10 facts about the great video game crash of '83

Everyone knows about the Crash, right? 1983. Atari. Unsold copies of E.T. Dump-trucks in the desert. But what's rumor and what's fact? Can E.T. really shoulder all the blame for the industry's downswing? Did Atari deserve its downfall? Was it really all that bad?

Here are ten lesser-known facts about the video game Crash of '83.

1) It wasn't just about bad games. There were too many games consoles. If you have half an hour to spare, take a look at Elder-Geek.com's Insane Console History Video 2.0".

Around the 1981 through 1983 mark, the number of consoles that came to market was astounding. Thus, we have one of our big reasons for the '83-'84 console crash: System saturation. Too many game consoles, and not nearly enough compelling software to sustain them.

2) The crash was centralized around consoles: computers thrived -- We tend to think of the Crash as a worldwide event that led humanity to swear off electronic games. Truth is, home consoles like the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, and Intelivision absorbed the worst of the disaster.

Around the time home consoles started falling out of favor, home computers like the Commodore Vic-20, the Commodore 64, and the Apple ][ became affordable for the average family. Needless to say, the computer manufacturers of the age seized on the opportunity to ask parents, "Hey, why are you spending money on a game console when a computer can let you play games and prepare you for a job?"

The move towards computer gaming was the same in Britain, where the ZX Spectrum reigned for much of the '80s. The home computer market also begat a generation of amateur coders. So even while the console market was sputtering, its future game builders were learning the tricks of the trade. Out of the Crash, came the next generation of game developers.

3) Bowling alleys saved the arcades -- Though the arcade scene survived the lean mid-'80's, shockwaves from the Crash did cause the popularity of arcade games to tumble from the Golden Age that lasted through the 'late 70s and early '80s.

But the widespread availability of cabinets outside of arcade settings, including bowling alleys, variety stores, and shopping malls, helped the market cling to life. It was revitalized in the late '80s and early '90s thanks to beat-'em-up titles like Double Dragon, Final Fight, and, of course, Street Fighter II.

4) E.T.'s role in the Crash is often over-exaggerated -- Make no mistake: E.T. for the Atari 2600 was an awful game. It shattered the hopes and dreams of children, and, according to some accusers, it was such a bomb that it annihilated the Atari 2600's fortunes and didn't stop falling until it sucked the entire console industry into a black hole.

The destructive force of the E.T. video game isn't completely embellished. Indeed, the game was made in a mere six weeks after Atari spent $20 to $25 million on the property rights, and skipped quality testing to make it out the door in time for the 1982 Christmas season. The result was a title that still baffles the sane, as the gameplay consists mainly of falling down house-sized gopher holes to find random bits of a telephone. About four million copies of the E.T. video game were shipped, and according to Atari's then-CEO Ray Kassar, about 3.5 million of those copies were returned to Atari.

All that said, E.T. wasn't the cause of the Crash, though the little guy's name is frequently brought up in the same breath whenever someone speaks about the event. Rather, E.T. can be thought of as the last straw. Atari might have had the strength and cash reserves to weather a disaster like E.T., but its endurance was pretty much spent by that point.

5) Atari made a lot of bone-headed moves. The Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man, released in March of 1982, was kind of a big deal. Out of all the arcade ports that made it home, Pac-Man was arguably the most anticipated. Unfortunately, the 2600 adaptation of the game was rushed (sound familiar?), wretched, and fans of the Pacster balked.

Worse, Atari, wallowing in its own self-confidence, ordered 12 million copies of the game. Its logic was that every Atari 2600 owner (about 10 million in total at the time) would buy a copy of the game, and that an additional two million consumers would purchase the 2600 and a copy of Pac-Man. 7 million copies of the game were eventually sold.

Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 wasn't the financial disaster that E.T. was, but it put a big ding in consumers' confidence towards the company. A surprisingly excellent port of Ms. Pac-Man made its way to the Atari 2600 later that year, but it was too little too late.

Atari also struggled with its game programmers, who felt they were underpaid (they were), and were disgruntled about being disallowed to sign their names to their work, as Atari feared they'd wooed away by competitors. This shoddy treatment led to the formation of one of the first third party video game developers (you might know them--a little company called Activision). It also led to one of the bigger reasons for the industry's downfall.

