It hit me earlier today that we're twenty years (at the time of this comment) removed from this episode airing, when this episode was twenty years removed from the Crash of '83 when it first aired. I know, that doesn't really mean anything, but it was one of those moments where I was like, "Damn, time flies."
"I'd like to think the console industry won't crash again, but... You never know... I think something that companies have learned from the Crash of 1983 was that: don't put all of your eggs in one basket; Don't bank on just one game; make sure you have, you know, a safety net below you with a couple of games that will help you get by; YOU CAN'T JUST RELY ON ONE GAME ANYMORE; It's all about DIVERSIFYING YOUR LINEUP and making sure you have a little something for everybody, just in case, gamers go, I DON'T WANT THAT ANYMORE, this is what I want; Hopefully, you have that, too." He might as well be talking about Games-as-service First-Person-Shooters.
This was limited to the US and Canada. In other parts of the world, the computer was all the rage (and they could play video games as well as compute). Arcades were found everywhere.
I miss this show. The G4 network was so great in the mid-2000's, and this was arguably its best program (X-Play was also solid). I'm thankful that RU-vid has The Video Game Years on Retroware's channel, which is similar and maybe even better. But I think that may be ending, too, since they finished the 80's and the channel mostly focuses on retro gaming. We need more stuff like this. The history of gaming is fascinating.
In no way is The Video Game Years better then G4 Icons some random Jack asses talking about a game is def not better then hearing the people that actually worked on the games story...Random RU-vid idiot doesn't know anymore then we Know.
It's sad too. WatchMojo claims that he hated E.T. the game, when in reality, he had mixed feelings about it. I appreciate the effort he put into it considering the deadline.
***** Valve may not be in financial trouble from PC gamers but they still have several issues popping up because of the lack of quality control. I know that their support is constantly swamped with people asking for refunds or saying that a game needs to be taken off steam. Waiting until there's enough complaints to get rid of a game is actually more work than just not letting it on Steam in first place. One of the reasons why other services like GOG, Desura, and Origin are gaining popularity is because whenever there's a sale, more often than not, the games on sale will be good games. If Valve expects to sell their Steam Machines, they need to step things up. Most of the gamers who buy those will be new to PC games. If there's just a crap ton of terrible games on the first page of Steam all the time, those new users will end up buying them.
Doubt it. Unless steam machines somehow surpass every top tier home console out there by providing a cheap and relatively easy set up experience... or PC finds a way to market itself to the couch potatoes out there then I don't see consoles going anywhere any time soon. It is more likely to evolve or blend with other services rather than completely coming to a halt.
@@StorygamerGames the only reason why Valve's Steam Machines failed because they're PCs and people pretty much expected them to be TRUE game consoles like how Xbox is from Microsoft, even though they had to prove that it's not a PC
Supposedly, that was why the next batch of consoles had lockout systems. The games approved by such manufacturers (e.g. "Nintendo Seal of Quality") were putatively non-junkware.
And of course,the boys got warned,and mom blast the console with the shotgun,and the next morning when they went to buy another machine. The store owner said: I'm sorry boys,we don't carry them anymore,the company is dead.
I can see several factors that caused the crash, ET was only the symbol to personify the crash. The factors I believe were: Too many consoles for consumers to choose from, spreading the income from games too thinly. Too many games by uncontrolled 3rd party developers for retailers to sell Inflation of prices so $0.25 was no longer enough money for 1-2 minutes of fun. Games being sold mainly for profit regardless of quality. No solid review forum for consumers to filter out the bad games. Loss of consumer confidence in consoles Competition from home PC's that can do work and play video games. Lack of understanding by console company owners that consoles have a much shorter lifespan than things like TV's and Record Players. Lack of respect for the makers of the games by the company owners. The 'ET Landfill' was an urban legend, I believe that that landfill was filled mostly with broken and defective products. No one was sure what happened to the unsold cartridges, not even the employees of the console makers.
