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[MightyHedgehog]

I was 12 in 1983. My recollection of becoming aware of the crash was a 1984 issue of Electronic Games about the "Great Shakeout":

Awesome, man. I think that is exactly the magazine and article that I referenced in my post.

*goes dizzy from nostalgia waves*

Funny enough, I think we're currently experiencing a similar sort of massive, industry-wide contraction and shifting of focus for the mainstream gaming market right now. Next-gen consoles will not be very traditional, even compared to the evolving forms of them we have now in this gen. Interesting times for vidya games. Kinda too bad arcades had to go away since they were the most accessible and cheapest form of electronic gaming to dip your toes into all of the newest, most cutting-edge stuff for a long time. If you squint, you can almost replace arcade gaming with mobile gaming for the same sort of inexpensive, broadly-appealing, and widely-available outlet for gaming...especially for the masses of more casual players.

 

[Beckx]

Awesome, man. I think that is exactly the magazine and article that I referenced in my post.

Excellent! Video game journalism never recovered, either. That mag was fantastic (or was to the me of 1981-1984). Hard to believe that back then most of the "screenshots" were drawings of what the screen looked like.

Funny enough, I think we're currently experiencing a similar sort of massive, industry-wide contraction and shifting of focus for the mainstream gaming market right now.

Very curious to see where we go from here, with pressures on the model from all directions. My 8 year old dreams not only of making games but of making the console they'll be played on, and doing it all as a small business. I don't have the heart to break it to him about how the business works, but who knows? Maybe when he's 20 it will be different, again.

 

[nolemite]

Some of my uncles had Ataris and Intellivisions and I wanted one really bad. It was a real treat to be able to go over there and play them and there was fighting over who got to take a turn. The games were amazing at the time and there didn't appear to be any crash to me. I loved playing at the arcade as well and they didn't seem hard to come by.

Somewhat unrelated but in 1985 I really wanted an Atari for Christmas and was so disappointed when I received a NES (the package with the gun and robot). Once we turned it on and I realized that I was playing the same Super Mario Brothers that I had played at the arcade I was hooked. I remember dying on the first mushroom the first time I played Super Mario Brothers on my Nintendo that Christmas morning. Great memories.

 

[Carnby]

E.T. wasn't that bad of a game. Am I the only one here that could finish it?

As for my experience, I was only three years old when it happened. But when I was 5 or 6 years old I got an Atari. And because of the crash my mother was able to afford to buy me games. Other wise, as a person who grew up poor, I may not have been able to afford any video games.

 

[GDGF]

1983 Catalogue for Sears (last pre-crash catalogue, video games don't show up again until 1988)
http://www.wishbookweb.com/1983_SearsWishbook/index.htm

Games are listed from $29-44. Here's an Atari page as an example

That catalog has the stand alone driving game I had as a kid. Been trying to remember what it was called for years!

(it was called Driving Game lol)

Plus it informed me that I had the Coleco Gemini as a kid and not the Colecovision.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Excellent! Video game journalism never recovered, either. That mag was fantastic (or was to the me of 1981-1984). Hard to believe that back then most of the "screenshots" were drawings of what the screen looked like.

In general, I do agree. I loved loved loved this one along with Compute! magazine.

Very curious to see where we go from here, with pressures on the model from all directions. My 8 year old dreams not only of making games but of making the console they'll be played on, and doing it all as a small business. I don't have the heart to break it to him about how the business works, but who knows? Maybe when he's 20 it will be different, again.

My daughter is a little bit older, but she is interested in making games...on smart phones and, to a lesser degree, tablets. I'm encouraging her to program and plan her ideas as programs as she has been interested in pursuing it on her own, too. I think it's a valuable early learning experience and a really interesting potential opportunity for something beyond. Gaming platforms, beyond general purpose PCs, certainly could do with some change that better facilitates the creation of unique-thinking independent games that are free of the corporate gatekeeper that large publishers and console platforms have long acted as.


E.T. wasn't that difficult if you were fairly experienced in 2600 gaming, but it wasn't fun...at all.

