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

[jetset]

Read about it on the internet somewhere in the 90's. I was in high school '83/84 when it took place, and my attention was turning from videogames and Doritos to buying clothes and chasing girls so I really didn't notice. I do remember there being great deals I passed on, but I honestly didn't know it was a "crash".

[+GoldLeader]

FWIW,  Even though I've responded, trying to make the most of what I do remember...It is definitely a hard to pin down memory for me.  I certainly don't deny that "A Crash" happened;  I think At The Time, what I remember most was changing interests in our age group, people moving on from video games to a point, but many of us (myself included) still playing them, like I say we drove to the arcade far more often, even if we enjoyed it less...Maybe it was the rarity of early arcade visits, (and the fact I didn't have my own wheels back then), plus the relative "newness" of the whole home console scene that made it so Epic in the earlier days...

 

At any rate referring to it as a "Crash" came later...(Just don't ask me when haha).

[Keatah]

36 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

I certainly don't deny that "A Crash" happened;  I think At The Time, what I remember most was changing interests in our age group, people moving on from video games to a point, but many of us (myself included) still playing them, like I say we drove to the arcade far more often, even if we enjoyed it less...

Changing interest was a big stink at the time. Cars, girls, jobs, RealSchool, coming of age, all that. And while I had given up on cartridge systems, my interest in computers was fairly steady from day one when Apple started marketing stuff with their ads for single-board stuff.

 

I lost interest in the arcades 2 times. First time as some close-by ones simply disappeared. Became more and more expensive to get there. BMX'ing was free. A 10-mile car ride was not - assuming I could get the car running in the first place!

 

Then there was a slight resurgence of activity when Galaxy World opened (or I discovered it). Too far for more than 2x month visits. And then fighting games came out and interest drifted away. Because fighting games!

 

36 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

Maybe it was the rarity of early arcade visits, (and the fact I didn't have my own wheels back then), plus the relative "newness" of the whole home console scene that made it so Epic in the earlier days...

I never knew it as a scene. Getting into it at the tail end of the Pong and B/W epoch, it just seemed like a cultural thing. At first the VCS was just that, an upgraded Pong console. It played like it. It felt like it. Yet there was a tinkling of more adventure and discovery to come. Combat and Surround and a few other early 1st catalog titles were overwhelming with all the game variations.

 

I'm not sure when it became a scene like, well, a scene. I could guess when NES came out.

 

I see the early pre-NES consoles as unique pieces of art. As unique as each LED handheld that came before. But when NES hit, all the makings of corporate marketing & promotion were present. More mascots, more fluffy plushie tie-ins. Artwork and posters that were perfect in every mechanical aspect. Very sanitized. Form-fitting. Safe. The exploration of the artform of electronic gaming seriously compartmentalized.

[Flojomojo]

I’m pretty sure every generation talks that way about the next wave of new styles that aren’t aimed directly at them. I’ll bet there’s a non-zero number of millennials who think the original Halo has so much more soul than the high-tech sequels, for example. 
 

Hey, at least the industry seems big enough to survive another shakeout, even if mid-tier developers (not megacorps, not indies) have disappeared and it seems like a bad career choice for a technical person. 

[CapitanClassic]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

If you mean 2600,  I got an Atari XL for Christmas 83 and was mostly gaming on that.   But I would still buy some 2600 bargains and play them, for at least another year.   But after that I don't really recall playing the 2600 very often and it ended up in storage.

 

This was my experience as well. After the family got an Atari XL, I spent almost all my free time playing Atari 8-bit games over the 2600 games. Sure, a strategy game of Starmaster or similar, Indy 500 (or other head-to-head game), etc. might get played, but for the most part there were 100s of games available for the a800 (thanks to crackers and local BBS computer clubs) to play that were more in depth and better looking.

 

The Atari 800 was the pinnacle of gaming for me through the early 80s to likely 1989 or so. I dont remember many games on other systems that looked or played better. Before the a800, I am sure I wanted a Colecovision,  but the a800 Donkey Kong looked at least as good or better. The local computer club had an Atari ST showing off Carrier Command and Captain Blood, but there is no way we could afford one of the new 16-bit computers. 

