10 Atari Games that caused the Crash of 1984.

[Drakon]

Apparently youtube users are the end all source of truth when it comes to Nintendo trivia.

Darn it won't let me rep you until I spread some around.

[Saturn Fan]

Say what you will about the 2600 Pac-Man port, but its sound effects sure were memorable at least.

They always seem to be included in every generic set of "retro" sound effects for a movie or Tv show.

[tz101]

I honestly doubt that either the NES or the Master System were in most stores nation wide even in 1986. I only started hearing about the NES in very late 1987 and I don't think even my friends started getting one until 1988.

Doubting by no means changes facts.

So if this source is accurate, then the Nintendo Entertainment System had a gradual Nationwide launch rather "Regional
Launch" starting in the NY/Mid Atlantic area on October 18,1985 but spread across the Country and was available in about 80% of all US retailers and Areas by Christmastime. The assumption that it was only test marketed exclusively in NYC is a myth.

So its marketing went like this: Because of the crash, most of the smaller less populated parts of America hated video games and had shut down most Arcade dens. Nintendo was forced to gamble in the more marketable larger areas that still played and sold video games so NES had a Shipping Journey that started in mid October and officially ended February in Canada. So I would say the Schedule or launch Window looked like this:

October 18,1985, Mid Atlantic Region: NY,NJ,PA,MD,DE,New England.

October 25,1985: West Coast, Los Angeles, Seattle(NOA's HQs),San Francisco.

October 31-November 1: The Rocky Mountains, CO,UT,NV,NM.

November 8-15: Heartland/ MIAMOLA/Midwest.

Thanksgiving/Black Friday '85 November 29: Texas/ Gulf Coast.

December 6-13: Southeast US.

January 1986: Deep South,Plains and Arizona area.

February 19: Canada. Western Hemisphere release concluded.

That timeline agrees squarely with my getting Control Deck with SMB for Christmas 1985. Thank you.

I really doubt Montana was getting the NES before Arizona. I moved from Montana to Arizona in 86. The whole state barely has a million people.

Don't question this guy. He knows all about Nintendo release dates.

[MrSega]

@tz101. You're welcome. I can't remember a single moment late in '85 that nobody had even heard of the NES. It was a pretty talked about item throughout mid 1985. Some people called it a "Strange Computer".

[NeoZeedeater]

It was a pretty talked about item throughout mid 1985.

Who were you hanging around with, Nintendo employees and CES attendees? System launches weren't hyped ahead of time for the general public like they are now. The number of people aware of the system in mid 1985 would have been very small.

[sheath]

Doubting by no means changes facts.

What facts are we talking about exactly and what do you think I'm trying to change about them?

[Thenewguy]

If you want to continue believing that the North American videogame market crashed, carry on. NES brought back console gaming to North America. They did not save videogames.

I didn't say they did, I said they brought back gaming to the mass-market in the US.

Nintendo did not save videogames, if Nintendo had not brought back gaming popularity in the US, someone else would've.

NES wasn't even remotely popular in Europe, and gaming was booming here.

Japan's market was kind of built in the arcade scene, NES was the 1st hugely popular home console there though, so I guess Nintendo pretty much did create the console gaming market as far as that country is concerned.

How's it irrelevant?

We're talking about the state of the market in the US and you're quoting worldwide figures, C64 was huge in Europe, everyone knows the home computer industry in Europe completely decimated the console industry of that entire era.

It's already been proven that the Apple II computer was the lead platform for computer game development in North America and that some of the more popular titles (of the time) on the C-64 were not only created on the Apple II

And again, what you've said here has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about.

All you've said (over and over) is that Apple II was big, and had tons of games, which was never in dispute in the 1st place

Apple II was big in the education, business, hobbyist, and general combo gaming/work market, nothing about its sales matter, because it wasn't sold to the people who were buying consoles in the first place, it was sold to an emergent market to older groups of people in different wage brackets (and schools).

The Apple II standard had been around for bloody ages, the machine had been around pretty much as long as the Atari 2600, and Apple were behind the idea of backwards compatibility, with them always releasing updated machines which ran the same software. The machine was essentially Mr "old reliable" and by the mid-80s was already in the schools, and homes of many people due to its versatile combination of serious applications and reliability, coupled with respectable(ish) entertainment possibilities. You have a computer which is fairly commonplace, had been supported for ages (and was in no threat of being suddenly discontinued out of the blue), and people who, as always, wanted to play some games in between learning, and work, hence tons of games.

There is no way, in hell that console owners gave up their $100-$200 consoles to start buying $1300 computers.

You disagree with me? fine, I've had it, lets agree to disagree.

What is your point here?