 

[Het_Nkik]

I was born in 85 so I missed it, but we had a bunch of Intellivision games because of it. I remember my mom telling me she was able to buy a whole pallet of games at Sears for dirt cheap. Actually, I wonder if the Intellivision itself was purchased during the crash? It's not like we had a lot of money back then.

 

[Warm Machine]

I was 8 and it was horrible. The crash hit hard in the small town where I grew up.

What we had before:
I remember seeing TV ads for Colecovision, Atari, Intellivision. A number of stores carried consoles, carts, and computers even in a town of 4000 people. We got the magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthy, Vidiot, and others. Even Games magazine would sometimes have video game content in it. Anything harder to find or really in demand we had to travel to the US or Winnipeg to get.

What we lost:
The ability to actually buy game carts for console or computers. Information on new games and systems dried up nearly completely. The only magazines we saw were PC or Commodore related and they were mostly business focused. Once in a while they would have a single screenshot of a new and extremely popular game, like Kings Quest.

What we kept:
Our "Pool Hall" and "Bus Depot" Both kept getting arcade games during the downturn. Rygar, Rush n' Attack, 1942, and Ikari Warriors came to town. Many many many people had Colecovision or Intellivision in the town and we shared carts all the time, though our controllers were slowly breaking and there were no replacements to be bought or found.

What we heard:
That there was a Colecovision 2 coming. That Nintendo was making a console. An Intellivision 2 was a possibility.

What we gained:
An appreciation for the now. The first time I saw an NES actually running was summer of 87. So there was about 3 long drought years of filling gaming time with my colecovision. First game I ever saw running on it was Super Mario Bros. and it looked incredible.

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

1983 Catalogue for Sears (last pre-crash catalogue, video games don't show up again until 1988)
http://www.wishbookweb.com/1983_SearsWishbook/index.htm

Games are listed from $29-44. Here's an Atari page as an example

Omg, I missed this earlier. Incredible, I haven't seen this in almost 30 years. There's that fucking terrifying gorilla cover for Monkeyshines on Odyssey 2.

 

[microtubule]

1983 Catalogue for Sears (last pre-crash catalogue, video games don't show up again until 1988)
http://www.wishbookweb.com/1983_SearsWishbook/index.htm

Games are listed from $29-44. Here's an Atari page as an example

Wow! Every holiday season, that catalog with a blank piece of paper and a pen ready to make a list. I couldn't wait to reach the G.I.Joe, Star Wars and most of all the Video Games section!!

 

[Sexually Aggressive Uncle]

I remember going to Babbages and being able to pick up 2600 games for a quarter out of a bin. Seemed absolutely crazy at the time but I also remember feeling somewhat indifferent to the demise of the 2600 because I already moved on to the C64.

 

[giggas]

In '83 I was only a year old. I had older brothers though and they had an Atari 2600 with a fair amount of games.

I'm going to assume that most of our games came from the crash because when I was that young my parents hardly had any money.

I do have a very distinct memory of my Dad coming down into the room and taking the bag off of a brand new Colecovision, Atari Adapter and a handful of Coleco games. No idea how old I was, but obviously old enough to remember it. Thinking back, I'm positive he likely got as a result of the crash.

I actually IMed my brother while writing this. He says he was with my Dad at the time he purchased it. Said they were just out and happened across it and my Dad bought it, so it had to be dirt cheap. He said they went back a month or so later to get more games for it and they were cleared out.

I still have that Coleco along with Donkey Kong and Venture. The video out on it doesn't work well though, I've been meaning to try and fix it.

 

[Dark Octave]

Oh my god. This thread just made me realize how I had so many Atari games as a kid. When I was maybe 5 or 6 my dad came home with two Atari 5200s and a box full of games. Maybe 50 or more. Later on I got a 2600 and another box full of games. Up until now I never knew how he got all these games. I thought maybe he picked them up at a garage sale or a friend/co-worker, which could still be the case. I've even joked that he must have robbed someone for them, but people here saying games back then were 99 cents because of the crash puts a little more light on the situation.

 

[flyover]

Playing the Apple IIe mostly. Which is what most people were doing on their C64s and Atari 400/800/XLs and Apple IIes while this supposed video game crash was happening. In other words, I always thought the "crash" was a bit of after-the-fact hyperbole. Sure, the Atari 2600 and Intellivision markets dried up really quick, but this is also when PC gaming really started to take hold.

