Did your collection survive the crash?

[HoshiChiri]

I was born in '83, so I wasn't exactly collecting back then.

 

Our NES collection did not survive the years, due to ye standard parental decision of 'we have a new system (Genesis), get rid of the old one'. We did collectively agree as a family that we had made a mistake though, so there was no grand move to get rid of the Genesis as we got older & gained personal entertainment centers. A few games got lost because my sister was given the Genesis (being the oldest). I got my own machine secondhand, then sis decided she didn't want one anymore. The system went to my brother, and the games got divided between us. He later sold what he had. At this point, the only games for both Genesis & NES I remember having but don't now are Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego on the NES, and Lotus 2 on the Genesis. I imagine I'll pick them up eventually.

[Flojomojo]

ye standard parental decision of 'we have a new system (Genesis), get rid of the old one'

All of the hoarding-help advice says that, too. Those people are NO FUN.

[awhite2600]

I still have almost all of the Intellivision games that my family bought before the crash. There were a few that I lent to a friend and never saw again.

 

I had a VIC-20 for about two of years. My parents bought me a C-64 ... but only on the condition that I sell my VIC and games to a neighbor. I have since replaced all of the cartridge games that I had. Still sad that I sold some original VIC-20 cassette games.

[Ransom]

I'd already moved on to computers by the time the crash occurred, and had sold off my consoles and cartridges in favor of a sweet 400 and then upgraded to a 1200XL as soon as they came out. So the video game crash wasn't a factor for me.

[BassGuitari]

 

I did know someone right across the parking lot who had a ColecoVision and I played hers probably 5 nights a week for 6 months or so, but I had stopped by the time the crash happened.

Wait...so you went to a girl's place five nights a week...and played videogames?

[Keatah]

Wait...so you went to a girl's place five nights a week...and played videogames?

 

That's funny! But I can see why it happens.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Keatah

[+save2600]

That's funny! But I can see why it happens.

because she was easier than the game and he didn't want to contract something?

[+thegoldenband]

Yes, we kept everything except the boxes. The only thing that ever got purged was my Atari 5200 collection, which my mother gave away (with my blessing) around 1994. We also had a CoCo 1 that I gave to a friend in 1995, I think, since I had a CoCo 2 and 3 anyway.

[spacecadet]

Wait...so you went to a girl's place five nights a week...and played videogames?

 

For the record, I was 9.

Edited March 28, 2017 by spacecadet

[dj_convoy]

I was like four or five in '83 so I didn't exactly notice the crash. My mom or dad still occasionally brought home 5200 games certainly thru 1984... maybe they were clearanced? I dunno. I even remember going to Toys 'R' Us at some point past the supposed shelf life of the 5200 to buy Wico controller replacements (to be fair, that might have been out of necessity... maybe they were the only replacements you get get by that point), and I know, due to the home I was living in at that time, that it was well post crash, and probably somewhere between 85 and 86. When video games "came back" in '86, my parents went out and got a SEGA Master System... luckily for me, they liked video games as much as I did.

 

My collection did survive, sort of. Kept everything, of course, but I didn't take my 5200, Master System or Genesis games with me when I moved out of home. Very, very lucky I kept my Saturn games with me. Thru various things too long and personal to go into, I did not get to retrieve any of those games, and have had to replace them all... which I think I've pretty much done.

[jhd]

I received a 2600 in about 1981. I sold it in Spring 1983 to purchase a Coco, and really thought no more about console games until I bought another 2600 at a rummage sale in 1989. I had no interest in the NES, and nobody in my social circle had one.

 

A few times in the mid-to-late 1980s I played 2600 games when visiting with friends; I recall being surprised that anyone was still interested in these old console games.

[Eltigro]

All of the hoarding-help advice says that, too. Those people are NO FUN.

That seems to me a lot like "We have new authors now, get rid of all the books by dead authors."

 

Edit: Meant for that to post the quote you quoted also, but it didn't... and I'm on my phone so... get rid of the previously quoted quotes, too, I guess... lol

Edited April 2, 2017 by Eltigro

[atarilovesyou]

Interesting how many of these posts that mention the crash (or 'shake-out', as I always referred to it from the game media I read back then) always comes back to whether it happened or not. It most certainly did. Whether or not you were affected by it is relative.

 

Anyways, my original video games didn't survive the 90s let alone the crash

 

I do wish I kept some of my stuff, but for some damn reason (booze, women and pursuit of good times) largely meant I had to reacquire my stuff. Twice I've managed to hang on to everything post 2004, however. I traded in some older systems for new (dumb, lol) but that's how I consider the 'spirit' of my original gear still exists. Hard to imagine I traded away a mint complete PS1 with Guncons, controllers and about a dozen games for one GBA SP and one game. Well, that's one for the drawing board. Still own the SP, though. There's a bunch of games that I own from a friend though that were period-specific and we actually played them in the 90s...mostly NES and SNES. It's always nice to have that stuff you actually gamed on back in the day.

