But the golden age was destined to be a very short one. Walter Day told writer Tristan Donovan, author of the book Replay: The History of Video Games, that the industry was "off the rails by" 1981, opening more arcades and ordering more machines than its players could ever support. By early 1982, cracks were already starting to show in the newly flourishing industry: that $400 a day machine, Time Magazine reported, was often "sucker bait, dangled to obscure the dreary truths that markets are becoming saturated and that dud games... bring in no money at all."
posted by Horace Rumpole
on Jan 16, 2013 -
42 comments
The Inside Story Of Pong - On Nov. 29, 1972, a crude table-tennis arcade game in a garish orange cabinet was delivered to bars and pizza parlors around California, and a multi-billion-dollar industry was born. Here's how that happened, direct from the freaks and geeks who invented a culture and paved the way for today's tech moguls.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Nov 30, 2012 -
18 comments
Atari, the first successful arcade video game company, would have been 40 years old today. The blog Arcade Heroes takes the opportunity to look back over 40 years of arcade gaming (from Atari and other companies) with flyers and video.
Part 1 (1970s & 80s) -
Part 2 (1990s to present).
(WARNING: huge pages ahead with lots of flash videos.)
posted by JHarris
on Jun 28, 2012 -
24 comments
Behold the gAtari 2600. An Australian musician performing under the pseudonym cTrix specializes in creating chiptunes using a combination of games consoles from 1977 - 1992, including a Commodore 64, Amiga 500, a clear-cased Gameboy, and an Atari 2600. The latter is possibly the most striking setup, incorporating the Atari (running custom-written sequencing software) into an oversized guitar body, with a fretboard packed with Boss stompboxes and a great pun as a name — gAtari.
posted by KevinSkomsvold
on Dec 31, 2011 -
40 comments
What do you mean you don't remember Olegco Gaming? They were like the best developer for the Atari! They had classics, like Cool Beens, and Ghost Garden Man. Don't tell me you never played Baron of the SkeleBone Zone! Well, you take a look at all of their games
on their archive site. Now try to be a little more knowledgeable before we talk about video games again... thanks.
posted by codacorolla
on Mar 14, 2011 -
18 comments
Trash cans, landfills, and incinerators. Erasure, deletion, and obsolescence. These words could describe what has happened to the various building blocks of the video game industry in countries around the world. These building blocks consist of video game source code, the actual computer hardware used to create a particular video game, level layout diagrams, character designs, production documents, marketing material, and more.
These are just some elements of game creation that are gone -- never to be seen again. These elements make up the home console, handheld, PC and arcade games we've played. The only remnant of a particular game may be its name, or its final published version, since the possibility exists that no other physical copy of its creation remains.
As a community of video game developers, publishers, and players, we must begin asking ourselves some difficult but inevitable questions. Some believe there is no point in preserving a video game, arguing that games are short-term entertainment, while others disagree with this statement entirely, believing the industry is in a preservation crisis.
Where Games Go To Sleep: The Game Preservation Crisis [more inside]
posted by timshel
on Feb 9, 2011 -
44 comments
TheSmartAss.info's suite of Java emulators allows smooth, in-browser playback of literally
thousands of old-school video games:
517 Atari titles,
148 for DOS,
636 Game Boy games (and
410 for Game Boy Color),
2,019 (!) NES titles,
238 GameGear games,
802 Sega Genesis titles, and
284 for the Sega Master System. Highlights include
Space Invaders,
Frogger,
Galaga,
Pitfall!,
Super Mario Bros.,
The Legend of Zelda,
Metroid,
SimCity,
Zero Wing,
Duke Nukem,
Sonic the Hedgehog,
Aladdin,
Earthworm Jim,
Pokemon, and
Metal Gear Solid. Use
the search function to find your favorites! You can also register an account to save games on emulators that support it. Make sure to check the purple bar below each game for control info and links to alternate emulators in case the default one is buggy or slow.
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 30, 2009 -
54 comments
The newly launched Atari.com includes the
Atari Arcade, wherein you may play Adventure, Asteroids, Battlezone, Crystal Castles, Lunar Lander and Yars' Revenge in your browser.
posted by jbickers
on Nov 23, 2009 -
37 comments
(NSFW)
The Angry Video Game Nerd (taking a cue from seanbaby's
lead) has been producing video reviews of some of the most notoriously awful NES games, from
Top Gun to
Bible Games. (Can't miss:
The Power Glove.) Not content to go after one system, he's upgraded his range to take on other colossal failures like the
Atari Jaguar,
Superman 64, and
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (the movie). His newest series of videos,
You Know What's Bullshit?, takes on everyday nuances like
DVD box sets. He may be vulgar and his vignettes silly, but damn straight he's got a
point. Enjoy all his archived videos
here, spanning five years of obscenity-laced love/hate for his greatest passions.
posted by Christ, what an asshole
on Jun 23, 2009 -
18 comments
"So I hit up a garage sale over the weekend and bought a genuine, working-condition Atari 2600, with a huge stack of games nearly mint in their boxes, for a song. I thought I’d scan the box covers and give you all
a look back into the fun of yesteryear."
posted by sveskemus
on Apr 21, 2008 -
74 comments
Steem is an
Atari ST emulator for Windows and Linux that is very simple and user-friendly. More details on installing are in a helpful
beginner's guide, but you're probably most interested in the
games, of which there are lots [more inside].
posted by greycap
on Apr 1, 2007 -
22 comments