People didn't just drop their Atari 2600 controllers to run out and buy computers. It was a slow start in 1979 and started gaining steam around 81 with the release of the Vic-20 and its replacement in the C-64. Apple IIs were in schools across America, where kids got their first experience with computer games that kids and teachers would bring to school. The Apple II went through many revisions over the decade, and kept compatibility in place.

So computers grew concurrently, and alongside consoles in a different market you're saying? which completely defeats your entire point.

-_-

Either computer gaming took over from console gaming or not, you can't "take over" sales when your sales were already there and you experience no growth. Prior to the crash the gaming market was consoles + computers at their peak, after the crash the console market disappeared and the home computer market stayed roughly the same (C64 grew but loads of the other manufacturers went out of business), that leaves you simply with a large deficit in gaming.

You said that the consoles were replaced by a much smaller computer userbase, when the list of early 80s computers shows you that they'd sold just as well, or better than consoles.

Under $1000 market

1982

Atari 2600 - Peaked
Colecovision - Peaked
Intellivision - Not sure, was doing well though
VIC-20 - Peaked
TS-1000 - Peaked
Coco - Peaked
Atari 8-bit - Peaked
TI99/4A - Doing well
C64 - Just started out

1983 (start of crash)

Atari 2600 - decreased in sales
Colecovision - decreased in sales
Intellivision - decreased in sales
VIC-20 - decreased in sales
TS-1000 - nosedived in sales, discontinued.
Coco - decreased in sales
Atari 8-bit - decreased in sales
TI99/4A - nosedived in sales, hemorrhaging money, discontinued.
C64 - increased in sales

1984 (crash in full swing)

Atari 2600 - nosedived in sales
Colecovision - nosedived in sales
Intellivision - Nosedived in sales
VIC-20 - Nosedived in sales (fully discontinued by january of 85')
TS-1000 - doesn't exist anymore
Coco - Nosedived in sales
Atari 8-bit - Nosedived in sales
TI99/4A - Doesn't exist anymore
C64 - Peaked in sales (+500,000 on last year)

Looking at the <$1000 home computer market, I think it may have actually shrunk in 1984, C64 is +500,000 but that is hugely offset by the dropping sales of the other machines (A8 and Coco drops alone nearly add up to 500,000), I'd say the C64 just consolidated most of the remaining budget computer market.

Everything I mentioned there was 1983 and 1984.

Exactly

Everything released in 1983 was being developed before anyone even knew a crash was coming, at a time when games were selling huge amounts across the board, a lot of 1984s stuff is going to be exactly the same. The market only looked like it was in serious trouble of dying out during 1984, games released in 1984 were being developed months earlier.

Not that this even matters because as I've said repeatedly game development doesn't stagnate instantaneously anyway, sales dropped, people continued their projects, 6 months went by sales nosedived and pundits started proclaiming the death of gaming, developers finished off their products etc, some didn't sell and those companies went out of business, others underperformed but did ok and those companies scaled back, after a few years of this we start having a lowering of standards and thinning out of companies and software.

----------------------------------

I'm probably going to dump this thread now, it really is a serious waste of my time (I mean jesus christ, now we're arguing that Nintendo of America are mis-remembering when, and where they released their most important product?!?!), I said my part and I'm just repeating myself now anyway.

[gamevet]

I didn't say they did, I said they brought back gaming to the mass-market in the US.

And I'm telling you it never left. It just stopped being played on consoles, because a computer revolution was happening here. Europe was not the only place this was happening.

You've had 4 or 5 North Americans in this thread tell you what it was like.

Nintendo did not save videogames, if Nintendo had not brought back gaming popularity in the US, someone else would've.

NES wasn't even remotely popular in Europe, and gaming was booming here.

The market changed. If the NES had never came out, we more than likely would all have been gaming on PCs. Which is exactly what happened to the computer market, bankrupting Commodore and almost taking Apple with it too.

[gamevet]

Don't question this guy. He knows all about Nintendo release dates.

I said: "I stand corrected."

What else did you expect me to say?

According to Game Over, the system wasn't being sold anywhere but the NY/NJ area. Somebody is wrong.

According to David Sheff's book, "Game Over" p. 166-169, the NES was only being sold in 500 stores in the NY/NJ area in December of 1985.

They worked until the day before Christmas. Between 500 and 600 stores were selling the NES. The team members were spent. A group of them summoned the energy to drag themselves to Newark Airport to fly back to Seattle to spend the Christmas with their families, but their flight was canceled because Seattle was fogged in. Most of the SWAT team spent a lonely Christmas in New Jersey.

The advertising and mall tours succeeded in building interest in the NES, and the stores were racking up sales. The New York test wasn't quite as successful as Nintendo had hoped, but half of the 100,000 systems shipped from Japan were sold. Most important, retailers had decided that Nintendo had a viable product. It was enough to justify going forward.

