DMUGA Assignment #2 - History of Video Games 1980's-1999

Hi all, and welcome to the second part to my video game history blogs :) In this part, I'll go through in a similar way before, but from the 80's to 2000. There have been major events that have happened in this period of time which has effected what we see today.

A quick note I'd like to add to this blog before continuing with the history, was something I found very interesting from Michael's lecture recently. Despite a lot of people knowing this and being interested in the older games myself, I somehow have never heard of "The great crash", where there were apparently so many mediocre consoles on sale to the public that they lost a huge amount of popularity, plus it meant that many companies went out of business. This surprised me as I thought that since the first console, the market for them has just continued to grow. However, it wasn't until Nintendo released NES that things blew up again and they gained more interest than ever before! This was what you may call the resurrection of video game consoles.
Another thing I found very interesting to learn about was how the personal computer kind of creeped in around the 1980's and gained popularity within the games as well. Funnily enough, this was probably another contributor to the great crash in 1982-83. The fact was that computers at the time were just better in most aspects, affecting the console market. Another reason for this was also due to the loss of publishing control over the games being made; many pirated versions of games were being created so the businesses were no longer very viable.
Going through what happened in the 1990's was a nice bit of nostalgia for me; the Gameboy and Nintendo were in my very early childhood and I could spend hours on end just tapping away at those slightly awkward control systems.

Pacman Arcade Machine

Anyway, carrying on with the transition from 1979 to the 1980's, Atari released an iconic exclusive home version to their system the "Atari 2600, aka VCS"... Space Invaders! This caused sales of the Atari 2600 to rise immensely. Alongside this release, came Nameco's "Pac-man"; one of the big dogs when it comes to retro arcade games. "Over 300,000 units are sold worldwide (counterfeit machines are not included in this figure, but their number nearly matches the number of legitimate Pac-Man machines)". - The History of Video Games, Leonard Herman et al 2002. It's funny to think that Toru Iwatani (Creator of Pac-Man), was inspired by a pizza with a slice missing, and it was such a hit. 2 years after this, Ms. Pac-Man was released, which was of course another hit with the public, becoming one of the best selling arcade games of all time alongside it's predecessor.

PC Booter game - Summer Games

In July 1980, IBM assigned the job of creating a 16 bit operating system for the PC to Microsoft. "At first, Microsoft licensed QDOS for $25,000. After a license agreement with IMB was signed, Bill Gates bought QDOS for $50,000 in July 1981." - Ref 1. IBM then put this on all of it's computers (IBM 5150) as PC DOS, and for other ones, MS DOS was for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partner. This spread very fast and in 1982, 50 companies already owned the licence to MS DOS. The need for a graphical interface was rising and was announced by Microsoft in 1983 as "Windows".
The MS DOS went worldwide by 1985 due to its versatility and low cost. As well as being an amazing tool for businesses, you could also play what was called " PC booter games" which required a floppy disk to boot the game. These games competed with the video game comsole ,arket, and in fact, thrived in the period of the crash of consoles in 1983.

1981 is another year where history is made when it comes to iconic retro games. Nintendo creates a game with a character that I personally had during my childhood - Mario. However, this was not his first name, he was originally called "Jumpman". The game Nintendo had created was Donkey Kong, another huge hit with the public. "Jumpman" was "later renamed Mario by Nintendo of America's staff, in honer of his resemblance to their landlord Mario Segali." - The History of Video Games, 2002.

Atari 5200

In 1982, the Emerson Arcadia 2001 was released and Mattel's 'Intellivision' was a competitor for Atari's 2600 & 5200. Although, the Arcadia 2001 had a very short life only lasting around 18 months with just 35 game releases. The main reason for this failing was likely due to the overpowering competition with the other consoles i.e. Atari, and it just could not stand up to them - Some are just better than others.

An interesting side note is that in 1981, the first video game magazine was released by Arnie Katz & Bill Kunkel; it was the first magazine to be purely based around video games. At this point in time, arcades had reached pretty much their peak, with revenues of around $5 billion. I find that it's a shame that now, the arcade is a rare sight in modern places. I don't know about others, but if I see a sign for an arcade, I can't help myself and feel like I must go in. Although, my experiences of an arcade are undoubtedly different from what they were in the 1980's, and I would love to go back in time to see the wonders of a 1980's arcade.


Now we've reached a point in video games history where there was the biggest decline in video game businesses ever. 1982-84 is a significant period in this timeline where things are going on everywhere.

