Did you live through the Great Video Game Crash of 1984?

[omnedon]

I was 14, and I can sum up what it was like for me, someone who never had a home system.

It was a general 'dropping off the radar' of home videogames in general. The overall interest in the CV, Inty and Atari was low. I didn't care anymore, and there was no excitement attached to the systems any more. There was NO talk of new, more powerful systems, nothing. People who had those systems considered them 'old', and my view of them was much the same, I loved arcade games, and would have loved to play them at home, but it looked like it would never happen. I'd hear about 'new' other systems, like the 5200, or the upcoming 7800, but there were like 'phantom' consoles, never saw 'em in stores, never saw 'em advertised.

I never really thought about home videogames again, until I was 16, and I saw an NES on demo display in a city department store. I stopped, and my jaw dropped. I picked up the weird little controler and started jumping.

Very Cool, I thought as I walked away....

[o2william]

Reading the replies to this post is kind of like reading my own biography -- so many of them match my memories so closely. I was 9 in 1984, and, like Scooter, was living in Ohio. Scooter's right that games really weren't that easy to find in Ohio, at least not in Southern Ohio, where I'm from. Pretty much NO stores in my area carried games; I only got new ones through mail order or by traveling.

I wasn't really aware of the Industry; I just knew that it had become nearly impossible to find new games for my trusty Odyssey2 and Atari 2600. I remember being jazzed to find Amidar and Reactor for $5 each at a drugstore, which probably would have been in about late '83/early 1984. Then it seemed like I didn't get ANY new games for a long time until chancing across Space Attack for about $2 at Big Lots. I was excited that maybe "old" Atari games were going to be available cheaply, but after Space Attack, I don't think I found anything more.

Luckily I had plenty of new (legal and pirated) games on my Tandy 1000EX to keep me occupied until 1987, when I discovered the NES.

[Kid Ice]

It's interesting to me that some of you expressed great pleasure in that time, seeing at as a "bonanza" where you could basically purchase whatever (and how many ever) games you wanted at will.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly wasn't complaining when I picked up a $50 Vectrex at Toys R Us. But my overall mood at the time was depression. Sure, there were a lot of games to be had for cheap, but the best the VCS had to offer had already passed. Those cheap games were just a bunch of junk. There were a few decent titles I recall picking up at heavily discounted prices...Battlezone, Moonsweeper, Enduro. Those are good games, but in no way approach the quality of earlier releases such as Space Invaders and Asteroids.

I found it very sad, and still do to a certain degree. Things have never been really quite the same since the crash. Although those were undeniably interesting times to be a gamer.

[Anthony1]

Thanks for all the responses guys! This is great reading. Very Interesting.


One thing that's becoming apparent to me from reading all of this is that it seems that all the big time video gamers back then basically migrated over to the computer systems and really didn't notice the death of the consoles too much.

I wonder how many gamers in the very early 80's migrated over to the computers to never ever return to console gaming?

I'm sure that lots and lots of gamers went to the Apple and Commodore and Atari computers, and then eventually went to IBM PC's and Windows and all that crap. Then they went to the 3D cards and they are still gaming today on their PC's. Completely forgetting their console roots.

Interesting.

And of course alot of other gamers went over to the Computers but then with the success of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, they came back with the arrival and proliferation of the NES.


And then there were others that always played both computers and consoles, never fully choosing one over the other.

[Aswald]

Yes to all 3, although we were hoping that it could've been averted.

I'm still sore about it. It was avoidable.

[badinsults]

I was 2 at the time...


Double plus sad.

[98PaceCar]

I was 10 at the time. The only real awareness I had of the crash was that I could pick up 2600 games for a quarter at the local drugstore. That's when my collection really grew, but at the same time I was making the jump into the C64 world and pretty much lost all interest in consoles anyway. Even the local arcade survived the crash. Maybe things were buffered a bit better because I was in a small town.

[tyranthraxus]

I was 8 in 84 and my only awarness was spotting Colecovision roller controllers in the clearance table at Canadian Tire. I wanted a CV badly
at the time but my parents were very anti video game. They were under the
misguided belief that computers were the way of the future and that by
buying me one that I would become a computer genius! So we got a 64 in
1985. I remember that Xmas well At about this time I did start to notice
how cheap Atari stuff was. Sometimes I would go to a neighbourhood
garage sale and see a 2600 with a bucket of games for very little.

