For those who were around during the great crash

[diskoboy]

When did you come to the realization that something seriously wrong was about to go down?

I think it began to hit me when Electronic Games magazine changed over to Computer Entertainment magazine. There was even an article in the first CE mag about a plethora of arcade games that never made it past the proto/test phase (Actually I learned about Gottlieb's Screw Loose from this issue). Most games they wrote about sounded really interesting. I think thats about when I realized things were beginning to change.

It became painfully obvious when both the Inty III and Odyssey 3 were announced, then both got scrapped around the same time. A few months later, both companies fold and get out of the market. Everyone then thought Atari and Coleco were the only contenders left. When Atari announced losses - thats when I knew we were screwed.

Arguably - The ADAM was pretty much the straw that broke the camels back.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

This is something I've been meaning to ask about, too. Mostly because I didn't notice shit. I was only six years old in 1984, so I guess I didn't notice much in the larger world, but neither I nor any of my friends ever stopped playing our Ataris (or dreaming of having a Colecovision).

We all played our 2600s religiously and occasionally someone would get a new game from Toys'R'Us (maybe they were cheaper than they had been before, but I wouldn't know since everything seemed pretty expensive to me back then) and I even remember one of my friends getting a cool newly redesigned and way smaller 2600 back when they must have been brand new. That lasted until about 1987 when my family moved to a larger town and I discovered that everyone there was playing Nintendo, though I had to keep playing my 2600 at home since I didn't get an NES until like 1990.

So for me there was really no crash at all. There was just Atari times and then Nintendo times with no real break inbetween. I've always wondered if I was really the only one who experienced the so called "Great Video Game Crash" that way. I can't believe that I am.


...word is bondage...

[alexkidd2000]

I noticed when Coleco Vision games were all of a sudden $5. Cheap ass parents only bought me one too!

[GrandAmChandler]

I noticed when Coleco Vision games were all of a sudden $5. Cheap ass parents only bought me one too!

Yeah, my dad and I picked up sealed copies of Pole Position and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back at Toys 'R Us, around somewhere between 1985-1987ish for around $5-$10 each. I was young but I still remember it. I remember not believing the price.

[norkusa]

I was 8 in 1984 and played video games a lot back then and had a little over 100 Atari 2600 games at the time. One moment during that time still stands out vividly to me. I haven't gotten any new games for a while and my mom took me out shopping at Meijers for some because we remember seeing them being sold for very cheaply there a while back. We looked around the toy department for about 5 minutes and couldn't find a single one. My mom then found an employee and asked him where the vide ogames were. He laughed and said "we haven't carried any of those for a while".

We went to a few stores after that and it was the same story. Nobody carried any video games. It was then I knew something strange was going on.

Seems hard to believe now, but there was actually a short period when you couldn't buy games anywhere. Thankfuly the NES came out not long after that though and changed things.

[kentuckyfried]

I was about the same age as most of the previous posters, 6 in 1984, and I remember that the friends that I had that had video games had lots and lots of them. I realize now it must have been due to clearouts, price drops etc.

When I finally got my first game system in 87, a brand-new Atari 2600jr system (60$) with Solaris ($?), you could get those Zeller's Atari games for about 5$ new from Zeller's (duh), and used games were Everywhere! For reeeallllllll cheap.

[dbiersdorf]

Boy am I young.

[Retsudo]

I was off to Bootcamp. So I didnt notice.

[smork]

I was 12 in 1984. I'll say like i've been saying all along -- there was no crash in 1984. Most people had moved on to the C64, TRS-80, or an Apple machine. There wasn't a great feeling of "Oh, we have to do this because the videogame market collapsed", but "Hey, this is better, better graphics, bigger games, and can program the thing to make our own games!" Computers were a step up from consoles, but were a similar price (Mac and AT/XT excluded, of course).

So, I say nothing went wrong, things got better.

[kentuckyfried]

I was 12 in 1984. I'll say like i've been saying all along -- there was no crash in 1984. Most people had moved on to the C64, TRS-80, or an Apple machine. There wasn't a great feeling of "Oh, we have to do this because the videogame market collapsed", but "Hey, this is better, better graphics, bigger games, and can program the thing to make our own games!" Computers were a step up from consoles, but were a similar price (Mac and AT/XT excluded, of course).

So, I say nothing went wrong, things got better.

That's a fantastic way to put it

But considering how many people lost their shirts in 84 and on.......

[dangevin]

I was a latecomer...I didn't get my 2600 until 1982 and my first NES until 1986 or maybe even 87. But I do remember being able to pick up 2600 games for $2 apiece in a big clearance bin at Ann & Hope (the local dept. store around Fall River, Mass.). Shortly thereafter, there were similarly priced games in and odd lot store, oddly called "Christmas Tree Shops". Although I was 6-7 at the time (was EVERYONE here born in 77/78???) I still remember stacks upon stacks of the "Pole Positn" (sic) misprint Atari 2600 cartridges, I guess they were considered "undesirable" then lol.

Anyways when the NES came out there was a whole new section to the Department store, with Rob and the Zapper and all the beautiful black boxes, stoic in their sharp contrast to the colorful yellow, orange and assrted M&m-colored disarray of old 2600 clearance boxes festering down the aisle.

So I have very clear images in my mind of the retail turning points in the games industry...if even at the time I had really no concept of anything larger at work such as the gears of capitalism grinding off in the distance...

