History of Video Games Part 2: 1980s - 1990s

The Story Must Go On!
Continuing on from where I left off, I would now like to take us further through the history of video games. With the industry just taking shape and the fathers of video games developing on their ideas, we now see a massive release of home gaming consoles; and this is where we start the second part of our adventure!

Donkey Kong Arcade
(source: wikipedia.org)

The Golden Age
It is the year 1981. Video games are increasingly gaining more and more publicity in the United States and this leads us into what is known as "The Golden Age". Since most video games were available in arcades and people increasingly got interested in spending time playing them, a large quantity of people spent hundreds of quarters to play. This quickly brought the video game industry to its peak with profits nearly twice as much as the movie industry, and three times as much as major league baseball, basketball and football.

While the arcades were booming with success from games such as Space Invaders and Donkey Kong, some companies decided to turn to people's homes and further bring the gaming experience into the living room by continuing their development on game consoles. One of the major companies was Atari. While many other companies released pong type Atari went a step further and introduced game cartridges together with their game console, which would enable developers to make different kind of games running on the same hardware. The Atari 2600 (or originally Atari VCS) was released in 1977 and with the help of continuous game development as well as ports of popular arcade games such as Space Invaders it became a massive success.

Atari 2600
(source: wikipedia.org)

Video Game Crash of 1983
Following Atari's success, many other companies decided to bring out their own game consoles with game cartridges. While Atari decided to follow up and release a better console in 1982 (the Atari 5200), the year also saw the release of Atari's main competitor: The ColecoVision. While the Atari 5200 had an arguably better hardware, the ColecoVision was more successful due to it's bundled in, licensed copy of Nintendo's popular arcade title Donkey Kong. Throughout 1982, the gaming market was flooded by enthusiastic companies hoping to release consoles and games and follow in to Atari's and Coleco's success. This in return urged Atari to fight its competitors by releasing major game titles for their system.

Atari 5200
(source: wikipedia.org)

ColecoVision
(source: wikipedia.org)

The first attempt at this was in made in early 1982 by Atari's port of Pac-Man. Atari was so confident that their game would be a hit, that they manufactured two million copies more than they had consoles sold, in hope that people would buy the console just to play the game. However, while the game sold seven million copies, it was badly programmed and many people were disappointed by it and asked for a refund. In their last attempt to get out of the hole, Atari licensed Spielberg's E.T, feeling confident that it could be a huge bestseller, however due to unrealistic development time the game again failed to impress and didn't sell, leaving the majority of E.T. cartridges in dead inventory.

E.T. Video Game
(source: wikipedia.org)

As 1983 slowly approached, many consumers had begun to lose interest in video arcades and stopped purchasing video games, which lead the industry into a black hole. Atari was left with enormous inventories of worthless game cartridges and with no hope of selling them, dumped millions of cartridges in a landfill in the New Mexico desert. By 1985 the golden age was truly over and video games started to completely disappear within the United States.

Console Wars
Over in Japan the video game market was far from over. With the rise of Nintendo and the release of their first console, the NES (or originally Famicom), they managed to conquer the market. Being a huge success, Nintendo decided to release their console in the United States in 1985, two years after the original launch in Japan. With many retailers scared of selling the NES due to the recent crash, Nintendo decided to offer retailers a risky offer: a money-back guarantee. Knowing that it would be hard to get the NES to sell, Nintendo only shipped over a small amount of units of the console and decided to only sell it in shops throughout the New York area.

Nintendo Entertainment System
(source: wikipedia.org)

The NES wasn't a smash hit, however it managed to sell 50,000 units, nearly half of the systems that shipped over from Japan. This was enough to prove that video games were not dead and resulted in Nintendo expanding their sales into Los Angeles. While the system only sold moderately well in both cities, the majority of retailers decided to continue carrying it which Nintendo saw as a sign of future success and expanded their sales to include Chicago and San Francisco.

