Chris++

Pioneer4x4, on Wed Apr 4, 2012 5:14 PM, said:

Star Ship has six Lunar Lander variations. That might have been it (unless you're like me and didn't even know Star Ship existed until the '90s!).

Holy cow! I didn't even know that existed. Thanks.

That's me as well; the eternal revisionist. Thanks for pointing out the thread about the latest issue. For having read so many issues cover to cover, I'm disgracefully behind by two or three. The "Top 25 C64 Games" article was...tops.

By "weaker companies," I meant those with the weaker games; many of the companies as overall entities obviously survived as "strong" ones. In fact, even the computerized entertainment-specific Atari, which didn't sell televisions or stereos, didn't cease to be a major player (surprisingly low late-'82 profits vs. projections notwithstanding) until later in the '80s, when Nintendo and Sega won the day.

And I maintain that the effects on gamers during the shake-out have been overstated in recent years; it might have been table talk for those who read such yawners as Forbes, but I never heard of/read about the industry having "crashed" in those days. As far as my fellow eleven-year-olds and I were concerned, along with those in the "industry" to whom young consumers paid any attention -- the companies themselves and their clubs/publications, the magazines now referred to as "classic," etc. -- interest in video games simply gave way to interest in computer games, many of which were made by the same companies that had once been dedicated to consoles (I'll cite AtariSoft). The occasional magazine would talk about the manufacturers that had been "shaken out" of the group, due to their low-quality games. Fifth-graders didn't have access to Google in 1983, you see.

Just as a tip, since you're evidently about to wrap up an article that you've done a lot of work on, it's spelled "misconception." No sarcasm intended.

Pac-Man came out in the spring of 1982. The game's sales figures at the time were high, but this wasn't as significant as what the game did to Atari's reputation; the buyer was much more wary after that, and less likely to buy even a great arcade translation without being able to play it first.

The horrible Swordquest games -- especially FireWorld, the bugs and sloppiness of which everyone knew there was really no excuse -- also contributed to the disillusionment that many gamers felt with Atari itself, after such a positive few earlier years.

Having said that, Pac-Man and E.T. weren't named as the primary causes of the 1983 downturn in the popularity of console games until years later. At the time, it wasn't even considered a "crash" -- merely a shake-out of the weaker companies (Data Age, Apollo, U.S. Games) and an industry consolidation. Also, people were turning toward computers. The C64 market in particular was thriving. I certainly wasn't aware of any "crash"; I loved 1983 in terms of VCS games, because they were all much cheaper!

The "crisis" was exaggerated years after the fact, and still is.