Here is a Video Games article scan from 1983 Rolling Stone magazine

[RIVER]

Got a few old Rolling Stone mags today at a flea market, this one is issue 391-March 17th 1983 with Jessica Lange on the cover. It has this article in it on video games, just thought some of you might enjoy.

Edited September 2, 2007 by RIVER

[theking21083]

That's some mighty good readin!

[BydoEmpire]

Very cool, thanks for posting. I love precrash gaming magazines & articles.

[opeygon]

an excellent find river! i think this underscores what a major achievement it is that we can finally market movie based video games successfully today. or even make movies based on video games (ie tomb raider, resident evil ect...). we all knew this would happen sooner or later as soon as the technology allowed it, it's just crazy to think about it. we are living in the future

[Prodos8]

Nice article.

 

I wonder if they imagined, back then, that people would still be playing the VCS and other classic games in 2007?

[SINGLE TOOTH]

I like that the author knows what he's talking about, and gets a little into the tech aspect of gaming.

[Zwackery]

very useful, thanks for posting!

[Brian R.]

an excellent find river! i think this underscores what a major achievement it is that we can finally market movie based video games successfully today. or even make movies based on video games (ie tomb raider, resident evil ect...). we all knew this would happen sooner or later as soon as the technology allowed it, it's just crazy to think about it. we are living in the future

 

But in one respect nothing has changed. They still make video games to capitalize on the "name" of a movie, and rely on the name to sell the game, whether the game is good or not.

 

An example this year would be Transformers. Big movie. Did great. But the reviews I saw weren't too good. The video game was just one of the ton of marketing tie-ins.

[jboypacman]

Hey thanks River for the article.

[Bruce Tomlin]

OCR

 

ELECTRONICS

 

Videogames that people will play

 

Those with a taste for schlock horror should enjoy the latest release from Wizard Video Games: an interactive version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in which the player assumes the role of video psychopath and gathers points by lopping the heads off of unfortunate figures that stray onscreen. Not as wholesome entertainment as Atari's E.T.: the Video Game and Raiders of the Lost Ark, perhaps, but the idea is the same. Take a hit, any hit, and pound a videogame out of it. So, from television, 20th Century-Fox Video Games offers a M*A*S*H game; from rock music, Data Age serves up journey Escape. The name of the game is the game with the name.

 

This kind of thing can happen when the marketing types at a company run amok. Getting a "hook" to sell the game becomes more important than the game itself. The catch, as the industry is painfully discovering, is that people are more interested in playing games than buying names. E.T. just did not do gangbusters for Atari, nor did the similarly hyped Raiders. The reason is simple: there's no way a videogame sardined into, say, 8K of a game cartridge's memory is going to come close to duplicating the experience of a great film.

 

In fact, the only spinoffs that haven't been disappointments in the home-games business are, not surprisingly, the ones based on the hot arcade games. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, Turbo and Frogger have all sold tremendously well in their cartridge incarnations. That doesn't mean, however, that the home market is captive to whatever succeeds at the arcade. Both Activision and Imagic, two of the leading design companies, have succeeded by custom-tailoring their games to the unique demands of the Atari 2600 VCS (video computer system). The Number One videogame on Billboard's chart is Activision's Pitfalll!--a jungle adventure bearing no resemblance to any movie, TV show, rock group or arcade offering.

 

Until very recently, a videogame was whatever could be played on Atari's VCS. That meant the game had to be fitted to 4K of computer memory in the cartridge and had to rely on a joy stick and blaster-button for control. Squeezing a complex videogame idea onto 4K of memory is like editing a sonnet down to a haiku.

 

Mattel's Intellivision did offer more memory and far better graphics. But as with all early-generation technologies, it offered these added benefits at an added price. Men Coleco introduced its ColecoVision system last year, it startled the industry by offering substantially more memory and processing power than the original Atari unit at a price significantly lower than Mattel's. It also offered different ways to interact with the games. For example, ColecoVision's Turbo, based on the arcade game, is an auto race, so Coleco offers a steering wheel and gaspedal interface to it. More important, Coleco immediately offered top-quality versions of hit arcade games such as Donkey Kong.

 

Atari retaliated by introducing the 5200, a new and improved games machine that delivers extremely good play by expanding the dimensions of memory, processing power and the interfaces to the games.

 

But where does all this innovation leave the original Atari 2600? This is a piece of machinery not to be ignored--there are roughly 12 million of them in households around the country.

 

How do you make the VCS a better games machine? Easy. Make the cartridges more powerful. Give them more memory. Make them "smarter." Instead of putting in 4K or BK of memory, stuff them with 32K or 64K.

 

Why haven't all the games-design companies done this earlier? The reason is money. Cartridges with more memory cost more money, and that puts the squeeze on profit margins. And there was no need to produce better-quality cartridges, because there was really no competition.

 

Now, because true technological competition exists and customers are a bit more discerning about their games, the companies are preparing to launch a new generation of game cartridges for the VCS. A chip-design technique called "bank switching" allows the cartridge makers to swell memory capacity to the point were it begins to rival that of the more expensive systems. Expect to see VCS games that offer sharper color, better graphics, greater plausibility and the ability to use more than a joy stick to hook into games control.

 

Sources within Atari, for example, hint that the company may offer both a piano-style keyboard for music composition and games and a membrane typewriter keyboard that converts the VCS into a low-end computer à la Timex Sinclair 1000. Atari has, in fact, already signaled this upgrading of the VCS by introducing a Trak Ball interface for the machine.

 

But nobody in the videogames business wants to depend solely on the Atari VCS in the future. Imagic, Activision and CBS Software have all announced plans to branch out and make their games compatible with personal computers--such as Atari's 400 and 800 models, Texas Instruments' home computer and the Commodore VIC-20.

 

The older technologies--most notably the VCS--may be tottering at the brink of obsolescence, but there are so many of them around that nobody is going to leave them alone. So if you have one, don't be quick to dismiss it. By the end of this year, there will be a flood of new attachments and games that will transform your VCS from a shabby games vehicle to a super-charged antique classic.

 

-MICHAEL SCHRAGE

 

Home games doing well are those based on arcade games, like Pac-Man (below)

[8bitgamer]

Thanks for taking the time to show that article. Great stuff!

 

On a related note, I highly recommend that anyone interested in classic games go to their local library and looking through the microfiche for old video game articles. Fascinating stuff.

 

http://brettweisswords.blogspot.com/

[Yojimbo]

Thanks RIVER for posting that , good read !

[mos6507]

I find it amusing that they were calling the 2600 an "antique" in 1983.