Yeah, that's about how I felt about it. I was about 11, and I never noticed a crash -- though I'm sure the companies that lost money did.

I just switched over to playing more and more Apple II games. As far as I was concerned, the Apple II was primarily a gaming console, already. To me, it just seemed like a natural progression from (and improvement upon) the consoles.

Except for playing NHL on a Genesis, I only played Apple II and DOS/Windows games from 1983-97, when FF VII inspired me to get a PlayStation.

 

[GDGF]

Here's a nice All Your History that sums up the crash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvHcYe2sQ-I

 

[Muffdraul]

As far as games go, still playing my Atari 2600, 5200, and Colecovision. And messing around with programming on my crude but fun commodore Vic 20. I was 19 years old.

You just reminded that I was also dabbling in programming my own games at the time on the TI994A. Right after Return of the Jedi came out I wrote a little Joust rip off with speeder bikes instead of ostriches. I simulated scrolling by changing the terrain at the bottom of the screen about twice per second and fudged the joystick inputs to make it feel like you were going super fast... which ironically was a matter of making the inputs way more sluggish than normal. I used to get this TI hobbyist magazine that had a centerfold every month of a game program all written out in code line by line, you had to sit there and type it all in. After a few months I felt like I knew all there was to know about TI Extended Basic. We didn't have a disk drive so I had to save on cassette tape. Pretty sure listening to my programs load is why I like Aphex Twin and dark ambient shit.

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

The G4 Icons documentary is pretty good if interested. I watched it on youtube a couple months ago.

 

[Eggo]

There was no crash for me. There was only the entrance of the Golden Age of Piracy with the C64, the best game system of all time.

M.U.L.E.
Archon
Karateka
Hardball
Racing Destruction Set
Mail Order Monsters
Super Boulder Dash
Lode Runner
California Games
Ballblazer
Impossible Mission
Pitstop

The list goes on and on. Crash? What crash? If anything, gaming got better.

 

[bjork]

There was no crash for me. There was only the entrance of the Golden Age of Piracy with the C64, the best game system of all time.

^ fast hack 'em forever!

 

[Mitsurux]

was 6 at the time, and there wasn't much talk about it on the playground..... but i do vividly remember the discount bins full of games in stores..... (just about every store for that mater it seemed)

 

[SmokedMeat]

There was no "videogame crash".

Arcade scene was still thriving, and I had moved on from Atari 2600 to Commodore 64.

 

[GDGF]

There was no "videogame crash".

Arcade scene was still thriving, and I had moved on from Atari 2600 to Commodore 64.

Nope, not a videogame crash per se, but definitely a home console crash that sent the companies that survived scrambling for other opportunities.

And yeah, I headed to the Arcades to get my fix.

 

[Beckx]

The contemporary term "shake out" is far more apt, I think.

 

[GDGF]

The contemporary term "shake out" is far more apt, I think.

That works

 

[bryehn]

Bins and bins of $0.99 games at department stores. I felt such pure joy as a 6 year old.

"I can buy HOW MANY GAMES!!!???"

 

[Le Singe]

Anything harder to find or really in demand we had to travel to the US or Winnipeg to get.

Hey, someone in my part of the world. Remember the old Long John Silver arcade on Portage or did you never get there?

I used to get this TI hobbyist magazine that had a centerfold every month of a game program all written out in code line by line, you had to sit there and type it all in.

I remember doing some of those. Typing in pages of code and then having to go through it looking for mistakes if it didn't work.

I wonder if it was the younger kids that noticed it more since it was home consoles but older kids that went to arcades a lot or were getting into computer stuff just kind of moved on.

 

[Ramma2]

I was 4. I thought ET sucked.

 

[Corto]

In Europe, more specifically, Portugal, it was never felt. I had a neighbor with a Spectrum Sinclair 48k. The Spectrum Sinclair was huge and it would continue to be so for more 5-10 years. Piracy was rampant with even semi-official stores facilitating bootleg cassettes of the Spectrum games. I was 6 years and I went to the arcades to play Kung Fu Master and old pinball machines manufactured in Spain and modified in Portugal called "Dona Elvira".

