VGCollect Forum
General and Gaming => General => Topic started by: gf78 on February 12, 2015, 09:42:25 am
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I love reading about the history of video games, and having been a gamer (albeit a young one) during the era of the great video game crash, I find it fascinating that much of the blame gets placed on Atari and their failures with E.T and Pac-Man. There is so much more to it.
For me, the biggest culprit was the sheer number of gaming systems on the market at one time. There were at one point ten or more gaming systems on the market, not counting variations like the Sears versions of Atari systems. TI-99, Fairchild Chanel F, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Bally Astrocade, Magnavox Odyssey 2, Intellivision, Emerson Arcadia, ColecoVision and Vectrex all vying for consumer dollars.
It also didn't help matters that the comparative cost to today's dollar value put these systems at between $400 and $800 each. The games also retailed for upwards of $50 each and were all varying degrees of crap. Sure, good ideas and the beginnings of gaming started here and some titles stood the test of time. But most were derivative garbage, cheap knock-offs of another more successful title or quick cash-ins tied to unrelated franchises. It was easy to snooker consumers into buying a Star Wars or Spider-Man game that had a cool looking box art, only for them to find the game iside was complete garbage.
Aside from word-of-mouth from people who already bought the games, people had no way of knowing if the game they were eying was going to be fun or complete garbage. Retailers had to decide what systems to carry and which not to. As each console went down in flames, consumer, corporate and retailer faith in the viability of video games continued to dwindle. I remember going to stores that carried the games. Stores like K-Mart, KB Toy & Hobby, Woolworth's, Montgomery Ward and Kiddie City (east coast) having these huge bins full of these games for dirt-cheap prices. They couldn't sell the stuff. The game manufacturers stopped accepting returns on the unsold merchandise and retailers had no choice but to drop the price of these games to $1.99 or so. You don't need to be a professor in economics to know that retailers were taking an enormous loss on these games.
And it was at this very time when gaming was coming apart at the seams that Atari released their two biggest flops in E.T the Extra Terrestrial and a heinous port of Pac-Man.
Since the 2nd generation of gaming and that big crash of '83, Nintendo pretty much single-handedly resurrected the US video game market. Sega was the 2nd player to try their hand and Atari continued to hemmorage money with the 7200. The 7200 and Master System were both pretty much flops, but Nintendo with their in-house marque titles and great, new games from Capcom, Konami, Taito and a handful of others revived the market.
In fact, since the 2nd generation of video game consoles ended, there has never been more than a handful of home consoles on the market at one time. There have been a few companies try their hand over the years with little or no success. Neo Geo, 3DO, TurboGrafx, CD-I and a few others threw their hats into the ring up into the mid 90's, but quickly exited the market that Nintendo and Sega-reinvigorated with Sonic and the Geneis/Mega Drive dominated.
It wasn't until the mid-90's when Nintendo screwed Sony over and backed out of their deal to make a SNES/Super Famicom CD-ROM add-on that a 3rd viable competitor entered the gaming arena. But that's a story for another day...
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it's equally interesting that the great crash happened just a few years after the home video game market had already crashed due to oversaturation of the market with pong consoles
you'd think that would have clued 'em in
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Great read OP, I wasnt alive for the great crash but also like reading about it. Thankfully I grew up with gaming when it was becoming popular again. I even have a copy of ET i got for free..... I was showing my buddy and he was like, wtf is this haha.
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Great read OP, I wasnt alive for the great crash but also like reading about it. Thankfully I grew up with gaming when it was becoming popular again. I even have a copy of ET i got for free..... I was showing my buddy and he was like, wtf is this haha.
Thank you. It was an interesting time growing up experiencing gaming back then. I "knew" somebody who could copy the Atari 2600 ROM chips back then. He made me a dummy cartridge that was basically a circuit board with a little lever where you could unplug the ROM chip. So all I had to do was pop one out, snap another one down and I had a completely different game. I had literally hundreds of Atari games. Even some naughty stuff like Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em and Custer's Revenge. :P
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it's equally interesting that the great crash happened just a few years after the home video game market had already crashed due to oversaturation of the market with pong consoles
you'd think that would have clued 'em in
I guess they just thought the Pong mini-crash was because they were all gaming systems that were just...well, Pong. And now these guys were releasing consoles where you could swap out hundreds of games. It was like the wild west. These companies were like settlers, staking their claim. Unfortunately, none of them were very good.