Los Angeles was next. It was a tougher sell there because of the time of the year. They hit stores in L.A. in February, a bad month for retailers, particularly for toys. Still, enough systems were sold to encourage Arakaw. The L.A. sales were slow but steady, and retailers were enthusiastic for the most part. The team continued to Chicago, San Francisco and several Texas cities before going national. By the end of the first year, a million systems had been sold in America.

So, is David Sheff's sources wrong, or are some of you really remembering your dates?

I know one thing for sure. I didn't know anything about the NES being in Montana in 1985 and would not see the console until the fall of 1986 in Arizona, when I'd moved there.

[goldenband]

If people are arguing "Yes, there was a video gaming crash in the US from 1983-1985, but arcades were more resilient and the growing computer market offset some of the damage", then sure, I can agree with that. Of course not everything croaked.

But if people are arguing "No, there was no real video gaming crash -- it only affected consoles but computers gained more than enough business to compensate", I don't see how that can possibly be true. It doesn't reflect my experience, and it doesn't reflect all the lost jobs and terror of the period. If you read trade publications from the era, everyone was scared shitless and talking about how much the market had shrunk, including the computer market.

Either way, the market penetration of home computers in the US in the mid-1980s didn't even come close to consoles like the Atari 2600. And it's not like there's a 1:1 ratio between home computers and video game play anyway ("No, you can't play games on Daddy's machine"), let alone business and educational machines which might've seen occasional gameplay, but hardly more than that.

(Working-class families who couldn't afford much, like mine, still found a way to have an Atari. Generally speaking, the same families didn't have a Commodore 64, let alone an Apple II series machine, in part because of the massive cost differential.)

[gamevet]

But if people are arguing "No, there was no real video gaming crash -- it only affected consoles but computers gained more than enough business to compensate", I don't see how that can possibly be true. It doesn't reflect my experience, and it doesn't reflect all the lost jobs and terror of the period. If you read trade publications from the era, everyone was scared shitless and talking about how much the market had shrunk, including the computer market.

The C-64's best selling years were between 1983-1986, where it averaged 2.5 million units per year in sales. That doesn't sound like a decline in sales to me, unless you're someone that's making the competing computer and getting their ass kicked by Commodore.

[goldenband]

Sure, the C64 did OK (some people question the claimed sales figures). But we're still talking about a big piece of a shrunken pie, especially in the US -- and for purposes of any discussion about the US crash, I don't really care how much the C64 sold outside the US and Canada.

[gamevet]

Sure, the C64 did OK (some people question the claimed sales figures). But we're still talking about a big piece of a shrunken pie, especially in the US -- and for purposes of any discussion about the US crash, I don't really care how much the C64 sold outside the US and Canada.

The numbers are world-wide for the console too. The 2600 may have sold a majority of its units in North America, but I'm pretty sure at least 20% of those 30 million 2600s sold were in other countries and a couple of million were the $50 2600 Jr units sold after 1985.

I have four C-64s, two of which I bought at yard sales in Pheonix (according to that old article you posted, I own 2 that are supposed to be in low numbers), one that I'd bought in high school and a 64-C I'd bought from a member over at Digital Press. They seem pretty common to me.

[goldenband]

I don't think the question is whether the C64 is common -- it is, absolutely -- but whether it and other computers offered enough of a video gaming market to offset the massive losses of 1983-1985 in the United States.

I don't see how the answer to that can be anything but an unequivocal "no", especially in terms of revenue in software sales, and especially once you factor in things like software piracy (which was practically nonexistent on consoles) and much of the installed base not being used for gaming. My own C64 was inherited from my fiancée's father, who used it for business far more than for gaming.

[gamevet]

I don't think the question is whether the C64 is common -- it is, absolutely -- but whether it and other computers offered enough of a video gaming market to offset the massive losses of 1983-1985 in the United States.

I don't see how the answer to that can be anything but an unequivocal "no", especially in terms of revenue in software sales, and especially once you factor in things like software piracy (which was practically nonexistent on consoles) and much of the installed base not being used for gaming. My own C64 was inherited from my fiancée's father, who used it for business far more than for gaming.

Well yeah, most of my games were copied one way or another. I did buy at least 20 or so legit titles over the years. Piracy is nothing new for computers, and even today the publishers prefer the consoles because of all of the rampant piracy that goes on with the PC.

My friend Bryan's dad bought their C-64 for anything but games, but his kids brought home games for it. He didn't like that at all. The closest thing to a game Bryan's dad bought, was flight simulator. We played it, because it had a hidden bomber game in it.

Here's an interesting find though. I was just looking through Retro Gamer issue 107, and noticed an article about Master Tronics, from UK. You can see the sales numbers for Kane I & II. The game was only 2 British pounds, but it still didn't manage to sell over 84k on the C-64. It's not like Europe had a bunch of million sellers on 1 format for home computers.