The luckier/richer guys had C64s and Apple II. Then upgraded a few years latter to Amiga and Atari ST.

 

[speculawyer]

I was around. One of the things that is often not mentioned is that the PC revolution was just starting to hit critical mass around then. So a lot of gaming moved from the consoles to personal computers. Apple 2, Atari, Commodore, IBM, etc.

So, yeah . . . the Atari 2600 died and the replacement console market was too fragmented. But a lot of geeks were moving on to PCs instead anyways.

 

[lvclix]

In 1984 I was 5 and got a 2600 for Christmass. Nobody told me the industry had crashed so I kept playing it.

This is my story. Down to the age.

 

[bj00rn_]

Everyone around here was too busy with the Vic 20 and Commodore 64 and never noticed any crash, and I doubt we would care if we knew.

 

[drspeedy]

1983 Catalogue for Sears (last pre-crash catalogue, video games don't show up again until 1988)
http://www.wishbookweb.com/1983_SearsWishbook/index.htm

Games are listed from $29-44. Here's an Atari page as an example

me? I wouldn't get a 2600 until years later, but...


MOUNTAIN KING!!!!!

Now there's an adventure game, Nathan Drake... That and Indiana Jones kept me busy every Saturday morning after cartoons (remember those, oldGAF?). I didn't even realize I was playing a system 2 generations behind at that point.

image search turned up this, which I think all of us had in some fashion for some game back then (my map was probably text, telling me where to go in terrifyingly basic terms. I wasn't good at maps back then):

 

[AutumnAve]

In my hometown, at the time of the "crash" I remember going to Alco's (A smallish dept store) had bins of Activision and other 3rd party VCS titles for a dollar at most. I remember snagging a ton of titles, and creating my first backlog.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

I was 8 and it was horrible. The crash hit hard in the small town where I grew up.

What we had before:
I remember seeing TV ads for Colecovision, Atari, Intellivision. A number of stores carried consoles, carts, and computers even in a town of 4000 people. We got the magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthy, Vidiot, and others. Even Games magazine would sometimes have video game content in it. Anything harder to find or really in demand we had to travel to the US or Winnipeg to get.

What we lost:
The ability to actually buy game carts for console or computers. Information on new games and systems dried up nearly completely. The only magazines we saw were PC or Commodore related and they were mostly business focused. Once in a while they would have a single screenshot of a new and extremely popular game, like Kings Quest.

What we kept:
Our "Pool Hall" and "Bus Depot" Both kept getting arcade games during the downturn. Rygar, Rush n' Attack, 1942, and Ikari Warriors came to town. Many many many people had Colecovision or Intellivision in the town and we shared carts all the time, though our controllers were slowly breaking and there were no replacements to be bought or found.

What we heard:
That there was a Colecovision 2 coming. That Nintendo was making a console. An Intellivision 2 was a possibility.

What we gained:
An appreciation for the now. The first time I saw an NES actually running was summer of 87. So there was about 3 long drought years of filling gaming time with my colecovision. First game I ever saw running on it was Super Mario Bros. and it looked incredible.

This story is fascinating.

 

[Corto]

In my hometown, at the time of the "crash" I remember going to Alco's (A smallish dept store) had bins of Activision and other 3rd party VCS titles for a dollar at most. I remember snagging a ton of titles, and creating my first backlog.

That could be a fun thread topic. hehehe "What's your oldest backlogged game that you can remember? Now go finish it."

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

This thread is amazing!
Thank you, all of you, for sharing your stories. I feel like I'm re-living the 80s just by reading all your posts.

 

[Alcoholikaust]

Was 6 and was already dominating the pong scene amongst my friends and family.

 

[Nealand Liquor]

I was 6 and I don't remember a thing. I was too busy watching G.I. Joe, pretending I was Luke Skywalker and playing with He-Man to know anything about the business side of gaming. In fact I had no idea there was a crash until my mid twenties when I started following gaming as an industry more intently.

 

[Liberty4all]

Awesome, man. I think that is exactly the magazine and article that I referenced in my post.

