The 40th Anniversary of the Video Game Crash of 1983
The40th Anniversary of the Video Game Crash of 1983
Back in 1983, Iwas 16 years old and living the dream. I had a car, I had money, and I wasunencumbered by a spouse, kids, or anything else resembling realresponsibilities, or than my job as a Quality Supervisor at a barbequerestaurant. Yes, at the ripe young age of 16, I was telling 20-, 30- and40-somethings what to do. (They loved it, let me tell you, he saidsarcastically.)
Before I digressinto my life story, let’s zero in on a certain newspaper ad I saw during thistime. Yes, teenagers and even people younger than that read the newspaper inthose pre-social media days. Not only for the funnies, and not only forbaseball box scores, but also for celebrity gossip, headline news, localinterest stuff, and more.
Each Sunday, thepaper was massive, thanks in part to ads from retail stores. I would scourthese ads for gaming bargains, and one day I found a whopper: a variety ofAtari 2600 titles for $9.99 to $14.99 each, including popular first-partytitles like Asteroids and Space Invaders. This was a hugediscount from the regular selling price of $30 to $45 or so for most video games.
Over the next fewweeks and months, I began seeing titles for the Atari 2600, Intellivision,ColecoVision, Odyssey 2, and other consoles selling for $4.99 each…then$2.99…then .99 cents. Yes, brand new video games for under a buck! I’ve spokento certain people around my age who recall seeing new video games marked as lowas .25 cents each. Amazing!
As a hardcoregamer and collector, I was driving from store to store, adding to my collection.I would buy pretty much any game that looked fun to play, and I would buypretty much any ColecoVision game no matter what it was because that was myfavorite console. Stores like Toys “R” Us, Kay Bee Toys, Circus World, and evenWalmart and Target would have huge bins with tons of discount games, and Iwould practically leap into these pits and swim around, catching as many “fish”as I wanted and throwing back what looked unappealing.
It was excitingand fun, but I had no idea what it all meant beyond being able to purchasevideo games for pennies on the dollar, amassing a cool collection, and playinga bunch of games that I would never have had access to without the Video Game Crashof 1983. I had no idea it meant the video game console industry in NorthAmerica was dying. It didn’t really sink in for me until 1984, when the writingwas on the wall that my beloved ColecoVision was on the way out. It wasofficially discontinued in 1985, and I was incredibly bummed. The Atari 2600and Intellivision hung on for a few more years, but just barely.
Video game salesdropped 97% from $3.2 billion in 1982 to $100 million by 1985. The reasons for the Crash are many. Too many random companies had jumped on the video gamecraze of the early ’80s and were cranking out lousy games for the Atari 2600,the most ubiquitous console of the era. There were also too many consoles onthe market in general. This created consumer confusion and dissatisfaction, andretailers struggled to find adequate space for new games on store shelves.
Two of the mosthighly anticipated 2600 titles, Pac-Man and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, were big disappointments as the former was a bad port and thelatter was confusing for most kids who played it. These and other titles wereover-produced, and Atari ended up burying thousands of games in a landfill inNew Mexico, as told in the 2014 documentary, Atari: Game Over.
By 1983, manygamers who had grown up with the Atari 2600, which was released in 1977, weremoving on to other interests like cars and dating. The 1982 follow-up to the2600, the Atari 5200, was largely a bust, thanks in part to its fragile,imprecise, non-centering joysticks. Coleco had announced they were going toproduce a Super Game Module for the ColecoVision that would have meant gameswith more levels, better graphics and sounds, etc., but they cancelled thateagerly anticipated peripheral and released the Adam Computer instead. Whilegreat in theory, the Adam was a huge failure because so many units werebug-ridden or downright inoperable right out of the box.
Speaking ofcomputers, they were a big reason for the Crash. Many parents felt morecomfortable purchasing a computer for their kids than a “mere” video gameconsole. Most of the big consoles at the time promised computer add-ons, butthose were all unsuccessful, such as Mattel’s Entertainment Computer System forthe Intellivision. The Odyssey 2 had a computer-style keyboard, but it was avideo game console, not a fully-functional computer.
The Commodore 64,which Guiness cites as the top-selling computer model of all time, played a bigrole in the Crash. Why buy a console when you can get a computer that alsoplays games that are at least as good as the ColecoVision and in some casesbetter and more sophisticated? And you can pirate those games for free? I sawevidence of this first-hand. After my best friend’s dad brought home a C64 witharound 200 games copied illegally onto floppy discs, his family rarely touched theirColecoVision.
While the videogame market in North America crashed in 1983, the industry didn’t stay dead forlong, thanks in large part to a certain Japanese company’s cool console, savvymarketing, and mustachioed Italian plumber. Test-marketed in 1985 and releasednationwide in 1986, the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was the NorthAmerican version of the Japanese Famicom, introduced a new generation to videogames, with Super Mario Bros. taking center stage. More than any videogame before it, SMB dazzled gamers with expansive gameplay, cartoonlikegraphics, hidden secrets and surprises, and pitch-perfect controls.
When I received myNES for Christmas in 1987, I barely believed what I was seeing. The closestexperience I can think of to playing Super Mario Bros. for the firsttime was my initial reading of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland—simplymind-boggling!
Numerous greatgames followed on the console, including such legendary titles as Contra,Castlevania, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and SuperMario Bros. 3, the last of which was heavily marketed in 1989’s TheWizard. An entire culture was built around the NES. Players would exchangetips and tricks for beating games (as well as call Nintendo’s hotline number), bringissues of Nintendo Power magazine to school, rent games from movierental stores, pause their system all night so they could continue that longadventure game the next morning, etc.
Even more than Atari,Nintendo brought video games into the mainstream, and the industry has beenthriving ever since.