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I've mentioned this book a hundred times over on this site, but I'm gonna mention it again:
High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Gaming
http://www.amazon.com/Score-Illustrated-History-Electronic-Games/dp/0072224282/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1423765264&sr=8-3&keywords=history+of+electronic (http://www.amazon.com/Score-Illustrated-History-Electronic-Games/dp/0072224282/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1423765264&sr=8-3&keywords=history+of+electronic)
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519ihx-MWSL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
It covers the history of gaming from the pre-Pinball up to the 360/PS3/Wii era. Very high production value and chock-full of great information. Big, color, glossy photos, lots of interviews and such. Very well made. And so interesting to read.
I mention it because it has so much on this era of gaming. It covers the U.S. crash, but also goes in to computer and Japanese gaming at the time, which didn't suffer the crash.
My only complaint is the cheap binding. It's basically glued together. Mine is starting to come apart. But well worth reading, regardless.
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I've mentioned this book a hundred times over on this site, but I'm gonna mention it again:
High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Gaming
http://www.amazon.com/Score-Illustrated-History-Electronic-Games/dp/0072224282/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1423765264&sr=8-3&keywords=history+of+electronic (http://www.amazon.com/Score-Illustrated-History-Electronic-Games/dp/0072224282/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1423765264&sr=8-3&keywords=history+of+electronic)
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519ihx-MWSL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
It covers the history of gaming from the pre-Pinball up to the 360/PS3/Wii era. Very high production value and chock-full of great information. Big, color, glossy photos, lots of interviews and such. Very well made. And so interesting to read.
I mention it because it has so much on this era of gaming. It covers the U.S. crash, but also goes in to computer and Japanese gaming at the time, which didn't suffer the crash.
My only complaint is the cheap binding. It's basically glued together. Mine is starting to come apart. But well worth reading, regardless.
thanks, i am gonna order me a copy
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I've mentioned this book a hundred times over on this site, but I'm gonna mention it again:
High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Gaming
http://www.amazon.com/Score-Illustrated-History-Electronic-Games/dp/0072224282/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1423765264&sr=8-3&keywords=history+of+electronic (http://www.amazon.com/Score-Illustrated-History-Electronic-Games/dp/0072224282/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1423765264&sr=8-3&keywords=history+of+electronic)
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519ihx-MWSL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
It covers the history of gaming from the pre-Pinball up to the 360/PS3/Wii era. Very high production value and chock-full of great information. Big, color, glossy photos, lots of interviews and such. Very well made. And so interesting to read.
I mention it because it has so much on this era of gaming. It covers the U.S. crash, but also goes in to computer and Japanese gaming at the time, which didn't suffer the crash.
My only complaint is the cheap binding. It's basically glued together. Mine is starting to come apart. But well worth reading, regardless.
Thanks! I remembered you posting that before but my scattered, feeble old mind forgot. I'm writing it down now and I'm going to check it out as soon as I get home.
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Regardless of whether the market is saturated with poor quality games or not, even the biggest franchises and high profile developers / publishers can throw out a complete mess of a game if they make just one bad decision. With the ever increasing standards of practically every aspect of our lives, bad games will stand out like a sore thumb.
As long as just a few people can voice there opinion, with the internet at our finger tips, the rest of the world will find out, and they will rip the game apart.
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Here's something I've always wondered...why didn't we have another game crash in the mid 90's? There were SO MANY consoles out at the same time. Was it just because the 3DO, CD-i, Jaguar, and TurboGrafx systems couldn't crack into the market the PlayStation, Saturn, and Super Nintendo had?
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Here's something I've always wondered...why didn't we have another game crash in the mid 90's? There were SO MANY consoles out at the same time. Was it just because the 3DO, CD-i, Jaguar, and TurboGrafx systems couldn't crack into the market the PlayStation, Saturn, and Super Nintendo had?
Because while the other companies were questionable, Nintendo and Sega were arguably at their best during that era.
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It was easy to snooker consumers into buying a Star Wars or Spider-Man game that had a cool looking box art, only for them to find the game iside was complete garbage.