 

I have two systems that *may be my old original hardware: I have a bottom shell of a Colecovision that just might be my childhood machine. It's in storage. And my current workhorse NES might be mine from back in the day. I got back both from a friend who collected in the 90s, and when I got back into it in the 2000s he let me take it all off his hands. He's been slowly purging off his retro collection (truly and amazing array of 90s systems, I wish he took pics of it all) and I've been kicking myself for not buying more of his stuff when I had the chance. He's found that letting go of the physical hardware much easier than anyone else I know...lol, he just uses emulators. I, though, need to have the whole thing to make it worthwhile to me: CRT, systems, controllers, everything (ok, I do use flash carts).

 

Getting older, I also find it harder to use replacement cases and such on my older systems: Gameboys, usually...where you replace the outer shell but keep the guts. I have like three kits waiting to go, but something about the 'actual' system is making that tougher to do, even though they are beaten up pretty good from years of use. I'm really gently with my stuff, but my friends were not at all. I'm almost looking to buy beaten up systems on ebay to use, just so I can keep my vintage systems intact Makes no sense, but who says collecting makes sense I do wish there was a real way to get replacement labels for systems like the VCS and NES, though...I have yet to see repro labels that have the look and feel of the originals. I guess they're just too expensive to do? I don't want to put repro labels that don't have that gloss feel of an NES cart. And Acti-Plaque has now claimed all my NOS purchases from the 2000s. Shame.

 

Anyways, what a tangent. I now have to go back and see what the oldest thing I own is, legit, from back in the day

[the_wizard_666]

Interesting how many of these posts that mention the crash (or 'shake-out', as I always referred to it from the game media I read back then) always comes back to whether it happened or not. It most certainly did. Whether or not you were affected by it is relative.

 

There most certainly was a crash. The only thing about it that can even really be debated is how severe it was, but even then, how much can one topic be beaten to death?

[mr_me]

Depends what you mean by crash. In 1982 about 6 million video game consoles sold in the US. Warner, Mattel, Coleco all suffered massive losses by 1983/84 and all exited the market. They crashed. But the US home video game market did not crash in 1983. Coleco sold 4 million Colecovisions in 1983 and later. The new Atari was kept in business in 1984 through the sale of its ageing 2600 while focusing on home computers. Even Mattel sold 750000 (25% of its 3 million total) Intellivisions in 1983 despite it being an older generation console. All this happening during the recession of the early 1980s. By 1985 there was nothing on the market (of significance) to buy, but what's the evidence that US market demand crashed.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Second_generation_of_video_games

[HoshiChiri]

Depends what you mean by crash. In 1982 about 6 million video game consoles sold in the US. Warner, Mattel, Coleco all suffered massive losses by 1983/84 and all exited the market. They crashed. But the US home video game market did not crash in 1983. Coleco sold 4 million Colecovisions in 1983 and later. The new Atari was kept in business in 1984 through the sale of its ageing 2600 while focusing on home computers. Even Mattel sold 750000 (25% of its 3 million total) Intellivisions in 1983 despite it being an older generation console. All this happening during the recession of the early 1980s. By 1985 there was nothing on the market (of significance) to buy, but what's the evidence that US market demand crashed.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Second_generation_of_video_games

 

One thing missing from that data- actual sales amounts. How much money did people really spend? If Mattel was selling its units at half off (or more), they might not care if it was 25% of their user base.

 

You are correct in that consumer demand decidedly did not crash- we've got plenty of anecdotal evidence to support that.

[spacecadet]

What crashed were the specific companies making games and consoles at the time. It was a US game industry crash. It wasn't a *market* crash. Those are two completely different things.

[high voltage]

I put all my stuff in a landfill. Gonna have a dig pretty soon which I'm gonna video tape.

Edited April 2, 2017 by high voltage

[zzip]

Depends what you mean by crash. In 1982 about 6 million video game consoles sold in the US. Warner, Mattel, Coleco all suffered massive losses by 1983/84 and all exited the market. They crashed. But the US home video game market did not crash in 1983. Coleco sold 4 million Colecovisions in 1983 and later. The new Atari was kept in business in 1984 through the sale of its ageing 2600 while focusing on home computers. Even Mattel sold 750000 (25% of its 3 million total) Intellivisions in 1983 despite it being an older generation console. All this happening during the recession of the early 1980s. By 1985 there was nothing on the market (of significance) to buy, but what's the evidence that US market demand crashed.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Second_generation_of_video_games

 

Wikipedia says the videogame sales fell "from $3 billion in 1982 to as low as $100 million in 1985" I presume they mean software. Retailers largely abandoned videogames during that era. I remember it was much harder to find them, by 1985, only Toys R Us still seemed have a large game selection, unless you mail ordered Everyone else massively cut back on videogames. That in turn could have hurt sales-- you can't buy what you don't find in stores unless you put in extra effort.

