How did you find out about The Crash(TM)?

[zzip]

32 minutes ago, Keatah said:

In the Apple II¹ world there was, shall we say, a certain atmosphere, a certain aura, surrounding the platform. Every platform has it. Point being is that there was no change here because of the crash. The system was just as cool before and after "the crash" equally. The same level of software (or more) was being produced in '83 & '84 as the year earlier or the year later. The progression of the trend line would not have indicated anything was wrong. In fact II+ users were starting to eye the //e.

The computer games segment was the only part not affected by the crash.   This market was tiny but growing when consoles and arcade collapsed.  84/85 were great years for computer games, but horrible for everything else.

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

The computer games segment was the only part not affected by the crash.

Yes I figured as much nearly subconsciously until I thought about it purposely. I only associated "crash" with carts. Never diskettes. So.. If I was to graph my rate of Apple II software accumulation it would be a steady upward trend from 1979'ish through about 1987. Tapering off in 1988, firmly flatlining in 1989-1990. The //e was produced till 1993, and I never appreciated such a long run of the platform, any platform.

 

In 1988 I was firmly stuck in the 16-bit arena and desperately trying to escape to PC. The price performance ratio wasn't quite there with 386 & 386. In retrospect, a good thing. But the 486 did have the right ratio. Enough to push me over the top.

 

I can't remember when I would get my next Apple II 'ware. Had to have been in the late 1990's with the advent of TOSEC or Asimov. And recently Internet Archive. It was a low-key event and not a big deal. I used to think my early Apple II collecting was a big run, and done. But in the past 7 years it absolutely exploded. New "old-stock" material is made available weekly! Proper re-cracks are being done. More documents are being scanned. And all that activity makes my teenage years look quite small. But let us not forget the early cracks, those are what made the Apple II "scene" THE scene to be in.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Keatah

[MrMaddog]

On 11/10/2022 at 4:26 PM, Keatah said:

Yes I figured as much nearly subconsciously until I thought about it purposely. I only associated "crash" with carts. Never diskettes.

 

I did mentioned that not only did the Crash affected cart-based consoles but also home computers that used ROM carts, but the Wiki-experts here didn't believe me because they only think about game consoles and nothing else.

 

Truth was there were inexpensive computers like the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and Coleco Adam that became "orphan" machines because the companies that made stopped supporting them.  And the same goes for 3rd party software support, they ended up being useless in the long run. Plus Commodore's constant price dropping made things worse for other companies except for Apple, IBM and PC clone makers didn't help much either.

 

And lots of software companies that made ROM carts were also in bad shape because of the unsold inventory that they wasted money on.  Here's a good video about how Sierra nearly got wiped till they did disk-based adventure games again...

 

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by MrMaddog

[Rodney Hester]

Strangely, at least on the east coast of the US, I never saw a *single* retail cartridge for the Commodore 64 for sale in a brick and mortar store.  Not ONE.  It was all diskettes, all the time.

 

The VIC-20, however, was another matter.

[didimo63]

I was 21 in 1984. I grew up in Italy. My first arcade game was Pong (summer of '75), my first console a Pong clone, Tele-partner (Christmas '77), my first programmable console a Philips Videopac (Odyssey 2). In '84 I had the Intellivision, Colecovision and Atari. In Italy/Europe we really did not get any perception of the crisis until late spring/summer 1984. A video game magazine, Videogiochi, June 84 issue, I think, they published an article about Mattel wanting out of the video game business. I could not believe it. The Intellivision was still my favorite console, and it was incredibly popular in Italy. I had trouble locating an ECS Computer Module add-on. By September '84, games for all systems were on sale at a fraction of the price. While I was happy to buy a Colecovision Roller Controller and several games that I could not otherwise have afforded, I was quite sad that the exciting times of the home console boom, which I had fully lived, were coming to an end. By April 1985 I sort of caved in and bought a Commodore 64, the top selling home computer in Italy at the time. While I enjoyed some of the cartridge games and the Atari conversions, most of the games didn't mean much to me. Except for software that I could not otherwise have enjoyed on a console, such as Shoot'em Up Construction Kit, Pinball Construction Kit, and a few others. 
The Sega Master System arrived in Italy in Fall of '86 (parallel import by NBC), but it was not until April '87 when the Nintendo NES hit the Italian market that I realized that finally video games consoles were not only back, but here to stay. 

[leech]

I had no clue there was a crash, I just recall most of the games coming out for the 2600 were kind of crap, we sold all our games at a yard sale and shortly after, my family got an Atari 800xl with a 1050 Floppy drive!

 

That made me be more of a computer gamer in my life over being a console gamer.  Sure, we engoyed the Sega Master System and Genesis later on, but at heart, I have always liked computer games over consoles.

[John Van Ryzin]

I suspected something was up when, as an Activision designer I did not get a big bonus for making the top 10 best seller game H.E.R.O.. Then two founders of Activision quit to form Accolade.  Then I started seeing many discounted games in Toys R Us.  Then management told us to design unique computer software products that were not games.
 

But I knew for sure when half the staff of our east coast Activision office was laid off, and the rest of us were moved to low cost basement office space.

 

LOL!

Edited January 1 by John Van Ryzin