The Great Video Game Crash of 1983! 

So I was about 12 when the Crash began. But I was largely oblivious because my 2600 died shortly after we got an Apple //e. Then, around '84-85 I saw a Zayre ad for the 2600 Jr. for $30. We still had all the 2600 stuff, so my parents agreed to buy it so I could play it again. My purchasing of cheap 2600 games probably didn't start in earnest until I got my driver's license around '87. Yes, you could still find 2600 games in the toy stores through the early '90s! And unlike Brett, I kept my boxes. :-)

Cool to hear a first hand account. I recently did a brief video about the timeline of Atari Consoles. I marked the 83 crash in my video. I love the details you give though. Makes me feel like I was there. I remember a similar crash in mid 90's with Sega CD, 32X and the Virtual Boy. I just bought your book "The 100 Greatest Console Video Games" I am excited to do a video about it soon! Keep up the good work!

I live in the UK, and it was more, or less the same here. I was under ten, so don't remember much. But Atari 2600 games and the System were dropping in price very much indeed at the sametime. In 1984, 1985 we got the ZX Spectrum. Then we never played the Atari again. But games for the 2600 in 1980 -1982 were around £35,($42) and upto £60, ($73). But super cheap in the mid-80's. About a quid, ($1.20). When we were grounded, we went to our friends houses to play video games there. Saying we had to do extra school activities, to cover ourselves.

I lived through the crash and I had no idea that it was happening. All I knew was that I could get games for cheap! Then I started to notice fewer and fewer games at toy stores until suddenly the NES showed up. I never an NES but my cousins did so I had a chance to play with it then. It wasn't until years later that I learned of "The Great Video Game Crash of 1983!" I was like, oh so, that's what happened!

I was only 5 when the crash happened, but I do remember CHEAP 32X and Jaguars. I paid 9.99 for my Jag and 29.99 for my Jag CD at Electronics Boutique. I bought them both at the same time. I also remember 29.99 Dreamcasts with 99 cent controllers at Toy's 'R' Us. Man I miss those days.

I heard the crash was the reason that Nintendo chose to market it as the "Nintendo Entertainment System". The American public still had a bad taste in their mouth with the term "Video Game System" and Nintendo thought marketing it as a Nintendo Video Game System would hurt marketing.

I would have been 10 during the video game crash and to be honest, I had no idea such a thing was even happening. We had only had our Atari 2600 for about 2 years by then so games could still be found easily and at regular prices. I only noticed that Atari games seem to disappear from store shelves once the NES really took off and at that point I just figured that Atari had run its course and Nintendo was the new system. I didn't see cheap Atari games until the late 80s when some local drugstore for odd reason, had new 2600 games for only a couple of bucks. Some of them were games I hadn't heard of previously. So I lived through it, but didn't even know the crash was a thing until I got back intro retro collecting in the late 90s.

Nice memories. I was 7 years old in '83, and I think it was around that time we got our first 2600 with a handful of games. I of course had no clue about a gaming crash...I imagine my parents were thrilled to find a home gaming system for so cheap!

I was 18 in 1982, and Intellivision was my console of choice. My addictions at the time were Burger Time and Mission X. I had two Colecovision ports for Intellivision: Donkey Kong (with its uninspired graphics) and my other go-to game, Zaxxon (played for hours on end). I was purchasing all my games at the catalogue store Consumers Distributing, but at the time had no idea that the game industry was on the verge of collapse.

Yes I lived through the crash...I couldn't willy-nilly buy games of course cause I didn't graduate high school until 1990. Ended up getting most of the popular games for the C-64 and getting good at playing.

I wasn't even alive during the crash. All I remember from my childhood is my dad taking me to Toys R Us and buying the NES.

I grabbed a Colecovision for $50 at Maybe a and later some games. Ignores the dirt cheap Atari games because I had a new console. Quickly moved on to the Commodore 64 for my gaming needs...that lasted years even skipped the 8bit generation in favor of the C-64 and years later a PC.

Basically with all the third party developers. Our clueless parents would go into store during Xmas and buy ten games for 12 bucks instead of buying us the one or two good games for 30 bucks each

I had an Atari 2600, Colecovision, and TRS-80 Color Computer during the crash... There were some dog titles for sure... I remember picking up a game called Sorcerer (wow, that was bad), after the crash I was at a Zayres store and they had all their loose cartridges for .50 so I scored pretty much the whole Activision library for 2600, and cleaned them out of their Colecovision carts. My opinion on ET, it really wasn't a bad game (from a design point with exception of the pits), Atari overpaid for license and really over estimated the demand (I think they produced more carts than existing systems)

I went into the video game sections of my local Target and Best Buy recently and it's the worst I've ever seen it, especially for the early part of a new console generation. The only times I've seen that much empty shelf space was at the tail ends of liquidation sales. Nintendo is poised to make a killing this holiday season because they seem to be the only gaming company who can credibly claim to be capable of keeping their console on the shelves.