Colecovision

Coleco brings out the Colecovision, which uses cartridges to hold the games on, and gains support from Nintendo, who then allows Coleco to share in the wonders that is Donkey Kong & Donkey Kong Junior. The graphics of Colecovision were far better than previous consoles, and they also produced an adapter that allowed you to play VCS cartridges on Colecovision. Coleco also made contacts with companies such as Universal, Sega and Konami.
"K.C. Munchkin" was a game that many people have not heard of, but would easily mistake it for the iconic Pac-Man. It was produced by Magnavox and done for the Odyssey 2, but Atari saw this and sued the company because it was pretty much the same game; forcing Magnavox to remove the game from circulation.

Atari 2600 E.T

Atari  during this time also released a 2600 version of Pac-Man, but it did not live up to expectations, affecting their community. Speaking of big fails, they brought out another game for 'E.T. the extra terrestrial' which was programmed in 6 weeks by Howard Scott. This game was expected to be right up there with the other best selling games, they actually made more cartridges than there were Atari 2600 consoles that had been sold. However, it was such an epic fail, not many copies were sold, and the majority ended up in a landfill site in New Mexico.
Ms. Pac-Man however, becomes the biggest arcade game ever in America, with around 115,000 units sold in the US alone. Namco then responded to this by creating "Super Pac-Man" for Japan, and some chips which changed: Pac-Man's speed, the maps, and the fruits with different bonus items.
Unfortunately, Atari revealed that on December 7th, that VCS sales didn't sell as well as they hoped, and Warner Communications' stock dropped by 32% in just one day!

Even though multiplayer had been around for a while now, it still hadn't kicked off quite so much, but in 1983 "M.U.L.E.", which had a focus on multiplayer and was a turn-based strategy game for up to four people. This was a big step for the multiplayer concept, although, it still didn't burst into the public and fill them with excitement, nevertheless, it was still popular to some extent.

The Falcon Project - Luma

In 1983, Atari let loose on a new project called "the falcon project", which was a division of Atari called Ataritel and it was to try and get into a new market aside from gaming (telecommunications). The rights to Ataritel's product/prototypes/designs was bought by MEDAMA (Mitsubish Electric Development And Marketing America). Roy L Elkins was the leader of this, and the product was a videophone, and first released the "Luma" in 1986 - "A telephone that used regular phone lines to transmit both voice and a black & white still picture of the caller onto a 3-inch diagonal screen" - Ref 1 , it was retailed at $1,450 but dropped to $1,095 a year later.

Still in 1983, Coleco reveals the 'Adam Computer' in June with the game 'Donkey Kong'. They don't have computer rights for this game however, and Nintendo threatens them with a lawsuit. In other big news, Nintendo released the 'family computer' "Famicom" exclusively to Japan, then signs an agreement with Atari to distribute it elsewhere. Although, this was short-lived when it was "revealed that Ray Kassar sold a quarter of a million dollars worth of Warner stock on 6th December 1982, the day before Atari made an announcement that caused the stock to fall." - Ref 2.

Here we've come to a very depressing period of video games & consoles, the big crash of 1983. There was so many products/consoles on for sale to the public, that many third-party companies are put out of business. There was loss over publishing control for games and many games were being pirated, which in-turn results in big losses by the big companies. Even the companies that survived, couldn't keep up with these incredibly cheap games and therefore also lost money on inventory not being sold.
This reference has the main points listed in detail, and is very interesting to read, especially as the writer has experienced this happening, and offers personal thoughts at the time: Ref 4. I myself did not get to experience such a time, and I have to remember a point said by this person, that there wasn't really a place to go to review/play games, so the box art was there to give you a taste of what you're paying for. Therefore, with so many of these weird games, who was to know what was good to buy or not? Another interesting read was ref 5, as it questions whether or not such a thing may happen again. All of this talk of consoles and it's easy to forget that the PC gaming market was still growing  and bigger than ever.

Oldest version of Tetris I could find

TETRIS ARRIVES!!! On June 6th 1984, Tetris hit the market and was pretty much instantly famous. It was created by the Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov and apparently "since then, 120m official copies of the game have been sold" - Ref 3. This is absolutely amazing, considering it's such a simple game and was created around 3 decades ago, yet still so popular with today's comparatively advanced gaming competition.
I personally love Tetris too, how can you not? It's a time killer, fun to play, and simple to grasp; the ultimate combination for an addictive game! There are so many versions of Tetris available out today, including 3D Tetris (which is awesome by the way!), and the graphics have obviously improved since back then, making an all round fun game for all ages.

