Games After The Crash 

Talking smack about MGS4 : quickest dislike in my life; won't even watch the rest of the video. Let me guess, you think MGSV is a fine game? I played the series since the beginning and I remember Famitsu giving MGS4 a perfect 40/40 grade but I'm sure you know better.

I can't wait for Gaming History to be an acceptable field of culture historical study and I will be able to say “I've studied under the likes of Leon Massey“ and they will have no choice but to say “Sir, please, this is your sixth bottle. And this is a kindergarten.“

The tone of Leon Massey's video essays is like he's come to terms with the fact the world is about to end and he's reflecting on everything that's happened in his lifetime.

I am convinced that the original Zelda and Metroid were designed to sell Nintendo Power guides. I'm surprised you didn't mention Manuals as a source of information.

As The AVGN once said: "...The knights take nine hits. NINE FUCKING HITS! You can't even concentrate on attacking them because you're too busy dodging Medusas! But you can't dodge the Medusas because you're too busy dodging the axes! But you can't dodge the axes because you're tryin' to hit the knight! BUT YOU CAN'T HIT THE KNIGHT BECAUSE THE GAME'S DRIVIN' YA FUCKIN' CRAZY! It's like a test. It's a test... to the SHIT."

As a mahjong fan. I can explain the difference between the two early mahjong games: 4-Nin Uchi Mahjong is a passable implementation of four-player mahjong given the hardware limitations of the basic NROM cartridge, and Nintendo Mahjong is a game that people only bought because it came out first, because it's two-player mahjong and literally nobody plays two-player mahjong.

I think the whole "where do I go" had two intentions, besides limited hardware. 1 - When you go on an adventure, as an explorer, you need to take closer looks to surroundings, get a notepad, draw a map, etc. It becomes less about exploring if you are given all tools, it makes the game more gamey if it needs to give you the info and also keep it for you. I Love when i go through my stuff and find my notes for kh, which enemy drops what, or my maps for phantasy star 1. It makes it feel like "yeah, i did this, i explored, i took these notes, i went through it all, it was a journey". But has we get older and live in a world where basically everything is given and kept by technology, we just immedeately remove us from the equation, and so those immersive pixels become less and immersive in the end, all we get is the skill to play, but thats it. 2 - sell those guides beybee!

The way you approached this video was really interesting. I've never given much thought into how developers wouldn't exactly know what made gaming fun early on. Cool vid.

It actually wasn't quality control that caused the crash. At least not in the United States. We had a massive recession and this was before people realized that during recessions spending on entertainment products stays the same or actually increases. Retailers panicked at a temporary drop in sales and dumped all their inventory and stopped stocking video games. Thinking the fad was over. If they had more data they would have known that people were still buying Atari 2600s. One of the reasons Atari made the 2600 Jr was it they ran through all of their stock of original consoles because people kept calling them and ordering them directly. Americans didn't give up on video games retailers did. That's why Nintendo was such a huge success. It doesn't help that the people running the companies that could release game consoles thought people would buy expensive computers instead. So when they did push something for game playing it was a computer. Those computers were many times more expensive even when they were 8-bit. If Only because we didn't use tape drives

