"Life After the Video Game Crash"

[gamevet]

You know, every time I hear people saying that the crash was caused by an alleged "glut of poor-quality games for the Atari 2600," I have to ask, "Where was this glut?"

People (usually those who adore Nintendo and despise Atari) hold up games like Chase the Chuck Wagon and Custer's Revenge as their examples of how Atari 2600 game quality was in the toilet. Truth is, Chase the Chuck Wagon was only available from the company through a mail-in offer (hence its rarity), and Custer's Revenge was intended to be sold in adult bookstores. You never saw those games in Sears or K-Mart or other mainstream stores. Most of the "really bad" games from companies like Mystique and Mythicon had such poor distribution that the big stores never carried them--I never even knew about them other than seeing the occasional mention in magazines.

In 1983, most of the big companies (Atari, Activision, Imagic, Parker Bros.) were putting out some of the best 2600 games ever. Games like Centipede, Joust, Dig Dug, Keystone Kapers, Enduro, Pitfall II, Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, Dragonfire, Q-Bert, and Gyruss were the ones most visible on shelves--not the obscure garage-produced examples that are usually given in the Atari-bashing articles.

I have 5 games in front of me, that were all purchased at KB Toys, when the bottom fell out of console gaming. I believe I bought these titles, 2 for $5.


Mountain King : The game was published by CBS electronics (Wow, everyone was making games for the 2600!) It's actually a pretty cool game and had added RAM to make the graphics better.

Omega Race : This game was published by CBS Electronics as well. It's damn near arcade perfect and came with a fire button contraption, you placed over the joystick. The Atari joystick fire button was used for thrust. This game too, featured the added RAM to make the graphics better.

Nexar: This game was published by Spectravideo programmed by Sirius Software. The game was so boring and the idea of going up another level, was a color change and the enemies came out of the center of the screen faster and faster. A really poor attemt at ripping of Tempest.

Space Chase : This game was published by Apollo Software . Who? I can't really recall how the game played. Defineatly not a top of the heap title.

Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom: I've actually played this game in the arcades. It was a sit down game, where you piloted old Buck's ship through a slalom like coarse, hovering close to the planet's surface. Published by Sega . Sega also published titles like Congo Bonga and Zaxxon for the 2600.


Sure some of these titles are pretty good, but how many people that owned an Atari 2600 played these. They were available at a national chain (KB Toys), but that did'nt save them from being bargain bin fillers.

What really happened in late 1983 was that consumers suddenly became interested in cheap home computers like the Commodore 64, Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, and Atari's own 600XL and 800XL. All of those computers offered games with better graphics, better sound, and more depth than most of the games offered on any of the dedicated game consoles of the day. They were also easy to use (most of the arcade-style action games came on cartridges, just like with consoles), and were about the same price as the high-end consoles.

The home video games weren't bad at all--as I said, most of the high-profile games were excellent. It's just that the computers were offering more and better games, including improved versions of many of the same games that appeared on consoles. Who wanted to buy the four-year-old Intellivision for $249, when you could get the vastly superior Commodore 64 for $188? Why buy an Atari 5200 for $199, when you could get most of the same games--along with hundreds of others--on the Atari 800XL for the same price?

Like some have already said in this thread, it wasn't really so much of a "crash" as it was a "shift" of the video game market from "machines that only played video games" to "machines that could play really great games and also do a whole lot more." Anyone who actually lived during that period, and played video games during that period, could tell you that.

TI-99/4A and TRS-80 relied heavily on the cartridge format, but computers like the C-64, Apple II (Over $1,500) and Atari 400, all relied on tape drives and Disk Drives to provide their software. I only found about 6 games that were available on the cartridge, for my C-64. A C-64 with the disk drive unit, would set you back about $600.

What really made computers a big hit with families, was that Mom and Dad were using it as well. So spending a few extra hundred dollars was an investment in juniors future and something dad could tinker with as well. Little did they know that instead of junior writing his essay on the little machine, he was upstairs playing Ultima and Zork! Meanwhile his Atari was sitting in the closet collecting dust.

