This crisis, which occurred between 1983 and 1985, is the first crisis in the video game industry. There are several factors and speculations in the emergence of this crisis. During this period, there was no quality control system and game companies were producing poor quality games. Game sales dropped when users lost confidence in these poor quality games.
Although competition was high, game companies produced a large number of games to meet the demand. However, when these games were not sold, stocks accumulated and many game companies were in a difficult situation. Revenues fell nearly 97% from $3.2 billion to $100 million, and many gaming companies went bankrupt.
The world’s worst game developed by Atari: ET
Atari was one of the leading video game companies of that era. Company; By purchasing the rights to ET the Extra-Terrestrial, the iconic movie directed by Steven Spielberg, which broke box office records and won four Oscars, it decided to bring this popular story to the video game world.
This project, which started with high excitement, came with the desire to have the game ready for Christmas. Executives believed the game would fail if it could not be produced by New Year’s Eve.
The team under this pressure had to develop the game in just 5 weeks. However, only 1.5 million of the 4 million ET cassettes produced by Atari were sold. The ET game did not achieve the expected success and faced many complaints from users.
Many of the players wanted to return their games. Analysts at the time expressed concerns about the long-term sustainability of console games and software. Newspapers started writing articles about the gaming industry being a bubble.
As a result, millions of tapes were returned. Because of this, stocks accumulated. Because there were so many refunds in the game, Atari buried these games in empty land in New Mexico. Atari company lost great reputation after these events.
So were Atari and ET really the cause of the video game crisis of 1983?
This game was seen as the main cause of the video game crisis of 1983. ET was a bad game, but it didn’t destroy Atari. The reason for Atari’s collapse was that it had released exactly 10 million more Atari 2600s to the now saturated market.
In 1985, the video game crisis improved thanks to the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System NES. However, the games that were buried still remained in our minds.
Filmmakers excavated the landfill where ET game tapes were presumed to be to make a documentary. The excavation took approximately several months and was completed on April 26, 2014. 1,300 of the 728,000 buried votes were found.
This is a region that witnessed very interesting historical events. It is very close to the area where the atomic bomb was first tested, and the grave of Ham, the first chimpanzee to go into space, is also located here.
So, how to play the ET game?
The main purpose of the game is; The aim was to find three phone parts in space, then call their alien friends and return home. Players start the game with 9,999 moves. This number decreases with each move.
In the game, the character can jump and fly; It can also move fast. At the beginning, they drop the character off in a spacecraft and the player tries to find phone parts.
It is also possible to defeat the surrounding enemies by running away or jumping on them and dragging them to the ground. The character may fall into a pit at some points and must fly to get back out.
The player may sometimes fall back because he returns to the same point; This is another one of the annoying situations in the game. In addition, it is also possible to die when you fall into a pit in the game.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary last year, Atari has become the symbol of the 1983 video game crisis, but has managed to make a name for itself with many successful games to date.
These pioneering games such as Pong, Breakout, Pac-Man; It has been the inspiration for countless games on the market.
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