"Kirby's adventure is still the best NES game" damn right

It should be noted that the '83 crash wasn't the first video game crash. Fewer people remember the crash from the late 1970s, when Pong clones and other machines on the market saw an insane dump in sales, with the Atari being the only system that survived it. Furthermore, the impact of the '83 Crash has been grossly overexaggerated with time and the US-centric point of view; it only impacted the US market. European markets were their own ecosystem with their own machines, with homer microcomputers being the systems of choice. Asian markets were their own thing, with China and Korea mostly pirating and copying neighboring systems. Nintendo's place as the world-leading gaming corporation doesn't hold water in its worldwide context, where Nintendo didn't see much success in PAL territories, where Sega ruled the console space. They offered better prices and better selections for the Master System next to the dirt-cheap cassette you could pick up for your Amstrad or C64. This was Nintendo mismanaging the PAL regions t no end, and would not see proper success in the PAL markets until the early 1990s, with them becoming the powerhouse people often depict them to be in the era with the release of the Super NES, and even that took until the release of Donkey Kong Country. In the worldwide context, this is a rather dismissive view of gaming as a whole, as it suggests the Japanese and European markets weren't doing completely different things before and during the same era. While Nintendo often gets the label of saving gaming and the NES having all these newfangled ways to play, express or approach games, they were just as much following trends as anyone else, even if their corporate culture doesn't want to admit to it. Games after "the" Crash really weren't any different than before; the US just got to see what Japan was cooking while ignoring how European developers had already gone the same lengths, if not further in some cases, on their local systems.

19:36 god damn super mario bros 1 isn't even released yet? so we've just been playing a leaked nintendo game for this entire time?

Banger video, pipe bomb's in the mail

19:39 damn, Miyamoto really was ahead of his time...

Thank you for being specific about what The Video Game Crash actually was, Leon. This has always been a story told from a very U.S centric perspective, and since a lot of games media online is made by U.S creators, has also come with the traditional U.S tunnel vision of equating American history to world history. It’s also why for years, U.S games media always talked about how, unlike in America where Nintendo ruled supreme, Europe favoured Sega consoles up until the Playstation, which of course wasn’t true at all for most of Europe, but just them equating the U.K to ALL of Europe. I’m not gonna say this was all American game’s media writers, because there were exceptions. And it’s gotten a lot better in the last 5-10 years. But it always stood out when I first started following online games media, as somebody who grew up reading local Swedish gaming mags that definitely always specified The Video Game crash as a principally American phenomenon. Even more confusing when you think about how the Famicom launched the same year as the Crash, and there was certainly no shortage of Famicom discussion in retro game focused U.S media. I hope that we can all start calling it the The American Video Game Crash instead. Would cause a lot less confusion, without always having to clarify what the Crash actually was.

I remember the release of Mario, 2985 was an excellent year for games.

that was the fastest click of my life

How did you abridge and improve all of Sequelitis in five minutes

19:36 man I can't believe that Super Mario Bros was released in the future that's crazy

Having owned a colecovision and a commodore, I remember my first experiences with the NES was like, how is there like a thousand times more *stuff* going on here?!?!

Nowadays, all I wait for is new Leon Massey content

I grew up with a C64 and what mostly changed for me with the NES is that developers weren't sadistic math nerds anymore that laughed about you as you die an unavoidable death climbing down the first ladder that you see. Suddenly these developers seemed to be interested in making games actually enjoyable instead of throwing shit at a wall.

"Progression that isn't putting more shit on the screen!" *Chuckles in shoot em ups

While I enjoyed watching some of your fighting game videos, I gotta say there is something really special about these more I guess "general" video game concept videos, I can't wait to see where your channel goes. Quality stuff man

Man Leon, you're style of video essay is just so good! It reminds me so much of the first 2 episodes of Sequelitis, before Arin got all weird. You do whatever content makes you happiest, but if you really enjoy making these informative+comedic video essays, feel free to make as many as you want - I'll probably end up watching them all multiple times. I still rewatch your older ones on Jump Arcs and stuff. Heck, I still rewatch that Castlevanie/Mega Man Sequelitis.

I liked the addition of the explanation of the innovation of health bars, never really thought about, glad they exist.

Leon Massey caused the video game crash

I'm genuinely surprised we haven't had another crash. People think the arcades were insane when it came to pumping out new games, they should see the industry now. Annual CoDs and EA sports games, an astounding amount of rushed games with so much promise, and games riddled with add-ons, dlc and microtransactions in general. Plus games don't stick anywhere near where pacman and galaga have stuck around for years, people get bored of some games after only a few months.