[NeoZeedeater]

Omega Race : This game was published by CBS Electronics as well. It's damn near arcade perfect and came with a fire button contraption, you placed over the joystick. The Atari joystick fire button was used for thrust. This game too, featured the added RAM to make the graphics better.

It's the best console version(the Coleco one kinda sucks) but the Vic 20 and C64 versions are better. Still, it's impressive what they did with the 2600 version.

[fraggler]

I have a few C-64 carts around. I once lent my Tapper C-64 cart to a friend and he moved. I miss that cart.

[gamevet]

I have a few C-64 carts around. I once lent my Tapper C-64 cart to a friend and he moved. I miss that cart.

I had Star Trek, the arcade game. I remember titles like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and several other titles published by Atari, being on the cartridge, but the Disk versions were always about $10 cheaper.

[Bacon McShig]

I don't think we'll see a crash, but I'm pretty sure we'll see some price restructuring. You saw this past Xmas' sales. Franchises and sequels are the only things keeping the market going, everything else tanks hard. You can say that was true all along, but it was really pronounced this season. We're already seeing a good increase on the number of games debuting at a lower price point ($40) since then. But when those tank against the big guns again this coming Xmas (I'm just speculating, but I'd be surprised to be proven wrong), then the industry better wake up and lower prices accordingly, or the ratio of original content to rehashes will be dramatically reduced, and small studios will be pretty much gone altogether.

[Diff-chan]

Small studios aren't going anywhere. They will maybe stop making console games, but consoles have been the big kid's playground for a long long time. There's always the PC, Mac, GBA (blah), PocketPC, etc., for them.

[Videodrone]

I don't think we'll see a crash, but I'm pretty sure we'll see some price restructuring. You saw this past Xmas' sales. Franchises and sequels are the only things keeping the market going, everything else tanks hard. You can say that was true all along, but it was really pronounced this season. We're already seeing a good increase on the number of games debuting at a lower price point ($40) since then. But when those tank against the big guns again this coming Xmas (I'm just speculating, but I'd be surprised to be proven wrong), then the industry better wake up and lower prices accordingly, or the ratio of original content to rehashes will be dramatically reduced, and small studios will be pretty much gone altogether.

Like Dif, I simply think that the small studios will move to platforms other than major console.

I do believe we will see more of a dramatic pricing stucture. Original, high production cost marquee title will still remain ~$50. You may see a lot of these second tier titles drop to a more competitve price area ($20-$30), but you will see a drop in production quality as well...unless the a lower pricing structure becomes very successful and they are able to make up the difference in quality. What I really hope we don't see is a drop in 2nd tier pricing offset, but an increase in first tier pricing. $55+

[Bacon McShig]

I do believe we will see more of a dramatic pricing stucture. Original, high production cost marquee title will still remain ~$50. You may see a lot of these second tier titles drop to a more competitve price area ($20-$30), but you will see a drop in production quality as well...unless the a lower pricing structure becomes very successful and they are able to make up the difference in quality.

Yeah, I was thinking along those very lines... at least to start with. I think the lower price games will undoubtedly be successful (if well-made), so much so that they'll cut into the $50 games' business enough that those will be lowered to compete. Maybe they'd still be a little higher, but $50 games would be a thing of the past. If things went down like that, it's my belief the game market would actually go into a tremendous boom.

[Videodrone]

Maybe they'd still be a little higher, but $50 games would be a thing of the past. If things went down like that, it's my belief the game market would actually go into a tremendous boom.

Marquee titles will never drop below $50 though. By marquee I mean Madden, Final Fantasy, GTA, etc...The only thing that prevents game manfacturers from increasing the price on these guaranteed sellers, is second-hand resale (used game) market in the US. Though as far as I know there is no second-hand game market in Japan. But Japanese sale figure and buying habits are much different than in America.