I was born in 1995, so it’s really cool listening to what it was like living through the Crash of ‘83. The Crash of ‘83 is really interesting to me, as it’s something I’ve researched and watched videos on throughout the years. I am 29 now and a lot say the industry might be heading for another one, I personally don’t see it because to me it seems video games have transcended from what they once were back in ‘83. Great video and you’ve gained yourself a new subscriber.

Hi Brett, appreciate the video. I am 48 now so around that time, didnt know any better and spent any cash I got at arcades or arcade machines. Didn’t even know it was going on as I was cocooned in an urban city and never veered out. Fun times with arcades back then and trying to relive my youth over the last 20 years via my basement arcade. Take care.

I was to young to remember the crash (I was only 4). I do have a faint memory of seeing Atari Games for sale at Toys R Us for $1. This was probably around 1985/86. The one thing I do remember clearly. A couple years after the Nintendo came out (around 1988), my mother would always drag me with her during the summer while she went to garage sales. I was older now (around 8 years old in 1988). I still didn't own a Nintendo yet, but I did have a Atari 2600. While at these garage sales I would often find boxes of people's old Atari stuff that they were getting rid of for very cheap (since most people already upgraded to the NES). It would be common to pick up a Atari system with 10-15 games for around $10. I would often convince my mom to buy me the stuff at those garage sales. I was able to build my collection quick that way. In 1989, when I was 9 years old I had already accumulated around 80 games for my Atari. Christmas of 89 I finally got my Nintendo 👍

In 1983 I had an Atari 5200. One day my dad and I went to the toy store and all the video games were gone. The store had stopped selling them.

I was born smack dab in the middle of the crash in April ‘83. I feel like I was born at the perfect time to experience the industry’s resurrection. I have a clear memory of playing Mario on the NES in ‘87 and it was all uphill from there for me.

I remember the video game crash of 1983 very well. Used to see a lot of games(Atari, Mattel and Coleco) in K-mart, Hills and Child World!, Kay-Been toys. Really marked down a lot then. I sold my Atari 2600 and games, went to having a computer(Atari). I did get back into collecting for the Atari in the late 80's. And I collect now for the Intellivsion too! Good video!

I'd kill to find new in box games $4 or less hell 99 cents is a pipe dream.... Loved your retrospective as a consumer!

Great video. Talks about the real good reasons consoles were failing at that time. I usually roll my eyes when someone talks about that time, then E.T. gets all the blame. I don't really remember a game crash because in 1983 I was knee deep into playing games on my Commodore 64. We had had a 2600 for number of years and had a lot of games before 83. I guess for me it wasn't a "crash" but more of a shift in how I was playing video games. I just figured that's how the market was going. What I do remember was stores like SEARS, Target and KB toys selling games and consoles for almost nothing and by the end of 83 they weren't selling video games at all. The biggest memory was when we went to SEARS and they were tearing down the huge video game display. The nearest SEARS was over an hour away and my brother and I would always camp out at that display and play games while our parents shopped. It was kind of sad day that day.

Great episode, Brett! It’s interesting to hear stories about the Crash of ‘83 from a consumer perspective. Your ungrounding only makes the story more interesting to me. I’d love to hear you embellish your tale, maybe in another video. Give us all the gory details! I was only 7 back then, and I believe the lower prices the Crash brought about acted as a sort of gateway into video games for me. I had been begging my parents for a 2600, and I was eventually able to get a (now cheaper) used console after I made a big enough deal about it. My brother and I were in video game heaven! My parents also bought a new Intellivision II in 1984, by my estimation. That was another excellent system. Those were magical times indeed.

I was 11 during the crash, and one of the positives of the crash I experienced was my Dad bought the Vectrex console and about half a dozen games at either JC Penney's or Toys 'R Us in Fort Worth. Plus with my observation alot of video game playing shifted to computers during that time because the console games (with the exception of Colecovision to some extent) were not good and the computer games were where it's at in gaming. It was an amazing and sad time in one because you got some good console games for dirt cheap but new games were being halted by console game companies with some shifting to computer gaming. I recall Zork leading the way. Lol!

I had no idea the industry was collapsing, but I was definitely aware of the prices falling drastically. I stocked up!

I was there too! Subbed!

Thanks for the info dude, your mom is proud. I had a similar adventure during the early 90's.

Lol. You rebel, you. ;) Great video. The crash was a tad before my living memory (born in '81), but in '84 my grandmother bought me Q*Bert and Ms. Pac for the 2600 in one purchase at Sears. Pretty sure she paid a heavily discounted price for them (still have them in my collection).

The only thing that causes the 83 crash was investor panic when Atari list market share and reduced it's expected returns as a result. That led investors to panic about the market as a whole and crash the whole thing.

PacMan on the 2600 is easy to criticize today looking back on it but I got it when it was released as did almost all of my friends and we loved it. It was Pacman on our home system. It was great. Yeah it looked nothing like the arcade but we expected that of 2600 ports back then. Et yeah, was hard to understand for a kid and could have been made as a much simpler game and would have probably been a huge hit, they missed the mark on that one.

I like Airlock! Lol

I wish the games were cheaper.