That is what happened. Except the ET Landfill story is not quite a urban legend. They were there, they dug them up last April and there was shipping packs filled with ET carts, along with copies of Raider of the Lost Ark,Centipede, Circus Atari and more. There are 2 landfills though, the other is in California somewhere and it's got a parking lot over it now so they will never get dug up.
Personally I think Howard did a great job w/ E.T. considering the clock was wearing thin from the starting line. I appreciate it b/c it was the 1st game I ever beat. People who think E.T. was the worst ever need to go play Sneak 'n Peek.
If they're implying that Empire Strikes Back for the 2600 was a bad game, I disagree. It did pretty well and it was one of the better games from Parker Bros. - at least that's what my playground buddies and I thought back in 1982 or whatever. Parker Bros. had several other decent games as well like Frogger, Q*Bert, Popeye and Spider-Man. And while none of those games pushed the 2600 as far as it could go in terms of graphics, they were all extremely fun to play.
DIsabledgamer jh Atari made those public the secret dumb somewhere filled with games still has not been found that dig up was noting special just told the truth was the truth.
In 1957, Warner Bros. put out a cartoon in which Bugs Bunny quips, "It must've been a real stinkeroo to bury it out in the woods like this." 25 years later, WB owned Atari, and was burying a stinkeroo near Alamogordo, New Mexico. It happens that Alamogordo is associated with a different notion of "bomb"
OmNomNomNomNom very true, but today we have steam, we have youtube, we have facebook, we have huge amounts of social media to keep these game companies in check. When a game company releases a shitty game, instantly the reviewers are on their case and the consumers are warned on what is good and what isn;t.
***** Sega's CEO just admitted that Sega has f***** up in the last few years and will be focusing on more quality games and not just rush just to release games on schedule. They also promised a big announcement for September this year for a Japanese conference (forgot what it was called).
The number of "unfinished games" hasn't increased as much as you think it has. Given the loose and broad definition of "unfinished" these days, that can account for games in the 90s and 2000s as well
+Gavin Tai But most of those games are free or very cheap. The quality games are the only ones that succeed, since most of them are pay-for-play now. And that's where all the money is. People are still holding onto the one's they like. With internet reviews and the ability to quickly delete a bad game and download another, there's a lot more quality control today.
+Gavin Tai I disagree. The large majority of people who play smartphone games aren't the same gamers of console or pc, and smartphone games tend to be a lot more casual than games from pc or consoles. Also, there's a bit of "checks and balances" so to speak on smartphones anyway - Apple's iPhone games and other apps have to be given approval before posted on their market, similar to Nintendo's Seal of Approval system post-1983 Crash. While Apple's market of games is smaller, they have a reputation of being a better quality. Android's market of games and apps is much larger, but the population of Android users tend to be more technical and grown to weed out poor-quality games.
OldSchoolAddict Pretty much, quality control to be exact. In 1983, they didn't. A massive overflow of games with no player review system would be necessary to cause a crash.
Grate145A Nintendo didn't save sht that's like saying that the 1973 oil embargo crisis killed of muscle cars and all cars with it and Honda and Toyota saved it no people move on to other things all Nintendo did was make console's popular again like the retro design of muscle cars of the 60s in today made them sell like hot cakes again.
Atari essentially pulled "A Beatles" move. They thought they were bigger than Jesus and were untouchable. They had that big an ego, could do no wrong and it backfired.
Do you mean that unfinished prototype that atari released as a finished game? That port of Pac-Man? Yes, I agree that Pac-Man on the atari should have been the game to take the heat and hate for the crash and not E.T.
Nintendo called their carts "game paks." They used the term for NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBC, GBA, and even N64. You can see it in the manuals and on the boxes. "Official Game Boy Game Pak" can be seen on most old GB games' packaging.