 

It wouldn't be until 1989 or so after everyone else seemed to be getting Nintendos that we finally got one. We didn't buy games for the most part ($49 was a lot), but instead rented them for 2 days for probably a couple bucks. Me and my brother got really good at beating games in 2 day rentals (I felt accomplished in beating Battletoads in 2 rentals. Made it to the queen in one two day rental, and had to rent it the next weekend to beat it.)

[Draxxon]

So "The Crash" was known as the "Atari Shock" in Japan?

 

"In 1986, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi noted that "Atari collapsed because they gave too much freedom to third-party developers and the market was swamped with rubbish games"."

[+GoldLeader]

8 hours ago, Keatah said:

plus the relative "newness" of the whole home console scene that made it so Epic in the earlier days... (GoldLeader)

 

 

I never knew it as a scene. Getting into it at the tail end of the Pong and B/W epoch, it just seemed like a cultural thing. At first the VCS was just that, an upgraded Pong console. It played like it. It felt like it. Yet there was a tinkling of more adventure and discovery to come. Combat and Surround and a few other early 1st catalog titles were overwhelming with all the game variations.

 

I'm not sure when it became a scene like, well, a scene. I could guess when NES came out.

 

I see the early pre-NES consoles as unique pieces of art. As unique as each LED handheld that came before. But when NES hit, all the makings of corporate marketing & promotion were present. More mascots, more fluffy plushie tie-ins. Artwork and posters that were perfect in every mechanical aspect. Very sanitized. Form-fitting. Safe. The exploration of the artform of electronic gaming seriously compartmentalized.

 

I get your point,...

But,

Actually I'm thinking the word "scene" may have been a bad choice of words,  and definitely not the one to be focused on.  I simply mean the stuff myself and a small group of friends were into.   At first we got into Atari;  Even the simple early games were neat at first,...Then Arcade ports began to arrive, then 3rd parties (Hell, I remember the day we discovered Activision!  Unfortunately it was with Laser Blast!  Thankfully we'd give them more chances later) and Imagic, Parker Bros., Data Age and so on...Then things began to really get good.  Then we had to save and beg our parents to let us "upgrade" our consoles.  Most people I knew went with ColecoVision.  I knew one guy who had a 5200.  And I regret to this day selling my Atari, but (at least) keeping all my games and playing them on Coleco's Expansion module #1...Plus there were magazines, and word of mouth about what games were out...Even a few places let you play the games beforehand (and the occasional kiosk),  though I personally preferred to play them previous sight unseen (I called it the Joy of Discovery)...And this was our world.   Our world would change as time went on and we got into music and muscle cars etc.   I got a Coleco ADAM, my friend got a C64...I tried to program for a bit,...He pirated games like most people with C64s...Some people got out of it altogether...I'd still buy games,...And I remember getting annoyed with magazines for including too many computers as time went on...

 

Although aware of it now and its implications...I have a hard time pinning down when I heard the word "crash",  although* I do remember magazines saying something...

 

 

 

*As mentioned by some other folks already

[Keatah]

One thing I never understood completely in focus was why the arcade games had higher fidelity graphics & sound. I mean I thought a computer was supposed to be more powerful than some arcade game. I was told by guy at the computer store it was because a computer had so much else to do that it couldn't excel at any one thing. It wouldn't be till much later I learned more in-depth about dedicated hardware wired specifically for whatever game.

 

It was one of the things, watching the 8086 - 286 - 386 - 486 progression, that I got an inkling that computers would exceed what was in the arcades.

 

But, whatever.. The comparison of an arcade game to a home console & carts was a discussion me and my buddies always had. Always. And when these discussions tapered off, that was just another sign of a market re-arrangement.

Edited December 24, 2021 by Keatah

[juansolo]

Technically I suppose the first arcade perfect home console was the Neo Geo AES. But you also had arcade machines with PSX, Xbox and even Amiga based hardware in them. The first time I think an arcade machine was actually surpassed by a home console I suspect would be Soul Calibur as the original arcade was on Namco hardware and then the Dreamcast version came along. Of course you then also have Naomi, so now dreamcast based hardware in the arcades also.

 

Sadly at that point people seemed to start losing intrest in arcade games both in the arcades and at home, certainly in the west. So where computers may have started to surpass them soon after, games had become something else by this point. I blame the PS2... /Dreamcast fan.