6) Anyone could make and sell an Atari game, and pretty much everyone did -- When third party game development became legally acceptable in 1982, product manufacturers suddenly realized that the gates to a veritable advertising goldmine had just blown open. What's better than commercials? Interactive commercials that customers pay for, or acquire for "free" by sending in a mountain of box tops! The cringe-inducing result was a glut of Atari 2600 games that were programmed by amateurs. If you think Mario's "Save the Princess" schtick is shallow, try spending an hour with the Kool-Aid Man as he chases down the tear-shaped "Thirsties" that are siphoning the world's Kool-Aid supply from the children.

When Nintendo brought the Nintendo Entertainment System to North American markets in 1985, it put a very short leash on third party developers. Maybe Nintendo's policies bordered on draconian, but its determination to avoid another Crash was understandable. Here's a fun game: Imagine Purina spokespeople stammering through a pitch for the "Chase the Chuck Wagon" game to Nintendo's famously stern ex-President Hiroshi Yamauchi.

7) Yes, there is an Atari cartridge landfill, but don't grab your shovel -- According to gamer legend, there exists in New Mexico a wasteland seeded with millions of unsold copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600. The Elders say it is a forsaken place, a patch of Hell raised up to Earth, a land where Stephen King himself would not tread.

Storytelling aside, sources have been back and forth about whether or not Atari dumped its E.T. excess into a landfill. As it turns out, it's not just an urban legend, though you shouldn't bother packing a lunch and striking out to dig up a souvenir. The landfill, reportedly located in Alamogordo, New Mexico, was chosen as the resting ground for Atari's dreams specifically because it didn't allow scavengers, and its garbage was crushed on a nightly basis.

E.T. wasn't the only creature to die in that pit, either: Atari dumped a large number of unsold 2600 consoles and a variety of games into the landfill, where it was all crushed and encased in cement. Presumably, the mighty brick still sleeps underground, and perhaps some day the Great Old Ones will raise it to serve as the corner stone for their Temple of Unspeakable Torment.

8) The Crash influenced the design of the NES -- When you look at the first North American model of the Nintendo Entertainment System, you might notice that it's a serious little system, especially compared to some of its successors (GameCube lunchbox, anyone?).

That's because the NES was engineered specifically to look like anything but a game system: Nintendo figured that North American audiences would be wary about delving back into the home console market after the Crash, so it initially avoided using the term "video game" for its console (the "Entertainment System") and its software (its "Game Paks"). The NES was designed to look at home next to a sophisticated piece of tech like a VCR (well, sophisticated for the time).

To this day, the NES's unique design helps us make the association between 8-bits and classic gaming. Unfortunately, the NES's front-loading design could also play merry hell with a game's connectors, which led to those infamous blinking screens and fainting spells as we blew into our cartridges to make them work again.

9) The Crash introduced many 20- and- 30-somethings to gaming -- The early '80s brought a rough recession with it, meaning a lot of families didn't have the $200 USD to spend on the Atari 2600 when it launched (approximate modern value: Sixty billion space dollars). The Crash led retailers to slash game systems and games to bottom dollar, which suddenly made video games affordable even for cash-strapped families. Our discounted Atari 2600's primed us for the NES, which experienced a popularity boom around 1987.

10) It can never happen again, right? Video games and video game systems are definitive luxury items. They exist solely to please us and pass time: We can't eat them, we can't clothe ourselves in them. They're among the first things to go when a family has to trim its budget. The industry is not "recession proof."

That said, can we expect another all-out industry Crash? From this angle, history seems to be repeating itself: We have more games than we can possibly play, but only a small percentage are truly excellent. And wading through the App Store for something worth buying requires thigh-high swamp boots.

At the same time, even though the industry is currently busy, there's still a sense of order to the bustle. The internet and word of mouth helps us make decent purchases, and some companies, like Nintendo, still have a reputation for producing excellent games. Veteran mascots like Mario still command a huge audience, while indie developers break into the industry with cool new ideas that are easy to distribute thanks to the rise of the digital marketplace. Also, today's publishers generally avoid making completely dumb decisions, like ordering more copies of a game than it can possibly sell.

Anything could happen, but at the end of the day, video games have remained consistently popular for better than a quarter of a century. They'll probably stick around a little longer.

Oxford, N, 2011. TEN FACTS ABOUT THE GREAT VIDEO GAME CRASH OF '83. UK: IGN (online). Available at: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/09/21/ten-facts-about-the-great-video-game-crash-of-83 (Accessed 03.12.14)

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