3:18 I THOUGHT that's who it was..... none other than Bobby Kotick aka the Face of the Scandal for Blizzard Activision. He looks like he kind of has a Soul here, but now the lights are on but no one is home.
I watched the Rage Quit episode of Dodge 'Em (Atari 2600) and Michael (the person who is playing the game) had a bad time with it. He even said "Dodge 'Em? No! More like 'Fuck 'Em!' The assholes who made this piece of shit!" People think it's funny, but to me, it's disrespectful. Obviously, Dodge 'Em and Atari in general were before his time. History isn't kind to Atari, and it shows. The most ironic part is that he was so close to getting past the first stage, but he messed himself up on purpose to make the game look bad. The game itself isn't all that hard. It's easy to learn, yet difficult to master.
A small side note: the market didn't completely crash. Kids still loved video games, sales just dropped briefly. Colecovision, Intellivision, Atari 5200, TI-99, C64, they were all big in 1983, with lower sales in 1984. 1985 saw Nintendo ramp things up again. There were only so many American households to purchase a game console. And between 1977 and 1983 people had 6 years to purchase one. Flood the market with systems for 6 years and then wonder why sales dropped? My point is, people hear "video game crash of 83" and think nobody bought them. There were still people buying them, it was a 2 year period with low sales between console generations. Same thing happened from 95 to 97 when 16 bit consoles were outdated and before N64 and PS1 resurrected the market. That time period saw 32x, jaguar, cd-i, 3do, pippin, neogeo flood the market, but you don't ever hear about the video game crash of 1995
The only thing that crashed was the home console market in the US. Nowhere else did anything "crash" when it came to video games. 1. Arcades drop in popularity as the "Golden Age" ended in 1984, but they were still around, if not in the numbers they were in the early 80s. Arcades experienced a "revival" of sorts in the early 90s (Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam) before they declined for good in the early 2000s once console technology surpassed arcade technology. 2. Computer/PC gaming was still growing in the early/mid 80s. Commodore 64 and Apple II GS were big time gaming machines, and they continued to be well throughout the decade. 3. The NES was big in the US and Japan, but was a non-factor in Europe. A big reason for the success of the NES in North America was Nintendo's antitrust monopolistic practices that basically locked out Sega. Yes, the NES was a great console and a significant upgrade from the Atari VCS/Intellivision/Colecovision, but it was mostly ignored in Europe and South America. 4. Movie studios like Warner Bros. were in charge of Atari, and had no idea how to make high quality games. 5. ET was a scapegoat, and actually quite ahead of its time. It got stuck on an outdated console, which is why it looked so bad. 6. People had no idea at the time that game consoles would become obsolete in 3-4 years and you would have to buy a new one. This was the era where you bought one TV, one refrigerator and one phone and they would last for 25+ years.
the 2600 was woefully outdated by 1982 with the crazy fast pace computing power was changing then. the colecovision was riding high with almost early NES type games but people wouldn't let the 2600 go.
Only for Nintendo to be a anti Consumer Seeing the controversies over the past few years and now ea and Activision blizzard will yet again cause another game crash and just like that With over reliance on shareholders Monetization and anti-consumer and make investors happy this will ultimately caused the video game industry to crash again. May the blood on the sword never dry and we may never need you again. Codex 717
My dad and I were talking about Atari, Collicovision, Intellavision, etc. a while ago and how many games (good and bad) that were out at the time and how many company's were involved on "the fad" back in the early 80's. I also remember playing E.T. on my buddies older brothers Atari 2600 and remember how terrible it was and even that made my dad laugh his ass off.
This guy wasn't impressed with the NES when he first saw it but I sure as hell was. I considered that the first console while all the other ones were more like toys.
they should've taken a game already in development that was pretty good and just changed it to ET. people getting overly ambitious with the 2600 and cranking out shitty games is what sunk the whole thing for everyone.