 

Also the US recession happened while videogames were booming. (81-82) In 1983 the economy was recovering rather strongly when the game crash happened. So I don't see this as a factor, unless you want to make the argument that videogames were counter-cyclical. (ie people bought cheap games as cheap entertainment and stay home because they couldn't afford to go out)

[spacecadet]

 

Wikipedia says the videogame sales fell "from $3 billion in 1982 to as low as $100 million in 1985"

 

Wikipedia isn't always right and that particular sentence really needs a "citation needed" (I will add one myself after I'm done here). It's used twice in that article with no reference at all. Usually in cases like this on Wikipedia, the statistic does exist somewhere, but it's intentionally not referenced because the context of it doesn't uphold the point being made. If you only selectively count one *type* of video game, meaning home console game software, then sure, the number's going to go up and down. The more specific you get (only home console vs. all video games, only first or third party games, only games starring movie characters, etc.), the more volatile the number will be.

 

It's no different than now, where if you look at *only* handhelds or *only* home consoles, the numbers look like they're heading down. But if you look at "video games" as a whole, including cell phones, computers, browser-based games, retro systems, etc. then that overall number just keeps going up, and actually pretty explosively. I'm sure the numbers would have looked similar in 1983 or 1985. It makes no sense to say the market went from $3 billion to almost zero, then suddenly restarted itself only a year or so later. People don't suddenly lose interest in something, forget about it for a year and then suddenly become extremely interested in it again. It makes a lot more sense to think that they were just buying video games on other (computer) platforms during the year when there was no console on the market that they could even buy games for.

 

I mean for me personally, I'm sure I lost interest in my Intellivision mainly because I couldn't walk into a store and get games for it anymore, not really because I wanted to stop playing it. As an original Intellivision owner in 1980, I had been really excited for the Intellivision II in 1982 and asked for one from my parents specifically. So if I'd stayed into it that long, I don't see why I'd have stopped playing if not for a lack of new games. It's the reverse of what most people think when they think of the crash. But I'm sure a lot of other people were similar.

 

tl;dr I'm not saying there was no crash, I'm just saying it was on the business side. Consumer tastes change in increments over time, but not that fast, and the success of the NES 18 months or so later proves that they didn't *really* change at all. The "big three" in 1983 just didn't have the right product mix and business model, and they weren't big enough to weather the storm.

Edited April 3, 2017 by spacecadet

[zzip]

 

It's no different than now, where if you look at *only* handhelds or *only* home consoles, the numbers look like they're heading down. But if you look at "video games" as a whole, including cell phones, computers, browser-based games, retro systems, etc. then that overall number just keeps going up, and actually pretty explosively. I'm sure the numbers would have looked similar in 1983 or 1985. It makes no sense to say the market went from $3 billion to almost zero, then suddenly restarted itself only a year or so later. People don't suddenly lose interest in something, forget about it for a year and then suddenly become extremely interested in it again. It makes a lot more sense to think that they were just buying video games on other (computer) platforms during the year when there was no console on the market that they could even buy games for.

 

I mean for me personally, I'm sure I lost interest in my Intellivision mainly because I couldn't walk into a store and get games for it anymore, not really because I wanted to stop playing it. As an original Intellivision owner in 1980, I had been really excited for the Intellivision II in 1982 and asked for one from my parents specifically. So if I'd stayed into it that long, I don't see why I'd have stopped playing if not for a lack of new games. It's the reverse of what most people think when they think of the crash. But I'm sure a lot of other people were similar.

 

tl;dr I'm not saying there was no crash, I'm just saying it was on the business side. Consumer tastes change in increments over time, but not that fast, and the success of the NES 18 months or so later proves that they didn't *really* change at all. The "big three" in 1983 just didn't have the right product mix and business model, and they weren't big enough to weather the storm.

 

It's definitely true that computer gaming was rising while console were falling. I don't think they completely offset the loss of console sales though.

 

I agree that in general, consumer tastes don't change drastically in most things, but there can be drastic short-term fluctuation when you factor in things like bubbles and fads.

 

Fad: after Pacman, seemed like everybody was into videogames, not just the traditional gamers. Like all fads, they are short-lived and the trend followers moved onto "break-dancing" or whatever the next big thing was. Games went from being "cool" to distinctly uncool among certain kids until things balanced out with the NES. So that could explain a rapid short-term loss of demand.

