Memories of the '80s - Video Game Systems

The first video game one could buy for the home was Pong, a simple black and white game where a large square dot bounces around the screen. You would control a rectangle which could only move up and down the screen which you uses to block the dot from going into your end zone, or basically preventing it from disappearing off the side of the screen rectangle was on. Your opponent also controlled his own rectangle which he also used to prevent the dot from entering his end zone. It was suppose to simulate ping pong. The amazing thing about Pong was not the game itself but that that the home version was exactly the same as the arcade version.

In 1976 a version of Pong called Tennis ( but was exactly the same as Pong ) was available in Coleco's Telstar system with two other games, Hockey ( Pong with four blockers instead of two ) and Handball ( Pong where the left side of the screen was blocked with a solid line and the blockers were both on the right side of the screen ). Within a year Coleco would release several more Telstar systems, each which had at least one more game than the last system. Many were variations on Pong but eventually started including Telstar systems with plastic guns used for target games. The target games were basically Pong where you could use the gun to shoot out the bouncing block. How it worked was simple. The gun had a light sensor in it's barrel. Since the moving Pong block was giving off light then if you pulled the trigger the sensor could tell if the barrel was pointing at the block or at a blank part of the screen. If it sensed the light at the moment you pulled the trigger then the block would be turned off and a point awarded to the player. The gun had no way of telling the Pong block from any other light source, so if it was pointed at the on screen score it would also register a hit. Cheaters could also point the gun at a lamp in the room and it would register as if pointed at the Pong. Gamers also discovered that you could shoot out the block during a normal Pong game.

By the end of 1977 Coleco offered it's most advanced version of Telstar called The Arcade which came with Pong controllers, a gun, and a steering wheel for the new racing games they were just starting to program. Coleco realized that it was getting a bit ridiculous for gamers to have to keep buying entire new systems every few months whenever a new game or attachment was introduced, so their solution was that the Telstar would be a cartridge system. Only four cartridges were made for the Telstar Arcade before Coleco decided to abandon it. They had been beaten by another cartridge system, the Atari 2600 which had reached stores months before the Arcade and by the end of 1977 was getting all the attention. Atari offered Tank Battle and Breakout, and promised new game cartridges every few months. The Atari 2600's controller was a joystick with a single red button which would become associated with video games for much of the '80s. The idea of upgradable cartridges made video game platforms far more desirable*. Others tried to compete with Atari, the one that came close to matching it's success being the Intellivision in 1979 which claimed more advanced graphics and had a controller with a small keyboard. The keyboard made the games on the Intellivision too complicated to play which is why that system failed to beat the Atari despite more advanced game play and graphics.

*Atari was not the first cartridge system. Magnavox introduced the Odyssey system in 1972. The graphics were more or less the same black and white blocks you found in Pong which Magnavox tried to beef up with full color overlays which you would place over the screen before playing. Magnavox released several cartridges for the Odyssey ( six cartridges came with the system ) and could have had the same success that the Atari 2600 would have years later. But Magnavox insisted in claiming that the Odyssey only worked on Magnavox televisions. They had only invested in the game system because they saw it as a way to sell more of their sets. The truth was that the Odyssey worked on any television. But consumers did not know this and sales of the system became mostly limited to those who already owned a Magnavox television.

While the Atari 2600 made video game platforms more desirable in the late '70s, it was the video arcade boom of the early 80s that made the home game systems an item every kid wanted. This began when Atari began offering Space Invaders as a free cartridge when you purchased a new 2600 system. For those already owning the system Space Invaders was also sold separately. While the 2600 was built with processors that could only handle '70s games like Pong and Tank Battle, they were able to do a reasonable enough job recreating the Space Invaders arcade game. Unfortunately games in arcades were about to advance even more with computer chips that allowed full color and more detailed graphics as well as far more complicated screens. The 2600 could just barely reproduce late 70s games like Space Invaders, Asteroids or Circus. The Intellivision could reproduce the late 70s generation of arcade games more fatefully but for some reason would rather produce knock off games like Astrosmash than pay the royalties for producing home versions of popular arcade games. Still Atari went ahead producing home versions of arcade hits. Game players put up with such deficits as a version of Missile Command with only one fire button and two silos, but finally complained with the release of Atari's version of Pac-Man. Atari's home version of the game was programed at the very limits the 2600 could handle. Game players were so disappointed in the poor quality of the home version that millions of cartridges were returned. Atari knew that if they were to continue they would need to release a more advanced video game system and began work on the 5200 which would be released later that year.