Capcom did this on their older NES games as well. They put the arcade picture on the back of the box and "state-of-the-art" "High Resolution Graphics" on the front.
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Here's something I've always wondered...why didn't we have another game crash in the mid 90's? There were SO MANY consoles out at the same time. Was it just because the 3DO, CD-i, Jaguar, and TurboGrafx systems couldn't crack into the market the PlayStation, Saturn, and Super Nintendo had?
Because while the other companies were questionable, Nintendo and Sega were arguably at their best during that era.
This is pretty much it. The majority of the secondary consoles released in 1991-1995 didn't offer much incentives to consumers that most people would have to enjoy on a Nintendo/Sega ( and eventually Sony) system, and they all had a huge flaw/flaws that gave the console low sales and made sure they didn't last long in most markets. The only exception is the TurboGrafx ( PC Engine) in Japan, because they got a lot of third party publishers to make games for their system, and the multimedia capabilities like the first cd add on prolonged the systems life in Japan to 1994. However, that was the reason why its successor, the PC-FX failed terribly because NEC lost sight of market trends and tried to release a system built on 1992 hardware that specialized in great FMV capabilities, which was something consumers didn't really want in 1994.
Most of those secondary companies didn't recover from those failures. Phillips lost $1 billion thanks to the CDi.
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It was easy to snooker consumers into buying a Star Wars or Spider-Man game that had a cool looking box art, only for them to find the game iside was complete garbage.
Capcom did this on their older NES games as well. They put the arcade picture on the back of the box and "state-of-the-art" "High Resolution Graphics" on the front.
Very true. Except Mega Man. That....that....just...where to begin?
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I've only heard bits and pieces of the whole 'Ninty screwed Sony' thing...
...anyone knowledgeable about it feel like breaking down the who did what to who and why of it?
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I've only heard bits and pieces of the whole 'Ninty screwed Sony' thing...
...anyone knowledgeable about it feel like breaking down the who did what to who and why of it?
Here goes: Nintendo, though quite hesitant to jump into the realm of CD-ROM games, was closely monitoring Sega and the CD add-on for the Genesis. Nintendo and Sony entered negotiations for Sony to manufacture a CD & cartridge based combo system called the "Play Station." Nintendo didn't like the idea that they would not have full control over the manufacturing and distribution of CD-based games and the relationship between the two began to deteriorate. Nintendo's boss Yamauchi sent representatives to Phillips unbeknownst to Sony to negotiate a different deal.
Sony had no idea things weren't working out and at the 1991 CES, Sony officially announced the Play Station. The very next day at CES, Nintendo revealed their partnership with Phillips. The partnership was pretty much over then. Ken Kutaragi persuaded his superiors to allow his team to continue working on the Play Station. In the span of just a little over 3 years, they created the console that we would all know as PlayStation.
In quite the ironic twist, Nintendo was building up hype for their forthcoming Ultra 64 (N64) an announcing their "dream team" of developers. Chief among them were Squaresoft and Enix which hold enormous sway in the Japanese market as the release of a new Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy is almost like a holiday for them. After Nintendo revealed the final specifications for the N64, complete with sticking with the cartridges that they held a stranglehold over both the manufacturing and royalties for, Squaresoft, Enix, Capcom, Konami, Namco and just about every single other developer in the world shifted their focus to the PlayStation. Why? The most expensive cartridge can only hold 256megabits of information. In contrast, a single CD-ROM could hold over 640 megabytes of info and were easily swappable so games could span multiple discs.
To add insult to injury, the marketing campaign for Final Fantasy VII included two-page spreads in various gaming magazines and comic books with the tagline "Somebody get the manufacturers of cartridges a blindfold."
Not only did Nintendo basically create their biggest adversary, they handed them the keys to the proverbial kingdom by sticking with cartridges.
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The partnering with Phillips never resulted in a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES. It did however, allow Phillips rights to make a handful of games featuring Nintendo characters. All of which were horrific.
As a side note, I believe Nintendo was particularly butt-sore because Sony also published all of Squaresoft's early PlayStation releases. Final Fantasy VII, Tobal No. 1, Einhander, Bushido Blade, Final Fantasy Tactics...and all of them were highly regarded titles. Even after taking over the self-publishing reigns, Squaresoft released a ton of titles for the PlayStation consoles.