I reckon you will never read this, but thank you very much for your essays. I feel that you take inspiration from other essayists, in your choice of subjects, tone and editing, and I mean it as the best compliment. I can tell though that you have an interesting and unique take on the subjects you choose to analyse, and that your own voice has been getting sharper and sharper as you release your videos. Thanks

I can't tell if ''Ghosts N Goblins'' is a joke or the actual title of the game and I refuse to look it up

I love your channel because I could NEVER predict any subject you're going to talk about

6:27 I was Cyber-Grinding in Ultrakill when you said this.

Mega Milk has always been my favorite video game series. Glad it's finally getting the recognition it deserves.

19:36 I'm still waiting for that Super Mario Bros game to come out

I’m glad someone took sequelitis and kept going with it. Was too good of a concept to let it die

“Wall chicken wouldn’t make you cum unless there was a health bar” I can’t man, I just can’t with how funny that is.

Probably my favourite video you've made so far. As someone who grew up playing these games from a young age, it kinda reminded me of things I felt when I went from playing asteroids to Mario 3 while staying with various family members. Simpler times that definitely had their own appeal. Albiet due to the lack of resources and knowing better

just wanted to say that i love whn you branch out from fightan games into these, don't get discouraged if these are not making numbers please

Not expecting you to come back with this but pleasantly surprised.

I once wondered why none of my colecovision favorites were in AGDQ or other speedrunning events. Then I watched one. Oh.

I find it interesting that you highlighted Chess 08 as an indictment of yearly releases when fans widely recognize that the year-to-year minute improvement is what made Chess 09 the undisputed best in the series. Good video nonetheless

Great video! Definitely going to check out the rest of your videos and I'm looking forward to new ones!

I admire you creating a whole ass video about old games just to say that block is not a type of expression

19:37 Dang, I'm still waiting for that Super Mario Bros release date.

>Look through the list of games featured in the new Leon video >See GGXRD All is well in the world

19:35 Still waiting for Super Mario Bros to release on September 13th, 2985

I love this video so much, one of my favorites on your channel

I've been watching your videos all day today, and then I look in my recommendeds, best day ever.

Nintendo showed up like the third act hero in the darkest hour

Extremely dope video. Reminds me quite a bit of the sequelitis series with some of the humor but well conveyed in ideas and game evolution. Hope you keep this up

Never thought I’d see Leon cover this topic, but I’m glad he did. I wouldn’t mind more like this. (Also commenting for algorithm boost I guess)

Based on the thumbnail i thought this was jump arcs again except with platformers

Heavy Egoraptor energy, love the style and content

Great points, I especially like the point where game design went from playing till failure vs playing till success. And yes point driven: choices in video games (because choices in life are more risky). More of these types of videos are welcome.... DAMMIT LEON WHERE'S MY FIGHTING GAME VIDEOS!

Leon was at least 17% more British than usual in this video

I like how you had Simon says block this overhead appear as Amane Nishiki appears... A character who has a literal single overhead lol

I've been taught this in multiple game development degrees as "ET broke the game industry than Nintendo was a hero and fixed it" Came into this video hoping it was some contrarian take, taking Nintendo down a notch. Its wasn't yet I'm not disappointed. Actually hearing about all the things Nintendo did to actually change the industry is so much better than hearing a bunch of business numbers heavily skewed by an Animican perspective. I feel like I actually learned things. Great video!

Is really amazing and great to remind people that what does make a game isn't technology is the people and there passion and there artistic vision . Good video

Now, I wasn't certain whether to subscribe but then you accurately titled Maggie, so, yeah. Subscribed.

Yes Leon.... YES! I thought we were long past the era of deep and interesting analysis on video games wit a spicy taste of personality. But I haven't felt this good watching a video since Egoraptor. Please, keep up the great work.

"Box to box. Amazon warehouse." I'm getting mad Sequelitis energy from your videos and I fucking love it. Hold that torch up high man.

19:36 WOW! They rerelease Super Mario Bros on 1st of September in 2985!? damn another time traveller!