In the meantime Atari did much better producing original games. One of the more popular was a game called Adventure and was the first action-adventure video game. It was basically the dot from Pong going on an adventure to find a glowing chalice ( possibly the Holy Grail ) and bring it back to the yellow castle which ended the game. To aid you on your quest was various items hidden around the kingdom, such as keys to open the gates to the castles, a bridge that allowed the Pong to cross past solid walls, and a sword that killed the Pong eating dragons that inhabited the kingdom. There were three quests, each more difficult then the last as the kingdom was altered with more castles, more mazes including a dark one, more dragons and an annoying bat that flew around stealing items and flying off with it. Adventure sold well in 1980 and then saw a resurgence in sales two years later with the discovery of the game's Easter egg. Programmer Warren Robinett realized that there would be one extra unused room during the game and decided to write his name in it. The room was blocked by a line down the side of the screen and one could only cross the line if they found an invisible item known as the chip which was hidden inside a room in the dark maze that could only be accessed with the bridge. No one knew about the secret room except for Robinett and his close friends. Gamers knew about a trick where if you allow the Pong to be eaten by a dragon and then wait until the bat shows up it will steal the dragon and therefore take the Pong on a flying tour through the walls and all around the kingdom. It was one of these gamers who began writing to Atari claiming that he had discovered the secret room when the bat flew him past it. Other gamers began to claim they had also spotted the secret room and Atari investigated. Urban legend has it that once Atari discovered the secret room they fired Robinett, but in actuality he had already quit a year earlier. Instead Atari published the instructions to finding the invisible chip that was the key to the hidden room in Atari Age Magazine, coining the phrase Easter egg to describe it. When this seemed to result in sales of the cartridge rising Atari encouraged other programmers to include their own Easter eggs. One of these games was Yar's Revenge. The title itself had a hidden meaning as Yar was Ray spelled backwards, a reference to Atari president Ray Kassar. During the game if you destroyed the enemy then flew into a line that appeared on the screen and stayed there for a few seconds the programmer's initials would appear. The game would also freeze. Many gamers who stumbled on the Easter egg by accident thought the game was broken and returned it. This included a friend who accidentally found the Easter egg three times in ten minutes and returned his game as a result.

The Atari 2600's popularity was it's own downfall. Nothing prevented publishers other than Atari from producing games for the platform. One of these was Activision, founded by a group of programmers who had quit Atari in 1979. Activision games proved to be so popular that Atari began to lose business to them. Other companies began publishing games that worked on the Atari 2600 platform. The most notorious was Mystique who published X-rated video games including Custer's Revenge, a game where General Custer navigates an obstacle course in order to rape a Native American woman tied to a cactus. Atari received so many complaints from both Native American groups and Women's groups that they sued Mystique only to have the case thrown out. Atari was also unable to stop companies from releasing knockoff platforms that were capable of playing Atari and Activision games. Perhaps the biggest hit in this area was with the release of the ColecoVision which came with an attachment that allowed it to play Atari cartridges. The Atari 5200 did not have an adapter and could not play the older Atari games. Both the Atari 5200 and the ColecoVision were the next generation of cartridge platforms that were capable of playing 8 bit games that came close to the quality of the then current arcade games. The idea of abandoning your game platform for a more advanced system was new at the time. Most had just bought their 2600 a year earlier. Parents were not eager to spend even more money on another expensive game platform for their kids, especially considering that the whole idea of purchasing a cartridge system was that you would not have to keep buying new platforms the way that you did back in the 70s with the Telstar systems. Despite the promise of advanced games that looked just like the ones in the arcades the 8 bit systems proved a hard sell. Many only considered the ColecoVision due to the Atari adapter. Other 8 bit systems including the Arcadia 2001 and Magnavox's Odyssey² failed to draw the attention that the Atari 5200 and ColecoVision had.