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) / Famicom

Mettel also sells Intellisivion due to some big losses, which is then purchased by Terry Valeski and renamed to "Intellivision Inc." Continuing on the losses, Warner Communications decide to sell off Atari Inc.'s consumer division, but keeps the arcade division, which is renamed to "Atari Games". Nintendo however, announces that they will release its Famicom in the US (The famicom was on sale already in Japan).

The Legend Of Zelda - 1986 Famicom

In 1985, this becomes true and Nintendo tests out the new Famicom - "Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)" in New York. The drawback that Nintendo had to risk with this was that all unsold stock in retailers had to be bought back. This did not matter as it was very popular in the test-run. The NES then goes on to be released nationwide in 1986, and opens with a pretty big bang... Super Mario Bros.! Now, someone of my age may or may not have played on the NES, or the original Super Mario Bros., however, I have played many of the later Mario games which were released on the Gameboy. This my friends. Was. Amazing.
Now, another console wars brews as Sega introduce its "Sega Master System" in the US. In addition to this, Atari reassesses the video game situation and releases the 7800, following on from the 5200. Although, Nintendo by far "outsells its competitors 10 to 1 in the US" - Ref 2. In addition to this, they release a disk drive attachment for the Famicom, as well as "The Legend of Zelda" & various sporting games I.e. Football/Soccer & Golf. Nintendo then signs third-party developers to allow them to create games for the Famicom.
In terms of the computer market, games are still being produced and sold, including the big ones originally released on the consoles. In additional to games to play for fun, the "Learning Company" puts together the "Reader Rabbit" program, which thrives with the creation of CD-ROMs in the 90's, but the internet shortly halts this program.

In 1988, Coleco couldn't recover from the disappointing Adam computer, and goes bankrupt. Meanwhile, Atari Games and Nintendo have a little dispute in which Atari claims that Nintendo has an illegal economic advantage on the games industry, so that they are the dominant sellers. In addition to this, Atari creates "Tengen" which produced games for home consoles, and they find a method of producing games for the NES but without Nintendo's approval of it - If you ask me, that's a pretty dangerous game to play. Later in 89, Tengen buy the rights of Tetris from Microsoft (of which wasn't actually theirs), and Nintendo had rights to it. Therefore, Nintendo released their own version of Tetris and forced the Tengen version out of the marketplace. What I find interesting in this whole situation is that it seems as if the companies are going at each other like dogs, fighting to be on top.

Nintendo's GameBoy

Moving on from this, Nintendo finally releases what I can actually physically remember as part of my childhood: The Nintendo Gameboy. Games such as Tetris, Super Mario Land, and Alleyway were released, and this thing was quickly gaining popularity. Alongside this release, many other came about, for example: NEC's TurboGrafx-16 with the $400 CD player that first introduced games to the CD, Sega's 16-bit "Genesis", and Atari's Handheld "Lynx" which doesn't fair so well against the Gameboy. This was due to a number of reasons I.e. Not enough support from game developers, was more expensive than the GB, and had rumours of the discontinuation of support for it from Atari.

We've hit the 90's! - Handheld games!
This was an amazing year for Nintendo all-round. Not only did they release Super Mario 3 (The best selling video game cartridge), they also released the Super Famicon which had better hardware than all of the other competitors. Super Mario 4: Super Mario World is also released to the Japanese market. Although, yet another dispute has to be resolved, this time with Nintendo & Blockbuster. One incidence involved Nintendo's claim that video game rental was inhibiting sales (Court sided with Blockbuster), the other was that Blockbuster had copied copyrighted game manuals (Court sided with Nintendo).
NEC's handheld device named "TurboExpress" was also released and it was the first portable gaming device that could play a dedicated console's game.
As well as these, the Neo-geo was released with an incredible price tag of $650 and $200 per game! - Ref 8. However, it boasted great graphics & was considered the best for some. The 90's was also a period which significantly noticed a decline in the classic arcade machines; a sad thought, as even though I didn't get to play on them, I would have loved to have experienced it fully.

Windows 3.0

Keeping up with the computer-side of gaming, the iconic Windows game that has been on every one of their systems until this date - Solitaire (Released on Windows 3.0). Once again, not a game that I myself enjoyed playing on my old Windows 98, but my brother loved it! It became one the most popular games for the PC which was for people who wouldn't actually go out and purchase say a console. By this time, the PC gaming community was still rising, and it hadn't really declined, with more and more games being made for it by numerous developers; not to mention that the PC as a system was growing larger & was slowly evolving into something that a lot of homes attained.