I'm in my 50's and everyone gets the video game crash wrong. There was no loss of interest in games, not even crappy looking games. if anything there was a huge boom in cheap crappy games. It was just on a different system. It was really just an ATARI crash. Everyone and their dog here ended up with a Vic 20 or if you were lucky, a Commodore 64. Nobody was buying 2600 cartridges. We were copying Vic 20 tapes and C64 floppies like mad. The "video game crash' was the Commodore boom. It was really more games than ever.

Leon your channel has grown so much and youve gotten a lot better at this, im proud of you bro

Easily one of the best video essays I've ever seen. Not even gonna say anything funny or reference any funny jokes you made, this is just genuinely really fucking informative in the best ways. Hats off.

i know im late to your content but i appreciate the self aware ending lol especially since it actually addressed an interesting point (and wasnt just a meta joke). if i were to put that section in the rest of the video though i would have put it somewhere around when youre talking about how "score" carried over and "player choices", but i think i prefer this layout :P

The downside to the focus going towards progression and not mastery is that a ton of genres (like Shmups, beat ‘em ups, or fighting games) feel obligated to appeal to people who want that sense of progression, even if it means lengthening the arcade mode to being hours long, or tacking on a shitty story mode (SFV and Soul Calibur 6, for example.)

I clicked on this video expecting just another video essay about the videogame crash that adds nothing new but keeps me entretained, and I was positively surprised! It's really well made, makes many interesting points that I haven't really seen discussed elsewhere in this much detail, and it's very fun to watch, filled with well placed jokes. It reminds me a lot of Sequelitis, and that's always great because I miss Sequelitis so much.

19:36 I can't wait for super mario to release in 964 years i'm so hyped

Although, Its 2021 and this oldest problem back in the day just reflected on us all... why reality? why do you snitched us that we hate to accepting unforeseen consequences? Also im glad you featured ULTRAKILL as well. That was my favorite GOTY ever too :D

Unique topic done well. Keep it up leon

19:37 looking forward to the release of Super Mario Bros in 964 years

Leon is slowly becoming Egoraptor

Not playing Ultrakill until it comes out god dammit

Please, more video essays! They’re really good!

19:36 Hate having to wait for hundreds of years for a game.

(19:38) Ah yes, my favourite video game, Super Mario Bros, released in 2985

Good video as usual, but… I kinda feel like score games got the shaft here. I like the acknowledgment that they changed more into a way to squeeze out extra value rather than becoming totally obsoleted, but they still kinda got the shaft here. The third generation of console games exposed the fact that most of the second’s scoring systems were far too simple and rigid, but rather than applying the same increase in complexity and choice that the rest of game design did, a lot of designers decided to throw out the baby with the bathwater and drop scoring entirely- hence gaming as a whole tending to see them as obsoleted, too. The few niche games that *did* stick to scoring (see shmups as a genre, especially Shmup Forum’s Top 25) took inspiration from this new progression based model to design intricate scenarios rather than slapshod hazard layouts, and the scoring systems themselves became highly complex and granular optimization puzzles to push skill expression to its absolute limits. I’d have loved to see some of this get explored in the video a little more.

Your videos are always super good dude

amazing video, great script and editing !!

To be fair, this isn’t something that just came into existence in the third generation, arcade games were already moving in this direction. It was just easier to make a cheap arcade style game, especially when there’s no quality control, no way for the consumer to actually tell what the game is, and very few ways to build trust with the consumer through having your team’s/company’s logo on the box. On top of that, the size of Atari games were extremely limiting, so having a larger scale adventure or action game was something that was really only done in the arcades where there was more control over the hardware and branding and credits, etc.

I’m surprised that when talking about the growth of gaming and the drastic departure from “point total” games that OG Final Fantasy or really any JRPG didn’t get a mention!

anothed banger, thankyou leon massive, very cool.

This is a really well made video, really big old egoraptor vibes

Instruction manuals were integral to game design in the NES age. They contained the information like the what and how that the video stated was lacking.