By 1983 with too many competing video game systems on the market and thousands of competing cartridges from independent developers there was suddenly an overall drop in sales of new platforms and cartridges. Some of this was blamed on the over saturation of video game systems and cartridges in the marketplace. Some of this was blamed on too many poorly programmed games on the Atari system including Pac-Man and the E.T. game. But the real cause of the sales drop came as a result of competition from an entirely different technology, the VCR and Betamax. Not only had the price dropped enough for the machine to be affordable for the average American family to buy, but rental shops began springing up who would rent you a VCR or Betamax, and after renting it for several months you would have paid off the machine's cost and have the option of keeping it permanently. These shops also began renting the otherwise expensive VHS and Betamax movies which lead to the video rental shops. As more and more Americans began hooking video recorders to their televisions and began renting movies the video game platforms began taking a backseat in popularity. In many cases families had no clue how to attach both a VCR and Atari 2600 to their sets at the same time and the parents simply had the game system disconnected and put into a closet. Kids who complained about the loss of the use of their gaming system were quickly pacified by the promise of being allowed to rent movies from their local video store. With the drop in sales of video games retailers decided to no longer order new games and even began removing games and platforms from their shelves. These ended up being sold at discount outlets like Odd Lot where an Atari or ColecoVision would sell for $10 while their game cartridges sold for $1. Companies like Coleco and Magnavox quickly closed down their home video game divisions. By 1985 video games were all but gone from the stores and it was believed that the fad had come to a permanent end.

The one place where video games could still be bought was the then growing home computer market. The leader was the Commodore 64 with a chip that allowed advanced enough graphics to play games that came close to arcade quality. Many of the games released for the Commodore 64 were text based, such as Zork. Instead of seeing graphics a gamer would see text which they responded to with more text. But computers were very expensive and although the Commodore 64 was promoted as a gaming system it simply cost too much money to approach the sales that the Atari 2600 had. Meanwhile in Japan video games and platforms continued to sell. Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan in 1984 but found it impossible to release the system in North America due to the video game crash of 1983. It was not until 1985 that Nintendo found enough stores interested in releasing the Famicom under the name Nintendo Entertainment System ( or NES ) and then only after including a little plastic robot called R.O.B. who would play along with some of the games. Everyone had thought that video game platforms were finished in the United States and that Nintendo was crazy for attempting to launch a new system, especially at the same time stores were getting rid of the last of their Atari, Intellivision and ColecoVision overstock. But Nintendo had studied what had worked and not worked with the past platform systems. The Easter eggs found in games like Adventure and unintentional bugs in other games proved popular. Nintendo deliberately programmed their games to have secrets, such as the hidden warp tubes in Super Mario Brothers. They also realized that Atari had lost millions due to others releasing games for their platform. In response the Famicom was designed so that it could lock out games that did not include a chip that Nintendo owned a patent for. This meant that Nintendo had to approve of any games released on their system, and could not only demand a percentage of profits from games designed by rival companies but could demand a high quality standards so that their system had no embarrassing games like E.T. released on the NES. They instituted the Nintendo Seal of Quality that meant that no cheaply produced games would be released on their platform. The NES slowly grew in popularity and was soon followed by the Sega Master System and TurboGrafx-16. By the end of the '80s home video games quietly came back. In 1989 the Sega Genesis was released opening the door for 16 bit systems, soon to be followed by the Super Nintendo and Atari Jaguar in the early '90s.