Meanwhile back in Japan a new competitor has decided to enter the market. The Sega Master System was more powerful than the NES, however it didn't manage to market as well within Japan, where Nintendo controlled more than 90 percent of the market. Therefore Sega decided to sell their game console in the United States a year later. While it was not as highly distributed as the NES, the Master System was sold by retailers in most major cities in time for the holidays.

Sega Master System
(source: wikipedia.org)

The NES sold more than the Master System in the United States due to Nintendo's console not only being cheaper, but also offering a range of highly popular arcade games, such as Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. The Master System was shipped with a port of the arcade game Hang On, however very few people ever seemed aware of the cartridge itself and rather asked for "the video game system that plays that Mario game".

Super Mario Bros. Cartridge
(source: mobygames.com)

While Sega's sales were not as high as Nintendo's, they were good enough for the company to expand into Europe and South America, which proved to be a good decision with the Master System selling more than the NES within those regions. Both companies continued to grow and a few major game titles got released throughout the 80s, such as The Legend of Zelda, Myke Tyson's Punch-Out and Metroid.

The Legend of Zelda Cartridge
(source: mobygames.com)

New Hardware (Console Wars Part 2)
By the end of the 80s Sega finally decided that it was time to release newer and better hardware to attempt to take over the market from Nintendo. They released the Mega Drive in 1988 in Japan and a year later in the United States under the name Genesis. At the same time Nintendo decided to take a step in a different direction and released the first portable gaming console, the Game Boy, in 1989. Both competitors responded to the releases and in 1990 Sega released its own portable gaming console, the Game Gear, while Nintendo released the Super NES (or Super Famicom).

Sega Mega Drive
(source: wikipedia.org)

Super Nintendo Entertainment System
(source: wikipadia.org)

In 1991 Sega started a marketing campaign around their new mascot, Sonic The Hedgehog, which quickly ranked up the sales for the Genesis and made it a true competitor for Nintendo who was not as successful with their Super NES as they were with the NES.

Continuing on their competition and going with advancement of technology, both Sega and Nintendo once again decided to upgrade their gaming consoles a few years later, but they were not alone. After Sega released their new console, the Sega Saturn in 1994, it was quickly joined by Sony, who successfully launched their first gaming console, the PlayStation, which was the result of a failed co-operation between Nintendo and Sony to bring out a CD-based video game system. It was a big hit and Nintendo disappeared for two years before releasing the Nintendo 64 in 1996.

Sega Saturn
(source: wikipedia.org)

Sony PlayStation
(source: wikipedia,org)

Nintendo 64
(source: wikipedia.org)

Both Nintendo and Sony were more successful and Sega began losing market share rapidly in late 1996, which pushed them to release their next and final console in 1998, the Dreamcast, which for the first time enabled online gaming by using a built-in modem, however by the turn of the century both Sony and Nintendo released their next generation consoles, the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, which both also featured online gaming through the help of adapters. Nintendo and Sony managed to outsell Sega, however they were joined by another competitor in 2001 with Microsoft releasing their Xbox, which finally managed to popularise online gaming and set standards for future consoles to come.

Sega Dreamcast
(source: wikipedia.org)

Sony PlayStation 2
(source: wikipedia.org)

Nintendo GameCube
(source: wikipedia.org)

Microsoft Xbox
(source: wikipedia.org)

End of Part 2 (PC and References)
While the console market was increasing in popularity throughout the 90s, at the same time PCs were becoming more and more popular and soon proved to be a competitor to gaming consoles. Many PC games changed the face of video games and inspired future games, for example Populous, which set standards for most strategy games released within the 90s, including Command & Conquer. The Monkey Island series popularized the point-and-click adventure genre and first-person shooters such as Doom, Quake and Half-Life were big hits with many gamers.

In the next part I will round up the history by talking about game consoles of the new century as well as the current generation. Apologies that this post dragged on so much, I will try to keep it shorter next time, but until then: Stay tuned!~

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