*goes dizzy from nostalgia waves*

Funny enough, I think we're currently experiencing a similar sort of massive, industry-wide contraction and shifting of focus for the mainstream gaming market right now. Next-gen consoles will not be very traditional, even compared to the evolving forms of them we have now in this gen. Interesting times for vidya games. Kinda too bad arcades had to go away since they were the most accessible and cheapest form of electronic gaming to dip your toes into all of the newest, most cutting-edge stuff for a long time. If you squint, you can almost replace arcade gaming with mobile gaming for the same sort of inexpensive, broadly-appealing, and widely-available outlet for gaming...especially for the masses of more casual players.

I miss the arcade era so much. Nothing like chilling with friends smoking a cigarette while playing elevator action or gauntlet or rampage or etc

 

[Cipherr]

I was to young to be fully aware of it.

 

[Margalis]

The "crash" definitely was a crash - a 97% reduction in revenue. 97%!! That's almost unfathomable.

People are stressing now about a 10% dip in revenue. 97% is impossible to wrap your head around and even being alive at the time and reading a lot about I still don't really get it.

Conceptually it's easy to understand that the market was flooded with crap, but video games weren't a fad like Beanie Babies that was inevitably going to evaporate at some point.

 

[SonicMegaDrive]

I was very young at the time, but my only real memories of it were bins of dirt cheap Atari games at K-Mart.

 

[Cheech]

That could be a fun thread topic. hehehe "What's your oldest backlogged game that you can remember? Now go finish it."

I am not sure I would have enough brainpower in my approaching-middle-aged head to complete King's Quest III.

 

[bender]

I was five at the time so my memory is more than a little fuzzy. If memory serves, my older brother was working me over in Joust and I was endlessly fascinated by Moon Patrol. When did Ms. Pacman release on the 2600? I'm sure it was after '83 but I remember writing down my high scores and competing with my cousin.

 

[shadyspace]

Do you guys who were there when it happened think Nintendo should get more credit for reviving the industry?

 

[weemadarthur]

I would've been 5ish, but I have a terrible concept of time.

I remember our family systems and games, but they all sort of blend together.

We had an Intellivion. I had my first exposure to sim games with Utopia, and a medical sim which I played with my brother. He got to pick most games because he was the oldest, and he has six years on me so he was much better at playing. I was often content to watch him. We did multiplayer with SNAFU and Frog...Bog?

We got a NES when it was still fairly new. I tried to love Mario Brothers but it didn't really motivate me. Then dad came home with that gold cartridge, and I was constantly amazed at the amount of content and story in it. It turned me into an RPG gamer.

At some point we got a PC. I played, but never finished, a bunch of shareware text adventure games. I was amazed when they started including still graphics. I played a lot of Rogue and quickly figured out how to abuse save states. We got characters up to the rank of Cheater. I guess it was right.

Eventually I had to start choosing my own games. I bought Myst and The Sims, which kept me busy quite a while. Now I keep up better with what's available and buy tons of games. I never knew the industry had issues, I just adapted my entertainment over the years. When console gaming is slow, I return to PC.

 

[Machine]

In the fall of 1983, I started college. I had an Apple ][+ computer in my dorm room and played a lot of Wizardry and Ultima but nobody was paying much attention to console gaming at the time so I didn't even notice the crash. There were also at least six arcades around campus so a lot of time was spent dumping quarters into machines. Miraculously, one of those arcades has survived to the present day and is a pretty nifty place.

 

[Oblivion]

Were there gaming equivalent bread lines?

 

[scitek]

I was only a year old when the crash happened, but my first gaming system was an old Atari with a 5 1/4" floppy drive that I played some Bruce Lee game, Spy Hunter, and The Last Starfighter on. I was 3 and still have some memory of it. When I was 4 we got an NES and I gamed on it on an old black-and-white TV until I was in 3rd grade or something (I started kindergarten at age 4). My gaming life had a humble beginning, but I was always aware of the predecessors of the NES and Master System because of it.

 

[btrboyev]

No memories of any crash, I was 5 and busy enjoying the Atari 2600 on a black and white tv.