ATTN: Old Timers

[Miho Mingu]

What was the Video Game Crash of 1983 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983) like for you?

Discuss.

[Documad]

It didn't affect me but I remember a bad and confusing time when I was working at Target as people tried to return old systems and get their money back and there was nothing to replace them with.

I had an early home computer. It had no hard drive. It could handle a four page document (up to eight pages double spaced). It had a bunch of dumb games you could plug in as cassettes into slots and two old school joysticks. I used that instead of one of a game system. It didn't have the same games are arcades or consules but there were ones that were similar to Space Invaders and Pacman.

[The Notorious LOL]

was it a Commodore?

[Documad]

An early IBM computer. It was almost completely useless, but it had an external modem and I could hook it up via telephone to my college's network and do some elementary programming in several languages. I think it cost about $1500 in 1983 or 1984. Another $500 for the modem. I even had Lotus 1-2-3, but you had to plug in two cartridges and put something in the floppy disc drive. To save anything you had to swap floppy discs in and out. And this was pre windows so you had to know the basic commands for everything.

But the best part was that I could shoot things off the screen a la space invaders. Until the joysticks started breaking. :( I apparently started hording joysticks when I realized the system was getting out of date because when I threw the whole thing away a few years ago, I found boxes of new joysticks.

I remember the old commodores though. We sold them at Target.

When the true game consules came in, they were on serious backorder -- people had to wait a year or more, and then they would get one that broke and have to get back on the list.

[Loppfessor]

I made and subsequently lost millions in that era, but man what a ride it was!

[Miho Mingu]

Nintendo saved the video games industry with the Nintendo Entertainment System. For the people that were around back then, how excited were people for that console, when it first released in America? (and later in Canada)

[The Notorious LOL]

I remember it first got popular when I was kindergarten or first grade was around the time I started seeing ads for it and everyone had one. That would have been in late 1986 or early 1987. I dont think it got much attention for about a year and word of mouth kind of spread. It didnt get REALLY big until at least 1989 though.

[ET]

When the arcade rush was on I wasn't really born yet. I kind of caught the "arcade games in Showbiz Pizza only" wave of things. I loved Donkey Kong though... godamn. I was still in diapers though during the 'crash'. I grew up with an Atari in the house (4yrs old and up... yes I got one on my birthday) but when I first saw the NES (which was about 1989) I pretty much shit my pants all over again. Everyone had one of them joints but me for a while. Oh, so jealous!

I guess back then you really had to use your imagination with the old systems. It influenced my artwork as I wanted to make what I saw look more realistic. I therefore made the characters and images into what I thought them to be, which was completely the opposite of what the developers wanted to portray. At least most of the time. So pretty much as soon as I could hold a pencil straight I have been drawing. And as sad as it is to admit I was influenced by old ass video games.

With everything looking and feeling so realistic these days I wonder how new toys like Xbox360 is going to influence the younger generations.

[Drederick Tatum]

I remember when I was 7 playing around with a speech program on a C64 at school. me and a classmate were typing in dumb stuff and I put in "show me your vagina" and she did. it was weird. I didn't really know what to think.

[Drederick Tatum]

did anyone else read GamePro? that was like porn for me until I discovered porn.

[The Notorious LOL]

yeah they had that cheesy cartoon bastard logo with what appeared to be FUTURE sunglasses or some shit.

[Documad]

I played arcade games for several years. I liked Centipede and Frogger the best. They were the girl-y games I guess.

We had the original Pong game for our TV btw -- but it was never as good as the version that was built into tables in the lounges in movie theaters and bars.

[skra75]

*puts "olde fart" hat on*
I guess back then you really had to use your imagination with the old systems. It influenced my artwork as I wanted to make what I saw look more realistic. I therefore made the characters and images into what I thought them to be, which was completely the opposite of what the developers wanted to portray. At least most of the time. So pretty much as soon as I could hold a pencil straight I have been drawing. And as sad as it is to admit I was influenced by old ass video games.

as was I. I was a serious atari jockey.
thing was, the damn thing was so simple and linear, back then no-one ever thought video games were much more than a board game you'd play on the tv. sure, game slike pitfall 2 were more complex, but rarely did the themes ever advance past "do x and beat your friends high-score"

when atari died I remember bc you could get games for dirt fucking cheap and i was a little nerdy kid in elementary school and I remember my frugal dad rolling home with the black-and-white boxes of closeout games.

at some point, I lost interest and played with transformers instead of atari, it was just too much fun. then I saw a sega master system in the store and played Alex Kidd and my head nearly exploded. it was a bananas moment I still recall very clearly. It was not anything like atari, and I was hooke dfor a different reason, graphics - color - story - sound.

good times

[ET]

Ahaha, bargain bin games!!! I still cop from the bin. :cool: Fucking E.T. The Game. Shit drove me nuts. I got that one secondhand with no manual. Hell, I didn't read any of the ones I got anyway. That's how I played all of my shits even NES ones. We'd rent all the time because we weren't rich and my allowance was about 4 bucks a week.

Having a high score only applies to online shooters, it seems. And a good majority of the people who aim for that hack the hell out of the game. In the arcade, though, if you had your initials on the top of Space Invaders or Street Fighter 2 you were the shit... hands down no contest.

[Otis Driftwood]

We had Pong but it was called Tennis. And a little Frogger machine. Every third bar had an arcade! I noticed when these games were dwindling (just when I could afford 'em, too. :mad: