
Video game crash of 1983 - amorphous
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983
======
kabdib
I was at Atari from 1982 to 1987. During the heart of the crash, I remember
attending a meeting with a bunch of 2600 programmers and marketing types, and
the new Atari CEO (a guy from the tobacco firm Philip Morris -- I forget his
name -- who spent the whole meeting chain smoking).

The meeting was supposed to be a brainstorming session for a 2600 game related
to some Warner film that was coming up. It did not go well. The tone in the
room from the programmers was that everything on the 2600 had been done, and
that the platform had been tapped out. The marketing folks just wanted pixels
on the screen and didn't give a damn about the content. I think it might have
been the Philip Morris guy's first exposure to the toxicity of Atari marketing
and the jadedness of the Atari programmers; his eyes just kept getting bigger
and the smoke started coming out of him faster as the meeting wore on.

In the end, I think that a programmer and an artist were sent off with some
notes and told to "go think about it some more," and that's the last anyone
ever heard of that project. Less than six months later Atari was essentially
gone, split into the coin-op group, and Jack Tramiel's Atari Corp (which
shipped the Atari ST less than a year later).

Most 2600 games were crap, and consumers knew it and stopped buying terrible
games. I don't blame them. Atari made some boneheaded decisions with its new
consoles (the non-centering joystick on the 5200 is a classic Atari move). In
the spring of 1984 the company was losing several million dollars a day (2M?
3M?) and wasn't a sustainable business, given the market and its burn rate.

~~~
msla
> Most 2600 games were crap, and consumers knew it and stopped buying terrible
> games.

Right. The biggest reasons for the crash were the lack of try-before-you-buy
and the lack of good-quality reviews.

(Eh... ever note how "good review" means a review that paints the product in a
good light, as opposed to a review which is, itself, high-quality? Ditto "bad
review", _mutatis mutandis_? Maybe this influences why nobody reviews
reviews.)

The industry practice of paying for good reviews (either buying them outright
or _stopping_ payment of "free" games and such if unfavorable reviews get
published) is classic quarterly report thinking: It works in the short term,
at least arguably, but it damages the industry overall and sets it up for...
another crash.

~~~
toast0
> Right. The biggest reasons for the crash were the lack of try-before-you-buy
> and the lack of good-quality reviews.

This wouldn't have mattered if there weren't so many crap games. Nintendo
addressed this by strictly limiting the number of releases, as well as having
a thorough pre-release review process. Atari couldn't do that, since there was
no way to police it, and anyway they wanted to shovel out crap themselves.

~~~
boomboomsubban
> Nintendo addressed this by strictly limiting the number of releases, as well
> as having a thorough pre-release review process. Atari couldn't do that,
> since there was no way to police it, and anyway they wanted to shovel out
> crap themselves.

This is only true of Nintendo outside of Japan, and pretends that both
Nintendo and Atari had some aversion to shipping crap games. Atari being able
to limit third parties wouldn't have stopped ET, and Nintendo of America still
published their own sweet of terrible games.

~~~
toast0
Since the crash mostly affected the US (see all the Europeans wondering what
the crash was), that Nintendo reviewed games only for the US/Europe is
appropriate.

Also I'm not sure you read my whole comment -- anyway they wanted to shovel
out crap themselves, refers to Atari shipping lots of crap games.

I don't think Nintendo released that many crap games to the US, and they also
didn't realease too many, 17 at launch in 1985, 10 in 1986, 9 in 1987, and
then fewer per year after that. Atari released 22 games in 1982, in addition
to the flood of third party titles that were released that year.

~~~
0xabe
You’ve never watched the Angry Videogame Nerd[0], have you?

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbQ-
gSLYQEc6IWgKJNOMU...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbQ-
gSLYQEc6IWgKJNOMUONgtNXdwVcDC)

------
deadmetheny
It's worth noting that the '83 game crash was really a United States
phenomenon - Europe and Japan's industries got along just fine during that
time period.

------
amorphous
> Revenues peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100
> million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97 percent)

These are mind-boggling numbers I can't imagine happening today in any
industry. And this was _before pirating_. And despite growing up being an
absolute fanatic about video games, like everyone else of my friends.

~~~
rplnt
This was definitely not before pirating.

Some C64 games came on cassettes and were extremely easy to pirate (compared
to cartridges). And even before that, arcade games were "pirated", so instead
of a license an operator would buy a clone.

Of course the scale would be different than it was with the Internet around.

~~~
ChristianGeek
No kidding. I was working on a game for the Atari 800 in 1980 and got a floppy
disk with a bunch of pirated games from a friend of mine that included a copy
of my incomplete game! To this day I have no idea how that happened.

------
Djvacto
From what I understand, a big proponent in the revival (which was centered
around the birth of the NES) was that Game Consoles were marketed more as toys
than computers, right?

So instead of finding the NES next to your other PCs at the time, it was near
the toy aisle?

I don't have a specific source for this, besides some memory of podcasts and
articles touching on the topic throughout the years.

Anyone who maybe was able to witness the revival able to comment with their
anecdotes?

~~~
wilsonnb3
That was a large part of it.

Nintendo also didn't try to oversell the systems capabilities or the games,
which was a big problem with the marketing materials for older games and game
systems.

They also limited 3rd party companies ability to make games for the system
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_(Nintendo)#10NES](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_\(Nintendo\)#10NES))
to ensure a certain degree of quality. That's also the origin of the gold
Nintendo Seal.

The NES also had _Super Mario Bros_ as a launch title in the US and that game
holds up incredibly well to this day. It was truly a big leap in video game
design, especially considering games like _Ms Pacman_ and _Donkey Kong Jr._
were winning Best Game awards in magazines the year before the NES launched.

Lastly, the Light Gun and _Duck Hunt_ were also big system sellers. As far as
I know, no other console had an experience like that and much like the Wii and
the DS, gimmicks like that are very popular among people who don't play a lot
of traditional video games.

You should also consider the velocity that Nintendo launched into the console
industry with. A year after the NES came out, _The Legend of Zelda_ came out
which was another giant leap in game design and the first home console game to
allow you to save your progress. Two years after that _Super Mario Bros. 3_
came out which was an absolutely massive leap over the first _Super Mario
Bros_. A year after that they launch the GameBoy and suddenly you can play
_Super Mario Land_ on the go.

Nintendo was responsible for a lot of innovation in a very short amount of
time.

~~~
kulahan
What's wild is the fact that Nintendo has consistently innovated in unexpected
ways pretty much the entire time they've been around. Whether it's control
schemes, new takes on mobile gaming, their camera controls for 3D gaming in a
world that hadn't really seen genuine 3D games before, etc.

They're constantly bringing new stuff to the table, so even though each
iteration of Mario might not be that far off from the previous one design-
wise, you're approaching it in a completely fresh way.

~~~
wilsonnb3
Yeah they are definitely my favorite video game company for that reason.

I find it amusing that their long and innovative history also includes things
like selling instant rice, their own "love hotels" for people to use with
prostitutes, and a taxi company in the time after their playing card business
declined but before their video game business took off.

"Nintendo" could mean something very different today had certain parts of
their business performed differently.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo#History)

------
ArtWomb
More than "saturation", my key takeaway is the crash was triggered by
"quality". With the apocryphal example of _E.T._ being such a travesty to the
art of video game creation that unsold copies would wind up in a landfill in
New Mexico. And Atari posting a half a billion dollar loss for the quarter.

It also helps to explain the rise of Nintendo. Just few years post-crash you
are starting to see _SMB2_ , _Zelda_ , _Metroid_. With the sheer joy Miyamoto-
san had in the creation process, evident in the final result. By the end of
the decade a Nintendo device could be found in virtually every US household.
And even Tetris for the GameBoy enjoyed a certain veneer of polish and
infinite playability that lasts to the present moment.

~~~
ASalazarMX
> E.T. being such a travesty to the art of video game creation

People love to bash E.T., but it was a good game for its time, just hard to
grasp without the included manual.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Also, though copies of E.T. ended up in a New Mexico landfill, they did so
alongside many other Atari games as Atari was just emptying warehouses.

------
ilamont
As a 13-year-old at the time, it was depressing. The consoles and console
games of the late 70s/early 80s seemed to have plateaued, and the PC-like
systems that were heralded as replacements were expensive and didn't really
have many good games.

At home, I had a Colecovision console whose most impressive game was a 3D
platformer, Zaxxon. The rest of the Colecovision catalogue was lame. I also
had a Vic 20 which didn't have any real games of note (although it was
interesting if somewhat frustrating to type in some BASIC games from
magazines).

I had access to Apple II+ and IIe machines at school and a neighbor had an
Atari 800. Choplifter was probably the most impressive thing on either one. I
remember a lot of people being really disappointed by the Atari 800 as it was
made by a gaming company yet didn't have anything that was really that fun.

(This was, incidentally, the same time that text adventures were getting a
shot in the arm with Zork and the follow-up games, but that was different than
the action games teens like me craved)

At that point I kind of dropped away from gaming and got into music in a big
way. The NES didn't gain traction until I was in college in the late 80s, and
by that point I was more interested in some of the arcade games that were
popping up in the basement of the student union.

~~~
js2
Castle Wolfenstein, Lode Runner, Karateka, Ultima, Wizardry...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_II_games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_II_games)

I don't ever remeber being bored for want of games. My house is where the
neighborhood kids went to play video games.

And what I remember about my Atari 800 is that it got so much play we were
comstantly having to repair or replace the terrible joysticks because the
bubble switches on the circuitboard would wear out too easily.

------
wilsonnb3
If anyone is interested in learning more about this topic, I highly recommend
reading _The Ultimate History of Video Games_ . [1]

I picked it up on a whim at a thrift store and found it to be very informative
and engaging. You'll also see some familiar names in there as it spends a lot
of time talking about Atari.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-History-Video-Games-
Pokemon-...](https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-History-Video-Games-Pokemon-
ebook/dp/B003FCVF6I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1534435722&sr=8-2&keywords=history+of+video+games)

~~~
amorphous
I also enjoyed _High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games_ [1].
The photos bring back a lot of memories

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/High-Score-Illustrated-History-
Electr...](https://www.amazon.com/High-Score-Illustrated-History-Electronic)

------
wgerard
I always wonder if this "hype->saturation->blow up->recovery and ultimately
more stable and serious growth" cycle applies to other industries as well -
arguably that's a bit of what happened during the dot-com boom to internet-
based businesses, so it doesn't seem totally insane.

On the other hand, there have obviously been plenty of "hype->saturation->blow
up->die forever" cycles as well, so maybe it's not a great thing to bet on.

Basically, now I'm wondering which of the two patterns things like
cryptocurrencies fall into (I'd also mention real estate, but it seems like
it's clear which one it's falling into).

Interesting to note that it seems like most of the actual companies involved
in the "blow up" phase don't become part of the "stable and serious growth"
phase, so maybe that doesn't bode well for the existing coins.

Side note: This article finally illuminated the origin of the name "Famicom"
to me, and I can't believe it took me so long to realize the origin of that
name.

~~~
toast0
The key difference between die forever and recovery (which sometimes comes
with another hype cycle) is the underlying utility/value of the thing. Real
estate in places people actually want to live will "always" recover, because
there's underlying value in somewhere to live (but people may not always want
to live in the same places). Video games came back because decent games are
fun. 3D movies seem to come back for another round of hype cycle every so
often, but they don't seem to offer enough real value to offset the cost of
producing them or viewing them, so we're kind of in the stable and stagnant
phase. Crystal Pepsi and other clear colas obviously have no redeeming value,
so it's probably not coming back again.

A lot of the companies in video games around the time of the blow up are gone
now, but some of them survived -- Nintendo was early and is still around, Sega
survived until much after the crash. The crash wasn't good for Atari, but it
sort of survived into the 90s, and it had a lot of corporate shenanigans too.
It doesn't seem that unusual that so many companies in a field aren't around
30 years later.

Re: cryptocurrencies, who knows, but the real question is if they're really
useful compared to traditional banking, for enough people for it to offset the
tremendous escalating costs of running the network.

~~~
wgerard
> A lot of the companies in video games around the time of the blow up are
> gone now, but some of them survived -- Nintendo was early and is still
> around, Sega survived until much after the crash.

Wait, but the Famicom wasn't even released until 1983 (the year of the crash),
and the Genesis wasn't released until '88, so it seems like those companies
really rose from the ashes of the crash - even though Nintendo had been
dabbling in video games since the 70s, the Famicom was their first attempt to
really hit the US market it seems.

> Re: cryptocurrencies, who knows, but the real question is if they're really
> useful compared to traditional banking, for enough people for it to offset
> the tremendous escalating costs of running the network.

Don't mistake this by any means as me being a fanatic, because by no means am
I anything less than incredibly skeptical of cryptocurrencies: I question
whether it's just because nothing has really managed to prove that fruitful
yet in comparison to the overwhelming use of them now as speculative
investments.

For example, we had to send a payment to someone who lives in a commonwealth
country - what a pain in the ass that was. For the first time I actually saw a
use for bitcoin, but the volatility and my general desire not to run afoul of
any weird money laundering laws got the better of me.

~~~
ChickeNES
>the Genesis wasn't released until '88,

Sega released the SG-1000 on literally the same day as the Famicom's launch.
In 1985 they introduced the Sega Master System, an upgraded SG-1000.

~~~
wgerard
Oops! You are correct, though it looks like the SG-1000 was never released
outside of JP. Still, not pre-crash.

------
apo
_The U.S. game industry lobbied in Washington, D.C. for a smaller $1 coin,
closer to the size of a quarter, arguing that inflation (which had reduced the
quarter 's spending power by a third in the early 1980s) was making it
difficult to prosper.[17] During the 1970s, the dollar coin in use was the
Eisenhower dollar, a large coin impractical for vending machines. The Susan B.
Anthony dollar was introduced in 1979, and its size fit the video game
manufacturers' demands, but it was a failure with the general public._

I found no evidence that the video game industry specifically lobbied for the
diameter of the Anthony dollar. Is there any?

~~~
hakfoo
It's likely that they picked a size that fit within the entire vending space--
not arcades specifically.

The mechanisms on old games-- like other vending machines-- could be
configured with gates to accept different size coins, but they probably topped
out at a maximum size smaller than the Eisenhower. So a machine with a big
enough opening to take, say, a UK 10p would be able to accept a SBA if you
snapped the right gate over it.

------
crististm
The Pacman port was very good considering the limitation of the console but is
an obvious disappointment for the consumer.

I rhetorically wondered what lesson we as engineers could learn from this...

~~~
DerekL
No, it should have been better. The Atari 2600 Ms. Pac-Man port was what Pac-
Man should have been.

~~~
LocalH
It was decent, given the ROM size limitation and development crunch that Tod
Frye was placed under.

------
pavel_lishin
I wonder if someone can help me identify a game I recall from my youth. I
recall it being a computer game, and you started off in a jail cell. You could
move around, there was a bed, and a window - I think you could jump.

I was young enough that I couldn't figure out how to even escape the cell, if
that was even the intent of the game. I played it in Russia, sometime in the
80s or maybe even early 90s,

The only other thing I remember is that the computer also had Dangerous Dave
in the Haunted Mansion on it.

~~~
ihattendorf
Escape from Rungistan? On the Apple II.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Hm, I don't think so - and I think this might have been a DOS game. That's an
excellent candidate, though!

~~~
ihattendorf
Maybe La Fuga / The Fugitive[1] or Eden Blues[2]. That's all I remember
though.

[1]:
[http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/fugitive](http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/fugitive)

[2]: [https://www.retrogamer.net/retro_games80/eden-
blues/](https://www.retrogamer.net/retro_games80/eden-blues/)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Holy shit, I think it's Eden Blues! Thank you!

------
teddyh
Recommended relevant YouTube video (7 minutes):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikIeaCE3Ljc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikIeaCE3Ljc)

------
corysama
Atari could have been Nintendo. But, they were so determined to pry-bar out a
few extra millions for a few years that they missed out on making billions for
decades.

------
classichasclass
I remember Kaybee blowing out Intellivision games for next to nothing when the
bottom fell out. We filled up our cabinet quick.

But it was prophetic, because it was the Commodore 64 I moved to next, and I
hardly touched the Inty after that.

~~~
fatnoah
My parents got me a used C64 with almost literally everything (monitor,
printer, light pen, speech synth, fast load, disk drive, tape drive) and close
to 100 games and apps for my 8th birthday in 1983. Knowing what they made and
how much that probably cost, it was a huuuuggee investment for them. That one
thing, more than anything else, impacted my life. I started programming basic,
learned word processing (hello GeoWrite), got online with QuantumLink, created
a fake newspaper for my house, and got my first taste of the potential for
gaming beyond consoles. There's just no way consoles could compete with that.