 

Bubble: Like the dot-com bubble where everybody needed a dot-com address and internet profits were going to grow exponentially-- things got ahead of themselves, reality set in, and for a few years nobody wanted to fund internet startups. Videogames had a mini-version of that. Everybody needed a 2600 game! Even the Purina dog food company. Games sales growth was going to be exponential year after year, until it suddenly wasn't. So again there was a lack of investment for a few years.

 

I think those two factors explain why there was a 'crash' quite well, and why another game crash is unlikely there aren't really signs of speculative investment, nor is there some new gaming fad -- well maybe in mobile these things could be true, but not in the established game sectors.

[Flojomojo]

Mobile isn't so different. The "chase the chuck wagon" phase seems to be over. It doesn't feel like a crash since there are no retail store cartridge liquidations, but a lot of companies have quit app and game development. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

I suppose if you squint a bit, you can see a "crash" in paid high end games on mobile. There aren't as many studios releasing games with high production values as before compared to free to play -- but the store and ecosystem still seems healthy for those who make it. Smaller mobile only studios like Rocketcat, Noodlecake, Nimblebit and many others have adapted much better than big dogs like EA.

 

Free to play has opened up a whole other type of games, with lots of dynamic events, leaderboards, and social features that we never got in the disk-and-cartridge days. I'm no longer bummed when I see a big Gameloft production launch as free to play instead of $5, because I know I can engage with it as much or as little as I want, and if they get too greedy, I can walk away. Just like an arcade game, but generally more engaging and "sticky."

 

Now back to Death Road to Canada.

[schuwalker]

I still everything game-related sans boxes pre "crash".

 

Here is my recollection of that era:

 

I'm going off memories of '84 because that's were I really think things were going awry in the console world. By '84, I was still heavy into the Colecovision w the 2600 adapter, although the latter peripheral was getting used less. I still recall my mom shopping at Jewel/Osco. Now this particular Jewel had one of those stands (I guess you would call it) filled to the brim w/ discounted 2600 games. I vividly remember picking up Frontline and Frankenstein's Monster at one of these shopping excursions. Every weekend we would pickup 2 or 3 games, whether if the game was good or not - they were cheap. I should mention Camelot Music store was another place I picked up quite a bit of 2600 games on the cheap. Like others have stated, I had no clue what was going on with the games being sold cheap; the red flag for me (this pertaining to the Colecovision as well) was games were no longer being sold at every store like they used to. My Sears, McDades (Chicago department store), that Jewel I mentioned - no longer carried games. I know I really wanted to get Frogger II for the Colecovision with some birthday cash I accrued and *finally* found the game at Toys R Us, which at the time seemed to be the only place to carry a good stock of old and new game releases of '84.

 

I'm curious if anybody remembers if Kmart still sold games in '84? For the life of me I can't recall....

Edited April 4, 2017 by schuwalker

[mr_me]

I still everything game-related sans boxes pre "crash".

 

Here is my recollection of that era:

 

I'm going off memories of '84 because that's were I really think things were going awry in the console world. By '84, I was still heavy into the Colecovision w the 2600 adapter, although the latter peripheral was getting used less. I still recall my mom shopping at Jewel/Osco. Now this particular Jewel had one of those stands (I guess you would call it) filled to the brim w/ discounted 2600 games. I vividly remember picking up Frontline and Frankenstein's Monster at one of these shopping excursions. Every weekend we would pickup 2 or 3 games, whether if the game was good or not - they were cheap. I should mention Camelot Music store was another place I picked up quite a bit of 2600 games on the cheap. Like others have stated, I had no clue what was going on with the games being sold cheap; the red flag for me (this pertaining to the Colecovision as well) was games were no longer being sold at every store like they used to. My Sears, McDades (Chicago department store), that Jewel I mentioned - no longer carried games. I know I really wanted to get Frogger II for the Colecovision with some birthday cash I accrued and *finally* found the game at Toys R Us, which at the time seemed to be the only place to carry a good stock of old and new game releases of '84.

 

I'm curious if anybody remembers if Kmart still sold games in '84? For the life of me I can't recall....

Where I was, Kmart had games in 1983 but not the new Intellivision games I was looking for. At some point Kmart like all the department stores got out of video games. That could have been 1984.

 

Was Colecovision available anywhere for Christmas 1984 and 1985? Were they heavily discounted? I don't remember Intellivision games being discounted, they just disappeared. I did find a couple of new 1983 Intellivision games I was looking for, at a small electronics store; but they were regular price.

[zzip]

 

I'm curious if anybody remembers if Kmart still sold games in '84? For the life of me I can't recall....

 

Yes. I remember buying Ultima III and Zaxxon there, and they still had the game counter. It had to be 84 or later, because I didn't own a disk drive until they got deeply discounted post-Tramiel. It was probably mid 85 to be honest.

 

Of course those were computer games, I can't recall about console games.

 

Game selection was dwindling though.

Edited April 4, 2017 by zzip