I was too young to know about markets and crashes and all that but what I
can tell you is that about that same time computers were pushed on us
big time. I recall accompying my Mother to a PTA meeting where they
discussed purchasing Apple II computers. They did and in a few years those
were stacked in the halls when we got new Macs. Teaching LOGO was part
of class and towards the later 80s we had a full time computer teacher and
lab set up as I headed into junior high.

I think in many ways 1983-84 was really a great push by computer
manufacturers to sell to parents. Parents and kids saw them as an upgrade
to those old consoles in the same way the PS2 release saw the PS1 fade
away. The bulk of Atari customers moved to computers and those
computers were not of Atari manufacture.

[ozyr]

I'll have to agree with PDF, that the biggest thing during the crash was the 'killing' of the Odyssey3. I found out when I went into a Magnovox store during that time, and mentioned the unit to the sales guy. He stated flat out that the O3 was 'dead' and that there would be no more games for the Odyssey2.

Man, was I bummed out!

The only good thing out of the crash - getting a crap load of Coleco and INTV games for almost nothing.

[Predatorxs]

Hey i was 7 at the time, and to think about it i was pretty aware of things i remember going to see E.T at the cinema..

But i'm glad to report, that i lived through the Crash in 84' with alittle to no damage, come to think about it, what crash? in 84', was it the terminaters fault?....... :P

But the crash in 1989 was a complete tradgedy, i couldn't believe, that for a simple fight with my brother, it would be the end of my nes and C64 for 8 days!

Cold turkey is a bitch and it bite me hard on the Ass!!!

Sorry for takin things off topic, continue!!

[punkoffgirl]

I was 6, and had no idea there was a "crash", probably right up until I first joined the forums

[llabnip]

I was 14 in 1984. I remember the early 80's pretty well. For video games, it started with an Atari 2600 for Christmas in 1980 (I was 10 years old) with a brand-new copy of Space Invaders (I think I had Bowling, Air-Sea-Battle, Space Invaders and Combat as my first 4 carts - soon got Circus Atari and within a year Adventure... those kept me busy!). Atari was a huge part of my youth - played everything I could for it for 2 years until Christmas of 1982 when I got a Colecovision (it was only a few months since the CV release - and my parents were saying they couldn't afford a huge new game system when my Atari was only a couple years old... but Santa came through!). The CV was played alongside my Atari for a year and then I got the 2600 adaptor for the CV (late 83?). In early 1984 I did start to notice a shift away from console games... my friend had a TI/99, another had a C64 and yet another a PC-JR. The latter was utilized to play Zork I and II for endless hours. My interest in games started to wane... less and less interesting games were on the shelves. Sometime in 1984 my parents thought I should get a computer - and so the choice was made to get the Coleco ADAM computer - with huge dasiy wheel printer and casette drive. I programmed this (BASIC) all summer - and came up with some pretty cool games that I tweaked and played right up until about 1986. At this point I was still playing some CV carts (almost no Atari at this point) - lots of Donkey Kong and Space Panic and a few games on cassette (Super Buck Rogers I think?!). The local bowling alleys still had arcade games - and I never missed an opportunity to put in a quarter at Sammy Whites Lanes for a good game like Robotron or Defender or Space Duel. I didn't really take notice that consoles and console games were disapearing since I had a computer - and that was better, right?! Well, I know a little better now! Anyway, the CV eventually gave way (after 3 years of faithful service - my first real paycheck went to buying a disc drive for the beast). Upon high-school graduation my parents gave me a Quantus XT computer (IBM Clone) - complete with turbo mode for a whopping 8MHz operation! Now I could play Zork on my own computer... and with a Hercules graphics card I could even play a few simple graphics games (Space Quest is one of the first I remember playing). I never even noticed the release of the NES... played Super Mario Bros. 3 a few times with a friend (and remember thinking what a cool game it was!) but didn't get interested in consoles again until 1992 when I picked up a cheap SNES and a bunch of games... But even that interest diminished with real life obligations and it wasn't until 2000 when I started to really get interested in "classic" video games and the whole classic scene which would seem to explode in the following years.