First crash was 1977 that's when too many consoles came out and that was a standalone pong console. The second crash in 1983 are the video games. Games were garbage back in the day. Games that no one wants or heard off. I predict the third crash will be 2018 or 19 because of loot crated and paid to win games which will be an unfair to people who can't afford those dlc or games so that's my prediction.
Why did he say the US doesn’t have dollar coins? They’ve been around a long time. We still have dollar coins though you don’t often see them. Also there was a smaller crash around the time the VCS launched. Pong clone overload happened and they couldn’t sell those.
along side with sega but sadly they have got the boot in the late 90s theres only a few left the remember that sometime is not about the money is about good games and only a few that know that
After the disastrous releases these past few months by big publishers like EA, Activision and Bethesda, consumer confidence is at an alltime low and I will not be surprised if The Crash of 2019 happens.
It's a shame Nintendo pretty much revived the video game industry, and continue to innovate with hardware but not with software. I still like them but their target audience is becoming increasingly niche, and that is why I think they may end up like sega. They get no love from the hardcore audience with the deep pockets.
Revive the industry? The INDUSTRY NEVER DIED NOR WAS EVER CLOSE TO DEATH. See that is the problem I have with this show and it's fucking so called historians. They get facts wrong and present them as fact. All that happened is the market shifted away from consoles to computers being the hot item. Companies like Activision, Sierra, EA, and more all went over to home computers such as the Commodore 64 and Apple II and did just fine. Gaming was NEVER in any danger of dying. Hell overseas in Europe almost all gaming was done on home computers, so the crash didn't affect them, plus the Famicom (which the NES basically is) was kicking ass in Japan at the time along with the MSX computers. So don't buy into the bullshit that Nintendo saved the industry, sorry never happened. All they did is bring consoles back to the mainstays of the market. Plus Intellivision was also still alive and kicking throughout the 1980's through a new company called INTV corp when they bought the rights of Mattell. They made games for the Intellivision until 1990. Activision was still making 2600 games and still selling decently for the 2600 as well. Like I said it was a complete myth. Sure there was a crash, but it was not like the death knell of gaming like shows have you to believe.
A company has its fans, everyone who grew up in the late 80s to early 90s starts with Nintendo, everyone who grew up in the 70s to early 80s starts with Atari and probably wasn't impress by Nintendo. Anyone who grew up in the mid to late 90s either starts with Sony or Sega, nobody care about Atari by then. When Sega and Atari goes third party, some core gamers think Nintendo will follow but you also had to realize Nintendo is unlike Atari and Sega. Nintendo made high quality home consoles and products which are more about fun, simple, and innovation rather than specs and they had a big market share in both the USA, Japan, and Asia. The only thing that may kill Nintendo at this point is either if Nintendo is losing money on every system or games they make or if they decided to go mobile altogether like the analyse want them to. Sega unlike Nintendo doesn't had a stable market, sure they are big in Europe and Brazil but a lot of the products that sold there were mostly console and not games and most of the earning that those product got goes to third party like Tec Toy and not Sega. Also compare to Nintendo, Sega IPs doesn't sell quite as successful as Nintendo IPs, you got great titles like Vectorman, Shenmue, and Skies of Arcadia which are struggling just to reach the million unit mark. So far only games like Sonic and license titles like Aliens would sell a bit more. Sega like Capcom, SNK, Midway, Atari, and Konami, was more of an arcade company than a console, when the arcade market died in the USA, it killed a part of those companies which is they are now struggling even with their own IPs.
DMore84 Nitnendo never saved the industry the industry never died. I was 1 of those people playing PC in the early 80s video games never died this video is giving you young people the wrong info saying games died is like saying Performance cars died in 70s with the oil crisis of 1973 no they were just out of the reach of people and people moved on to economy cars by then they didn't want to touch performance cars like muscle cars anymore just like no one wanted to touch game console's in the 80s people moved on to PC kinda like today and had a better investment 30 years later all Nintendo does is sell us good crap from 30 years ago or ports games from last gen cough Nintendo switch.
