever been to Alamogordo?  Trust me, it was well-chosen for that particular job.  That place IS a dump...

--- End quote ---

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

vanrose72:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on September 03, 2012, 06:17:04 pm ---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

--- End quote ---

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.  :laugh:

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.

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