So the Video Game Crash of 84 came and went... and I hardly noticed. I had moved along with the industry to computers and it took another 15 years before I returned to my roots.

[JaredCenter]

I was about 10-years-old at the time the crash happened. I never felt the crash in 1984 even though Electronic Games were touting about it at the time. Probably about early-1986 is when I felt it, because I wasn't getting any cheap/free game cartridges anymore. Also, all my friends had C64s and loved the games they were able to pick up for it (Marble Madness, Ghosts and Goblins, Impossible Mission, you name it).

But I made them feel like shit a year later when I struck back like a razor. I got the NES for home and became a metalhead like my peers. We all hung around video arcades. I was 13 at the time and got laid by a beautiful 16-year-old lady who also hung around the video arcades. She thought I was, in her words, "so fucking cool." But of course, I was an influential delinquent thanks to the game crash. Good things can come out of a game crash.

[Dire 51]

I was nine at the time. I knew something was up when I saw the tables of discount 2600 games, but I didn't know exactly what that was. I was getting a fair amount of games, though, so I was happy.

I was almost oblivious to the launch of the NES because I was so happy with my 2600; even more so when kids at school just started giving me their 2600 games. No lie. They didn't want them because the NES was the "in" thing, they knew I did, and several times I was offered 2600 games, which of course I took. One guy brought ina duffel bag with a good 50+ games for me once, several of which I still have. It was like another Christmas for my brother and I.

[Pop Culture Portal]

I was at the ripe old age of 16 at the time and did notice a change, but wasn't aware that it was considered some sort of "crash." Like some other people have already said, my magazine subscriptions were the one thing I really noticed. Some of the magazines I loved (like Electronic Fun) changed their titles to Computer Fun, or something familiar. Other magazines just stopped showing up at the house all together without any explanation. I wasn't interested in computers, although my brother had a C64, which I slowly (but not wholeheartedly) got interested in. Atari 5200 games and extras became like ice in the desert (practically non-existant). I remember going to one of those new "everything-is-a-dollar" stores and finding Atari 2600 games (lots, and LOTS). I bought all I could, but didn't open them...I later sold them at a yard sale (stupid, stupid, stupid). I remember the boxes were printed in black-&-white.

I also remember raiding the clearance bins at Kay-Bee Toys to grab up all those 2600 titles and Adam games I always wanted (yup, sold at the yard sale)

Maybe it was the area I lived in, but I never heard of the Odyssey or any of its cousins (not even the Sega Master) while growing up. It was 2600, 5200, C64, Intellivision, TI, and Adam...and nothing else. Most of these other systems I never heard of up until the past 5 years or so. I suppose in some ways, the "crash" didn't affect me in such a big way as it did some of you other guys simply because there wasn't as much for me to miss.

[tom]

I was 26 (hey am I the oldest???) and in Germany there really wasn't a crash, as most of the people moved on from Video games to Computers. The main Computer was C-64, followed by Atari 8-bit, and Schneider CPC (like Amstrad CPC). Magazines like 'Happy Computer' and later 'ASM' supported these machines to the full.
VCS games became somewhat cheaper, and all other's went into never-never land somehow.
I did have a local Radio shop in my town selling a huge range of VCS titles for half price, so I was in heaven. My CC was working overtime.

Later in 1987, when I moved to UK, we had Telegames (UK) still supporting all pre-85 consoles, and when Atari came back with the VCS Jr. and Palan Electronics set up office, VCS became all the rage again (about 1989). Even Activision made a comeback. Full circle.

[Raedon]

Lots of debate on this but Computers were a catalyst for the crash (I've said it before.)

I had a C64 almost a year before the crash and had filed away my INTV by that time.

Hard to notice a VG crash when you are busy playing Zork and Space Taxi.

[Aswald]

It's ironic that older consoles have been resurrected.

Here are a few ColecoVision games- Kevtris, Steamroller, Pac-Man, Dig-Dug and Joust (not quite finished), Lord of the Dungeon, Ms. Space Fury, Bejeweled(!), Space Invasion, Star Fortress, Space Invaders/Space Invaders Deluxe, Sky Jaguar, Cosmo Fighter 3, ICE, Reversi, Dac-Man 1.3V (not finished, but fun)...

And these aren't just crude games, either. Most homebrews are easily equal to "big company" games, maybe superior.