Sonic the Hedgehog 1991

Just a couple of years after the Gameboy, Nintendo then goes on to produce the "Super Nintendo Entertainment System" (SNES) which sold 49million units worldwide! - Ref 7. This was also a time for another iconic games character "Sonic the Hedgehog", created by Sega and came out on for the Genesis. I don't know of anyone my age or older who hasn't heard of Sonic. Even though I didn't play any of the games as a child (I was a Mario kid), I still love the concept of Sonic, and I have heard from some of my friends who have played some of the more recent Sonic games that it's an incredibly great play/series of games.

1992 was the year that Nintendo and Sony breaks their partnership and announces that they plan to work with Philips to make a CD-ROM that can be used on the Philips CD-i. Sony then scraps previous work for Nintendo to start on a 32-bit CD gaming device. Another console that didn't go very far was called the '3DO', which was also a 32-bit gaming console. It was released in 93 but stopped around 95 due to the news of 64-bit gaming. - Ref 2.

Example of an ESRB game rating

93 came the release of the Atari Jaguar, along with the information that Sega & Nintendo are releasing new systems of the 64-bit quality. What I find rather important also is the investigation into video game violence. Mortal Kombat was most likely as you'd say the 'kickstarter' in this situation, which causes for a rating system used across the whole video game industry to prevent underage children purchasing games with violence in them. This came true in 94 whereby the 'Entertainment Software Rating Board' comes to the table and rates all future video games with warnings of violence/obscenity/sex etc & an age rating.

Towards the end of 1994, the Japanese market receives the blessings of Sega's 'Sega Saturn', and Sony's 'Playstation', then they hit the US market in 1995. However, Sega expressed that it'd be released on 'Saturnday' - September 2nd, but instead released it 4 months earlier since the Playstation was coming out at the same time. This meant 3rd party developers weren't prepared for it, so almost nothing was made for it, also, the price was $399 which is rather expensive, so Sony dropped the launch price to $299 ($100 cheaper) and it turned out to be a very successful move for Sony. - Ref 9.

During 95, the wonderful Nintendo 64 hit the Japanese market, it was much sought after and broke previous Nintendo sales records. However, far more game were being produced for the Playstation and sales of the N64 slowed greatly after a short period of time. Games like 'Goldeneye 007', 'Supar Mario 64' & 'The Legend of Zelda' were big sellers for the N64 and are considered some of the most favourite childhood games of my generation. I myself haven't played these, but I haven't heard anything negative about them, just people feeling nostalgic when they talk about them. In addition, the latest version of windows was released during August, 'Windows 95'. I don't remember owning one, but I do remember having a Windows 98. It's amazing to see how far technology has come in just 18 years from Win95.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (L to R = 1996 to 2011)

1996 introduces a wide variety of simulation games which included a lot of sporting games. The prices of consoles are generally lowered, and the Sega Saturn's sales are slow in the US. The big game of the year though was probably 'Tomb Raider' by Eidos Interactive; this was a point in history that was largely noted for sexism in a video game. Nowadays, things like this aren't as a big of a deal as it was back then, but that's probably because I've just grown up with it so it's nothing new. A few other things happen this year, for example: Atari stops production of the Jaguar, Nintendo sells its 1 billionth game cartridge, Sony profits around $12 million over Christmas, and N64 is released to the US which sells 1.7 million units in 3 months! - Ref 2. In addition, something I didn't know about was the Nintendo 'Atlantis' project, a 32-bit coloured version of the original Gameboy, but it stayed as just a concept. - Ref 10.

Sony's Playstation 1

So many things happen in 1997, but to keep it short, figures of the number of units sold for Sony's Playstation far outweigh the units sold by Nintendo. Nevertheless, Nintendo's figures are still very respectable 3.2 million in the US alone, but Sony's Playstation was as much as 5mil in Japan, 4mil in the US, and 2.2mil in Europe; they sold the 20 millionth console 4 months later. - Ref 2. Sony's 'Yaroze' also came out in 97 for the computer so that people could create their own games for the PS if they wanted to (with a hefty price of $750). A whole load of price cuts happen this year too: Japanese N64 drops to $137, US N64 drops to $150, Sega too drops to $150, and Sony's PS drops to $149.
Guess what else comes out this year too... The Tamagotchi! It was already out for Japan in 96, but this pet concept was extremely popular and they were everywhere! In fact, I remember my brother owning 5 of those things, I was too young to know how to use it properly, so kind of messed it up for him... By accident of course! Oh, and remember the chess program I mentioned in the first part? Well, the program named 'Deep Blue' on an IBM computer, beat the world champion Gary Kasparov in a match. - Ref 11.