[98PaceCar]

I was lucky in that my mom worked in a shopping center that had a drug store with 2600 games in it. Towards the end, I was getting games for $.25 to $1 a piece. I remember my collection expanding quite a bit during that time. Looking back, there were very few good titles available at that store, but I did get a few Activisions and most of the silver label 2600 games.

WIsh I could have bought multiple copies of each, but I never would have guessed then that I would be collecting games and would care about having them now. I am just glad that I still have most of them now.

[lordnikon]

I acquired a 2600 after having an NES. I had a few games for it that I liked playing. Mostly activision titles. Note that the 2600 was before my time. I started with the NES, and the prime of my video game youth was during the 16-bit era (I was born in 1980, currently 26 yrs/old).

Now, I am guessing around 1990-93 I was in a dollar store. There was a wall, from the front of the store to the back of the store completly stocked with Atari games for a dollar each. All 2600 and 7800 games.

Yes they were all $1.00 each, brand new sealed, and I didn't buy any. I was too into comic books.

I wish I could go back in time.

[NeoZeedeater]

This kind of repeats what others have said.

I remember the discounted console games well and even though I was young I knew that products on the market were always temporary. As a gamer it never felt detrimental as there were still tons of popular new arcade games. New arcade games like Paperboy, Punch Out!! and Karate Champ were innovative and awesome.

There were also more quality computer games than I could keep track of. It made sense to me that people would flock to gaming computers like the C64 because they generally had better arcade ports than the consoles along with great new games like Bruce Lee.

There was never a point in 1984/1985 where you couldn't buy new games in the stores and there were always arcades around. The console crash was just that: game systems defined as consoles. Gaming wasn't at its peak popularity but it wasn't dead.

Honestly, I think the people that make the biggest deal out the crash are the ones who weren't there. They see the word "crash" and get the misconception that gaming was wiped off the earth or something.

[Mayhem]

We never truly noticed until after we'd sold the 2600 and gotten a C64. Then some point after the games went right down in price and became harder to find. Video shops stopped doing rentals on them.

Of course being in the UK I never really knew what "the crash" was until a few years after talking to people who had experienced it in the US. Here in the UK people moved onto or into computers and it pretty much passed us by.

[JerseyDevil65]

I don't remember the crash at all.

I remember playing my friends 2600 when I was 12 or 13. I really didn't play videogames when I was ages 16-20 which was right during the crash.

My girlfriend at the time bought me an NES in 1986 for my 21st birthday and have been playing ever since.

[Griking]

When did you come to the realization that something seriously wrong was about to go down?

I think it began to hit me when Electronic Games magazine changed over to Computer Entertainment magazine. .

I was around but I didn't think that the name change had anything to do with a crash. I just thought it was because computer games were just a natural progression. Computer games at the time were just so much more advanced than the video games of the time. And some even still are.

[mailman187666]

i was 2 in 84 but i remember my mother and I picking up atari games in bargain bins back then and also i went from atari to an Apple 2e playing games. Other than that I didn't really know anything about a crash till I read about it. I was too young but I was in fact still playing games at the age of 2. Tell me thats not a lifetime of gaming for ya....I'm 24 now.

[Pantechnicon]

I was 14 at the time and not aware of a market crash, and I don't think that a great many other young'uns at the time were aware of a market crash either.

It is really important to remember this era in a pre-Web context. There was a far less permeable division of awareness for the average person between gaming as a hobby and gaming as an industry. There was no DP, IGN or any other sort of collective repository wherein thousands of people were able to pore over both the minutiae and business trends which drove their hobbies.

Game magazines, by and large, were propaganda tools of console manufacturers or (in the case of 3rd-party publishers) less concerned with the business-related intricacies of the industry than promoting the up-and-coming games. If there was any speculation on a market crash, it would more likely have been found in a publication like Business Weekly or the Wall Street Journal than Atari Age, and there weren't a lot of teenagers reading those first two publications back then...at least not in my part of the country.

So back in 1984, what the antacid-popping Money Men in three-piece suits referred to as a market crash, I called a bonanza. I distinctly remember walking into a Walgreen's one day over my 9th grade lunch hour and seeing three tables of boxed 2600 carts going for $2 to $4 each. Warlords, Star Raiders, Pac-Man ( I know...I know) and a few others that had long eluded me in the $25 to $40 range were finally coming home. That was a good day.

A year or so later that new-fangled NES popped up in the stores. I wasn't interested. It looked too complicated and besides, I had all these great "new" 2600 games so I really wasn't in the market for something different. The point, though, is that this industry-ignorant mindset was more the rule than the exception for persons my age.

[Hep038]

I was at Lowes of all places with my mom. I cannot remember what we were there to get, but when you are a kid back then there was not much you ask your mom to buy you at Lowes. So I was just walking around goofing off when I saw a big table of games. I ran over and saw Atari games $4 a game. I grabbed Atlantis and took it over to my mom and did the " Can I have this PLEASE!!!". First she said no, the asked me where I found the game, knowing that Lowes did not sell vidoe games. Well I dragged her over to the table and showed her all the games priced at $4. When she said OK, I did the next thing any kid would do, I started picking up all the $4 games and asking how many I could get. Well I only got the 1 game, but I remeber after that everytime we went to Lowes I would tag along hoping to find a table of $4 games to increase my collection. Saddly I do not think they ever carried games again.