Jonathan Carreon Nintendo never saved the industry the industry never died to begin with all Nintendo did was come in to America and give us dated tech Apon release and called it there new system here and now 30 years later all they can do is sell us the same game from 30 years ago or games from last gen by porting them over cough gba GameCube ds wii wii u 3ds cough Nintendo switch $300 port machine Sony and Microsoft isn't any better.
charger master They d finitely revived the industry. I’m sensing a sever bias against Nintendo. It’s made even stronger because you deny the history. Sure, arcade games still existed, but the home market was dead, there is no argument against that. Then Nintendo revived it here because they saw there was still a market for them. The idea was if people still flood arcades then obviously they’re still interested in games. You can’t rewrite history because of some personal bias, and no, they’re not perfect either, but they’re still a great company offering quality platforms.
I have an Atari flash back and I don't even barley use it cause Atari games are pretty boring honestly. but with modern game systems, wow. I don't hear much about the wii u let alone the new play station. I here more about xboxone. in reply to ***** I think its crashing now, at this moment. I remember when sims 3 came out, it was pretty big, but sims 4 seems like its not getting much attention (this is just an example, idk). but I do honestly think pc gaming is becoming allot more popular, because every one has a pc and most modern pc's can handle pretty decently sized games. why pay 500 bucks for a new system when you have a pretty powerful one right in your house. not to mention the apps and games you can download for free! idk, it seems that not many people are interested in buying all these new systems ( because in like another 5 or 6 years there will be another gen of new systems anyways) , I think most people are still happy with there wii, xbox 360's and ps3's console wise. and for new stuff they have a pc. ok I am done lol
+Hunter Greer Honestly in a way I agree with you. Maybe i'm just getting older now (23) but I just don't care about these new systems. I really don't even see a major improvement over the last gen. If you really want an improvement, just spend the same amount of money that you'd normally spend on a PS4, and make a PC that's not only more useful, but more powerful as well. The last console I ever bought was a PS3 (I had to buy 3 of them over time cause they kept breaking) and since then I built a PC and have never looked back. PC gaming is also a lot cheaper, anyone who says it costs more just doesn't know fuck all what they're talking about. Either way, I think a console market crash may occur in a few years time if things don't change pace. We're already hearing talks of Sony releasing a "Super PS4" which would be beyond stupid to do, and shit like that is what makes things crumble.
17:05 I wish electronics were made like they used to make them - built to last. Can you imagine any piece of technology lasting more than a few years without it crapping these days? Hell, now cell phone companies (*cough* Apple *cough*) intentionally make it difficult, if not impossible, to use their products and force you to upgrade every few years.
I didnt like et intil 10 15 yrs ago when i learned how to play it along with Indiana jones. There a cple of games you had to read the instruction book 4 and almost no one did lol
Colicovision had telephone shaped controllers, BUT the quality of the games must of been amazing compared to ATARI's crumbling quality! The shrewd, awesome and epic way of those quality-Samurai at Nintendo for how they took over as ATARI died like Disco? THEY made it a point to have an ACTUAL quality-control concept! The Nintendo Seal of Quality! Game Testers! Imagine reading a poorly written story- that's another way to imagine playing a BAD video game!
Nintendo is way better than Atari cause Atari didn't have quality control on their system and there's no license program on games. I'll treat Atari as a garbage company and til this day with the Atari VCS that was delayed for 1 year or something. Nintendo is the king of the industry from the NES to the Switch.
Josue Monge, most of the junk games for the Atari were made without their consent. They filed several lawsuits to try to prevent companies from making them. Every single piece of crappy wii and ds shovelware had the Nintendo seal of approval.