Sega releases the 'Dreamcast' in 98, but there were some other names being tossed around before this was official, I.e. 'Black belt', 'Katana' & 'Dural'. It uses a 64-bit MS Windows CE operating system which makes it much easier to transfer game to and from the PC. Sales begin in Japan on the 27th of November, and the 150,000 units get sold right away, and a whopping 132,000 Virtua Fighter 3 copies. Unfortunately during this year, Sega pretty much give up on the Saturn, and it isn't really of much significance anymore. Rumours begin to circulate about the upcoming Playstation 2, and that it may be released in 2000 with a DVD-compatible drive.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
 - Limited & normal Edition

Remember the first Legend of Zelda? Well Nintendo brings out the new updated version for the N64, "Ocarina of Time", which brings in a huge $150 million in sales, beating the latest Disney movie "A Bug's Life" by $36 million.
Another big part of 1998 was the Gameboy Colour! Now, I loved this thing and could play for hours on Pokemon. Nothing would beat a sick day off school and playing through the whole Pokemon Red version in 6 hours. Anyway, the Pokemon tv series was already out in Japan, and came to the US, but with edited scenes due to epileptic inducing images that were experienced by around 700 Japanese viewers. - Ref 2. The Pokemon Red & Green were released in Japan in 96, but didn't come to the US till a few years after. These game along with Pokemon Blue & Yellow (Special ed), were Nintendo's best selling games for the Gameboy.

Original X-box Logo
 - Announced console in 1999, released 2001

After recently releasing the Gameboy Colour, the Gameboy Advance is announced in 99 as the upgraded version which allowed players to have a widescreen; if the game was originally for the Colour/monochrome you could also pick between widescreen and the normal aspect ratio - This was then released into the Japanese market in 2001. Microsoft also announced their latest project/console, the 'X-box', which too used the Windows operating system like Dreamcast did.

Sony then reveal the new specs for the PS2 which would come out later in 2000. I personally loved the idea that the PS could play audio cds & dvds; along with the great games to the PS2, I think it was more value for money with the built-in dvd player - It was extremely useful when I was growing up. A few other things happened this year, but to finish this off, 'Connectix' brings the 'Virtual Game Station' to the Macintosh which allowed players to emulate Playstation games on it. I think this is quite cool, but Sony wasn't very happy, and rightly so! Not to mention the price tag of $149. Plus, 'Bleem' then releases one for the IBM computers for just $19.95! Sony tried to stop this but couldn't for some reason. - Ref 2.

Everquest - MMORPG 1999

Quick note: Game for the home computers were still being developed and still going at a constant rate. More and more developers are joining in creating game for the PC, including a variety of educational games. Everquest was a game by Sony Online Entertainment and it was a hugely successful MMO-RPG back in the day. To link it back with my previous blog, it's interesting to see the development of multiplayer games, how it started with an ethernet cable and 2 players, to hundreds of thousands of people playing one online game!


Thank-you for reading this far, the next shall include a short run through of the big dogs from 2000-2013.

References:
1-http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-msdos.htm
2-Leonard Herman, Jer Horwitz, Steve Kent, Skyler Miller. (2002). The history of video games.
3-http://mcurrent.name/atarihistory/videophone.html
4-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/rbth/technology/7847705/Tetris-the-worlds-best-known-computer-game-was-born-in-Russia.html
5-http://plus10damage.com/blog/2013/8/25/retroactive-the-video-game-crash-of-1983
http://www.denofgeek.com/games/24531/the-1983-videogame-crash-what-went-wrong-and-could-it-happen-again
6-http://videogamegeek.com/videogameplatform/6550/pc-booter
7-http://www.gametrog.com/GAMETROG/SUPER_NINTENDO_SNES_Information_Specs.html
8-http://www.computerandvideogames.com/403360/features/history-lesson-neo-geo/
9-http://www.cyberiapc.com/vgg/sega_saturn.htm
10-http://galleyslaves.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/nintendos-project-atlantis.html
11-http://www.icheg.org/icheg-game-history/timeline/


Image References:
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http://www.denofgeek.com/games/24531/the-1983-videogame-crash-what-went-wrong-and-could-it-happen-again
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http://blogs.arts.ac.uk/london-college-of-communication/files/2010/02/lara_croft.jpgSNAc_DvXk1s/USTRakFAfNI/AAAAAAAAHIU/Sxnvq9Gcu7s/s1600/PS1.jpg
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