The relationship between Nintendo and Squaresoft, now Square-Enix healed a bit over time and some titles eventually started making their way over to Nintendo systems. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is a sub-series that is pretty much exclusive to Nintendo systems, but the main Final Fantasy titles never returned to their original home.
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It was easy to snooker consumers into buying a Star Wars or Spider-Man game that had a cool looking box art, only for them to find the game iside was complete garbage.
Capcom did this on their older NES games as well. They put the arcade picture on the back of the box and "state-of-the-art" "High Resolution Graphics" on the front.
But Capcom games were good. They and Konami were the best third-party publishers during the NES days.
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It was easy to snooker consumers into buying a Star Wars or Spider-Man game that had a cool looking box art, only for them to find the game iside was complete garbage.
Capcom did this on their older NES games as well. They put the arcade picture on the back of the box and "state-of-the-art" "High Resolution Graphics" on the front.
But Capcom games were good. They and Konami were the best third-party publishers during the NES days.
Agreed. Early Capcom games that I really loved include Section Z, Trojan and Ghosts 'N Goblins. Great stuff. What a shame that in the last five years, Capcom has turned into one of the worst offenders for ripping people off with DLC.
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It was easy to snooker consumers into buying a Star Wars or Spider-Man game that had a cool looking box art, only for them to find the game iside was complete garbage.
Capcom did this on their older NES games as well. They put the arcade picture on the back of the box and "state-of-the-art" "High Resolution Graphics" on the front.
But Capcom games were good. They and Konami were the best third-party publishers during the NES days.
Agreed. Early Capcom games that I really loved include Section Z, Trojan and Ghosts 'N Goblins. Great stuff. What a shame that in the last five years, Capcom has turned into one of the worst offenders for ripping people off with DLC.
Not even their best NES stuff, IMO. I would point out the Mega Man series, Bionic Commando, DuckTales 1 & 2, Legendary Wings, and Mighty Final Fight.
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thanks gf78...i feel smarter now 8)
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thanks gf78...i feel smarter now 8)
Your very welcome! It really is crazy how Nintendo were basically responsible for Sony's rise to prominence.
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It was easy to snooker consumers into buying a Star Wars or Spider-Man game that had a cool looking box art, only for them to find the game iside was complete garbage.
Capcom did this on their older NES games as well. They put the arcade picture on the back of the box and "state-of-the-art" "High Resolution Graphics" on the front.
But Capcom games were good. They and Konami were the best third-party publishers during the NES days.
Agreed. Early Capcom games that I really loved include Section Z, Trojan and Ghosts 'N Goblins. Great stuff. What a shame that in the last five years, Capcom has turned into one of the worst offenders for ripping people off with DLC.
Not even their best NES stuff, IMO. I would point out the Mega Man series, Bionic Commando, DuckTales 1 & 2, Legendary Wings, and Mighty Final Fight.
Those are great games. But I was still thinking in the context of the initial Capcom games as were mentioned earlier. As I stated elsewhere, when I finally did play the Mega Man games, they were some of the best games I had ever played. But I avoided them early on because of that hideous artwork. Had no idea that a great game was actually hiding inside the cartridge.
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I believe Nintendo was able to resurrect the USA game market with their practices. (Praise them or hate them - it did work)
Yet Nintendo became used to calling the shots and making tons of money.
They became their own worst enemy in some ways, but look at the quality of games they still produce.
If you look at the top 100 games of the past 10 years, 20 years or even 30 years and Nintendo always takes like 50% or more of the lists (especially in Japan).
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It was easy to snooker consumers into buying a Star Wars or Spider-Man game that had a cool looking box art, only for them to find the game iside was complete garbage.
Capcom did this on their older NES games as well. They put the arcade picture on the back of the box and "state-of-the-art" "High Resolution Graphics" on the front.
But Capcom games were good. They and Konami were the best third-party publishers during the NES days.
Very true. Capcom and Konami were the best 3rd party for the NES. Except for Strider!!! I felt so cheated when I played that. Granted it did have the actual gameplay photo on the box, I was just expecting the arcade version. Kinda like when I played Ninja Gaiden for the fist time on NES...was thinking, what the hell is this crap?! Tecmo really changed that one up.