@@oaf-77 The reason filed lawsuits against 3rd Party Companies back then cause the NES doesn’t want to be the 2600 and people might refuse to buy the system because of all the crappy games. Even with any junk DS and Wii games still has has the Nintendo Seal of Approval, they’re still made by a 3rd Party and a 3rd Party Company always had a chance of failing like LJN for the NES and Data Design Interactive for the Wii
-The Video Game Crash of 1983- More like the _Home Console Gaming Crash of 1983_ , see. When, between the over-saturation of that market, filled with at least as many "jackals" (as Nolan Bushnell referred to some of them) as quality video-games, and _E.T.: The Extraterrestrial_ and the _Pac-Man_ conversion, both for the Atari 2600 VCS, those factors brought the entire CONSOLE GAMING industry down and out, dead (and would remain "dead" for a couple of years until "resurrected" by Nintendo's NES [Nintendo Entertainment System] in 1985). Meanwhile coin-op video-games at the arcades are doing as well as ever, and the console crash gave way for the upstart of computer video-games to fill the void at home, see. Fact: The "Video-Game Crash" of '83 is a n00by myth (spun by the n00bs themselves) that never happened, as such.
They don't even show any of the actually bad games. Go look up stuff like Sorcerer, Firefly, Racquetball, Space jockey, and that's just the start the list could go on and on but those are some of the many legitimately bad games for the atari 2600. The only actually bad games they showed were the James Bond game, chase that chuckwagon, and Pac-Man, but only because Pac-Man is an unfinished prototype that got released. E.T. isn't that bad if you have the manual to understand how the game is played. This show was made over a decade ago, so I guess I will have to let them off for having some incorrect information because it's far too late now. They recycled their own footage from other episodes. That was pretty lazy on their part. This reused footage from their arcade episode.
Fun Fact. Sony's first 3 home consoles out sell all of Nintendo's home consoles combined. Sony has shipped 337 million consoles with just their first 3 home consoles. Nintendo? 276 million units sold. 6 consoles outsold by 3. Playstation fucking rules! PS4 is the future!
iheardthatcurtis2424 Playstation rules...except for the fact that Sony had to copy off of Nintendo's innovations to stay in the game and it took them last gen to even support more than two players for multi-player games. In the fact that Sony as of now is in the red. Not to mention that Sony lost the previous console war to Nintendo's Wii.
kaihedgie As long as we have Microsoft and Sony and maybe Nintendo if they ever evolve that is.We'll be ready for the games to come from other companies that gives us something new.Like i said Nintendo is releasing the same games every year with mario and zelda yes those are the game that we grew up with but will nintendo grow up to give us an M rated game?.Some people want better games besides mario and zelda something new.I just wish that nintendo will evolve.
HYPNOGLANCE87 ...No Nintendo doesn't need to "grow up", you do. Nintendo does not need an M-rated game to stay relevant. People play games because they're fun, not because they're gritty grimdark and full of brown war simulators. Havin' an M-rated game does not equal evolution and they've been doing games other than Mario and Zelda for years. Hell, they even showed us a new IP this year.
kaihedgie There was multitap adapter for the PS1 and PS2 btw. So they had more than 2 multiplayer for decades. Also Nintendo played the me too copy game just as much as Sony and Microsoft have done. Nintendo is not as innocent as you think.
Everyone in the comments are arguing about nintendo I guess everyone over looking that Steven Kent looks and sounds like Steve carrel from the 40 year old virgin.........
Sievers34: Not being money hungry bastards doesn't explain why no one is buying their systems...if anything, that would be a selling point, but it's not because everyone knows that the systems and games are properly priced and the only thing that's overkill are DLC packs. Other than that, no...Nintendo sucks and their sales worldwide show it. Have fun with that WiiU while everyone else is rocking high power for the next 6 years, buddy...
This video is complete bullshit when talking about Nintendo Nintendo never saved the industry the industry never died but console's were in decline by 1984 and things like Atari console's and Nintendo and there new old machine from japan were falling out of favor with the public people were playing games on PC i was one of those people playing on Commodore 64 and other PCs of the 80s.