Did you know? Super Mario Bros was released in 2985

very insightful video! i enjoyed that.

Idk why RU-vid does not include your videos in my “subscription” feed. But sadly you are not alone. I’m subbed to a lot of channels. I have noticed so many videos are never recommended to me. This is a comment for the agg, but also, Fuck the agg! Thank you for content.

l don't mind having your videos get pretentious, you earned it through the course of building it up throughout the video.

I have three (3) overly verbose comments to make, which I will arrange from least to most verbose. 1) One of my favorite things Super Mario Bros. does to separate the importance of high score from reaching a definitive end goal comes from when you jump on a multitude of enemies or kick a shell into a series of them. Your reward for getting enough of them isn't more points, but instead becomes 1-Ups, which is a clever way of letting the player know which has more value in this specific title. 2) I think the reason The Legend of Zelda is more successful than Metroid as a game based on exploration comes primarily from that little map in the upper-left corner. Since the game immediately gets players to determine what they should be on the lookout for in the overworld with the cave where you get the Wooden Sword, every time a player finds a cave they'll want to visit it and see what it holds. So while it can seem like roaming around is a bit of an aimless endeavor, as long as players can look at that map and ask themselves "where have I not gone yet?", it encourages them to head in a different direction if they get a game over, or consider what can be done to get to a section that seems otherwise impossible to reach like the very upper-right square. (It doesn't hurt that Zelda also has areas where you can get fully healed, whereas Metroid has you start with a meager 30 health that makes exploration feel stressful from the word go.) 3) I think that even before Super Mario Bros., Nintendo's first foray into a game with a designated end goal was Donkey Kong. Sure, you'd still want a high score to show off at the arcade, but you also have two primary aims: get as "high" as you can by progressing through the four different stages, and save Pauline. It's not a permanent victory once you actually do so, and the game's brief enough that talented players can plow through the game numerous times, but it still feels like you did something impressive when the eponymous ape takes a tumble that first time. Donkey Kong also does very good work with allowing the player to make decisions as to how they want to reach the top, as well as how to deal with the specific obstacles that they face. Even a single barrel in 25m can be faced three different ways, each with their separate pros and cons. You can jump a barrel and earn points, but it won't be as many points as hitting it with a hammer and you run the risk of landing on it and losing a life. You can hit the barrel with a hammer, but since you can't jump while using it you could be caught unawares by another one. You could play it safe and climb a ladder to avoid the barrel, but not only do you not earn any points, you run the risk of having a barrel roll down that same ladder and knock you out instead. The risks and rewards allow players to have a sense of individuality despite having the same end goal. 75m and 100m also do this very well, though 50m struggles a bit due to its relative linearity; maybe that's why it wasn't included in the NES/Famicom release?

People need to talk more about this bit at 19:04 that ended with me cracking up making my neighbors hate me more

I think the more compelling side is that this only affected consoles. That win state has always been there on the pc since microsoft's adventure and zork. It should have caught on. However, it was $1,565 at launch. This was in early 80's money. It would be a family thing or bought for business and it would not even get close to being competitive till 1986. It was so popular, people started making graphic's and sound cards for it. Adventure games, and other games with a win condition thrived on this thing. Infact, quite a few of the devs that made games for the 2600 went to developing computer stuff for a good while.

Bump for the algorithm. Love the videos.

“You’re probably not even in your 20’s” Right, I’m in my 30’s. *cries in old*

yet another amazing video. good shit

6:26 only a true ultrakill fan would manage to shill for the game while talking about nes games, through one of the only things connecting them. Truly, this is based.

Hey, I wouldn't complain if you kept making videos like this. Good stuff!

Simon's NES sprite looks like he's looking for shredded cheese in the fridge at 3 AM.

'Consider blocking this overhead' lol

At first didn't realize this was Leon since no fighting game talk, thought it was Funke or GamingBrit due to the modern games mentioned.