[Draxxon]

Dont forget everyone was getting internet in their homes when arcades started to die.

 

I never had the NeoGeo but it wasnt until PS2 that the games surpassed the arcades for me. PSX was really really close.

 

Tekken Tag on PS2 vs the Arcade version instantly comes to mind.

[jacks]

On 12/16/2021 at 2:55 PM, Rodney Hester said:

I promised my parents the world.  Birthday?  Check.  Christmas?  Check.  Both covered.  Mowing the lawn without allowance for a year?  Done.  At some point I probably also negotiated away my soul and firstborn, but I didn't care.  I'd just scored more games in under half an hour than I'd ever seen in my life combined.

 

Gaming...

 

That's what it was like for me as well.  My haul was not as good as yours but I remember promising everything I could to take home the discounted titles I found at my local Kmart as well.

 

I really do miss those days.  When the gaming world was out in front of us. It's still great now, but the nostalgia somehow makes that time feel more grand.

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, jacks said:

When the gaming world was out in front of us. It's still great now, but the nostalgia somehow makes that time feel more grand.

That's because it's easier to remember the good times instead of the bad times. And it self-perpetuates till you're wearing rose-colored glasses bigger than Elton John's costume!

[jacks]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

That's because it's easier to remember the good times instead of the bad times. And it self-perpetuates till you're wearing rose-colored glasses bigger than Elton John's costume!

I'm going to try to wear those kind of big glasses and play some Yars Revenge  (That game was good times indeed!)

[Draxxon]

2 hours ago, Keatah said:

That's because it's easier to remember the good times instead of the bad times.

bad times consisted of tv/game boxes with stripped connectors. you had to wrap the bear wire around screws on the back of the TV and tighten with a butter knife if you were a kid.

Flimsy power adapters and ports also come instantly to mind.

[Keatah]

It was par for the course and we didn't know it could be better. And it was rewarding for a kid to succeed at those McGyverish hacks.

 

But those sorts of annoyances made me take interest in building an All-in-One console. A kid-size attempt at a Ben Heck re-wiring kludge. All the then contemporary consoles stuffed into one. Of course it couldn't work, due to my kid-size workmanship. But I tried. Today the hardware exists at about 10,000 retailers. Just stuff it with emulators. Instant AIO!

[Kokovec69]

During the crash my father bought me a Vectrex and a bunch of games.
My father was very miserly so it was odd that he would splurge like that.

At the time I had no idea that a videogame crash was happening, and didn't really find out until sometime in the 2000's that there was one.

[zzip]

On 12/23/2021 at 2:59 PM, GoldLeader said:

I think At The Time, what I remember most was changing interests in our age group, people moving on from video games to a point, but many of us (myself included) still playing them,

Changing interests is the key I think.  Normally this wouldn't be a problem because people come and go to the gaming scene all the time.   But what was different back then was that Pac-man created a craze that brought in an awful lot of players.   There's a honeymoon period for any intense interest of maybe 18-24 months tops before it becomes less interesting.   Since the bulk of gamers came to gaming around the same time with Pac-man, the honeymoon period started to wane for them around the same time.

 

Yes people still played games.   But many of them were spending less hours gaming, some stopped completely while others never stopped.   For an industry that was planning on the rapid growth continuing,  this sudden unexpected drop in game hours played and games bought was devastating to their bottom lines.

[high voltage]

[Keatah]

Yep. That the honeymoon period happened all at once was an inevitable consequence of the first group, the fad group, being the first. As time moved toward today the age range and stages of enamorment spread out to where inflow and outflow are balanced.

[+GoldLeader]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

Yep. That the honeymoon period happened all at once was an inevitable consequence of the first group, the fad group, being the first. As time moved toward today the age range and stages of enamorment spread out to where inflow and outflow are balanced.

 

Ya know,  I have no idea what this second sentence means.

 

I like it!

 

 

 

PS:  Please don't ruin it by explaining...Sometimes a Happy Befuddlement is the right mindset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PPS:  Lest I get all trippy,..I would still consider this different than an Ignorance is Bliss situation, though I see how they could be... semi-adjacent.   I do like my rose colored glasses and my nostalgia when dealing with this topic...But lately I've been thinking (and filled with more non-sequiturs, but I digest) and (I think) my rose colored glasses are not as big or rosy as Elton John's but mine are kind of like a big blue lily,...Wait!  Do big blue lilies exist?  Hmmmm...No idea.  But why a rose?  Because Tuliip colored glasses just sounds silly?  The lilies in front of my house are called Day Lilies,  True story.   They only bloom for a day or 2 around the 4th of July Every year!  And they are Orange!  See how special and interesting it is when something is only around for a brief moment of existence?  Like nostalgia and happiness itself.  I think my Rose Colored Glasses are actually like those orange tiger-looking Day Lilies in front of my house colored glasses and I generally have both feelings (Nostalgia and the actual joy of actually playing video games...) going on simultaneously even as one usually washes out the other as I get into the game....My inflow and outflow of enamorment and enamored armament (? haa!?)  (Hmmm?!) No clue.  ... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm    also become balanced....HMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

 

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

 

mmm

 

 

m

 

 

Not Edited:   But certainly should be.

 

 

 

 

 

(NOT!)

[zzip]

On 12/25/2021 at 11:37 AM, Keatah said:

Yep. That the honeymoon period happened all at once was an inevitable consequence of the first group, the fad group, being the first. As time moved toward today the age range and stages of enamorment spread out to where inflow and outflow are balanced.

Exactly, which is why I maintain the crash was unavoidable.   It didn't matter if Atari had successfully stemmed the flood of third party games or not.   People were destined to get tired of the scene in large numbers at roughly the same time.   The only thing I can see that could have stopped it is if someone had created the next big game with popularity that rivaled Pac-man and Donkey Kong.   Even still, that would likely have only postponed it.   The industry had to topple and rebuild itself slowly in a more organic and sustainable way.

 

People have been predicting the next crash for years.   But it's not going to happen because as you say there's a constant inflow and outflow.   You may get a slump, but you aren't likely to see 90% of the revenue dry up like you saw between 83 and 85

[+x=usr(1536)]

4 minutes ago, zzip said:

People have been predicting the next crash for years.   But it's not going to happen because as you say there's a constant inflow and outflow.   You may get a slump, but you aren't likely to see 90% of the revenue dry up like you saw between 83 and 85

We're certainly looking at very different revenue models today vs. nearly 40 years ago, that's for sure.  Having said that, my opinion is that we will continue to see crashes, but they'll result from oversaturation of a market focussed on a particular technology rather than ones that more or less slash and burn entire (or extensive parts of) industries.  Think of it as the death of specific services or offerings rather than the whole thing crumbling, with either a couple of choices surviving and absorbing customers from those that don't make it, or the technology quietly being put out to pasture over a short period of time.

 

To my mind, cryptocurrency is looking likely to experience exactly this kind of shake-up.  While it may not be in widespread public adoption for commerce, there is enough use of it for it to have created multiple competing ecosystems.  Too many organisms in the petri dish and they die through overcrowding and competition for nonexistent or overextended resources.  There's also very little in the underpinnings to give it resilience in the event of a loss of faith on behalf of the holders resulting in severe devaluation.

 

My wife picked up lunch at Burger King a few days ago, and received a scratchcard along with her change.  The prizes: varying amounts of Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and a couple of others I don't remember offhand.  If the technology has reached the point where fast-food companies are essentially giving it away, its value and worth as a technology may be at the point where calling those things into question might not be a bad idea.

[Corby]

I read aboot it here on Atariage

[Draxxon]

those music rhythm games crashed pretty hard.

Somewhere there is a whole generation of adults that can push buttons with their feet and play plastic toy instruments, tho.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Draxxon

[dr. kwack]

I remember going Christmas shopping with my folks to Belden Village Mall in Christmas of 84. I was 10 years old and a die hard Intellivision kid. I went into KayBee toys and saw bins filled with games at strangely low prices. Some of them I had never even seen before. I had a paper route by this time and had some Christmas tip money on me. I got three games (Beauty & The Beast, Snafu and Night Stalker) for 10 bucks. I was amazed and wanted to go back after Christmas. Funny thing was, with my new income I was able to afford a new gizmo a couple of my classmates had called a Commodore 64. I quickly shifted from video games to computer games and never really looked back until years later when I started collecting Atari 2600 in high school.