WEBVTT - The Video Game Crash of 1983 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:14.720 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:17.640 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.640 It all love all things tech, and you know, back 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:25.280 in two, Chris Pallette, my original co host, and I 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:28.159 did a short episode about the video game crash of 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:31.960 nineteen eighty three. But I think we fell into some 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:33.800 traps that a lot of people fall into when they 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.639 talk about that, and I figured that we could probably 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:40.120 go back to a deeper dive in this episode and 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:45.280 learn about how that all happened. Now, the super short 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:48.800 version of the story is that here in the United States, 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.920 the home video game market went into a recession after 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:57.800 it became oversaturated. It was built on a faulty business model, 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:01.120 really a faulty distribution mode atle which we'll talk about. 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:07.039 Investors lost confidence in the companies involved, and the entire industry, 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:11.880 mostly concentrated in a single company, collapsed under its own weight. Now, 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:15.480 some people given even shorter version, effectively blaming a pair 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:18.960 of Atari cartridges for the whole thing. But as we'll see, 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:24.360 that ends up being a little bit reductive, but seemed 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.040 like it would have been a great year for games. 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:29.640 I mean, if you look at the arcades, Dragons Layer 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.919 and Space Ace, both video games with full hand drawn 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:38.360 animation from Don Bluth stored on laser disc. They made 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:41.479 a big splash that year. This was despite the fact 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:44.000 that player interaction in those games is just limited to 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.400 responding to timed events and pushing on a joystick in 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.680 a particular direction or hitting a button. Um, but you're 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:55.760 not controlling animated characters the entire time. It's literally like, oh, 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:59.000 the screen flash to push left. Uh. The Star Wars 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:01.520 Arcade Machine also came out in nineteen eighty three. That 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:05.800 one had vector color graphics and lines from the movie. 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:08.360 By the way, that game remains one of my favorite 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:12.960 arcade games of all time. Likewise, Spy Hunter another game 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:15.640 that I consider a top arcade game of all time. 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:17.840 That one came out in nineteen eighty three. That's the 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:20.600 game where you control a car. You have an overhead 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.200 view you're controlling of cars that goes down the highway 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.160 and the car's got like all these spy gadgets kidded 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.880 out into it, or it can get them by you know, 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:33.680 docking with a a U a semitruck that's also on 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:37.080 the road and you have to shoot bad guys and stuff. 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:39.800 Super cool game. And a lot of other big titles 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:42.800 came out that year, like Discs of Tron, Elevator Action, 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.440 Junior pac Man, and Crawl. Okay, so that last one 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:49.880 wasn't exactly a class arcade game, but it was an 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.040 arcade die in with a science fiction fantasy film that 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:56.600 I've got a soft spot for. All Right, So we 0:02:56.680 --> 0:03:00.480 can't just jump into nine or even nineteen eighty and 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:03.000 expect to have a full understanding of what led to 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:07.320 the industry crash. We really need to understand how this 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.600 all got started in the first place. So we're gonna 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:14.240 do a quick overview of the birth and evolution of 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:18.240 video games, both for home consoles and for the arcades, 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:22.360 because they are tied together somewhat um And also, arcades 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.320 were a thing too once upon a time, just in 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:27.160 case you weren't aware. I mean, there are some arcades 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.720 still in existence, particularly outside the United States, and you've 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:33.600 got your stuff like David Busters and whatever, but it's 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:38.720 not like the old days insert old time and music here. Now. 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:43.400 Before even the old days, there was a physicist named 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:47.640 William Higginbotham uh, and this cat was an interesting fellow. 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:50.560 For one thing, he was a scientist at the Los 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.880 Alamos National Laboratory during World War Two and was part 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:58.480 of the group that developed the atomic bomb. He worked 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.040 on the electronic side of things, you know, rather than 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.680 the stuff what goes boom side of things. But of 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.240 course all these groups were working together with a common 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:10.640 goal in mind. Anyway, he was part of the team 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:14.280 that brought upon us the era of nuclear weapons. He 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.000 also campaigned hard for the world to you know, not 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:20.560 go ham on nuclear weapons and build them all over 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:24.160 the place. Also, I should point out that it's not 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:26.360 like the United States was the only country working toward 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:29.040 nuclear weapons. And I don't mean to suggest that if 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:32.279 the US hadn't developed the atomic bomb, no one else 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:35.640 would have done it. Uh, that surely would have happened. 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:38.640 It's just that's how history played out, all right. So 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:40.880 let's get back to the video games, though. So Hagin 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:44.320 Botham goes to work for the brook Haveven National Laboratory 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:48.279 after the war, and he worked in a department called Instrumentation, 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:52.279 and this department built various cathode ray tube or CRT 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:57.000 displays intended for radar systems. Well, in ninete fifty eight, 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.000 he's told he's gonna create an exhibit to show off 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.680 to people whenever they're touring the lab. And he's like, 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:07.400 we use systems to display stuff on screens. It's not 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.160 very exciting. I mean, it's radar systems, and unless you've 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:12.200 got something to pick up, it's you're just looking at 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:14.679 a screen. So he gets an idea. See, the team 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:19.080 was using oscilloscopes, and oscilloscopes are used to display wave 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:23.040 forms of various signals. So when a scilloscope can show 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:27.320 stuff like a signal's frequency and amplitude, among other things, 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:32.240 and most importantly for this podcast, it can plot curved lines. 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:37.200 And when paired with an analog computer that Higginbotham's department had, 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:40.280 it gave the physicist a chance to design a very 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:45.960 simple tennis game. A technician named Robert Davorak took Higginbotham's 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.560 plans and built the exhibit, and Higginbotham called it Tennis 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:54.520 for two. This was in nineteen fifty eight. That's more 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:57.760 than a decade before we'd see a refined version of 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.720 this called Pong. But the game was different from pong 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.400 in other ways, as well, so pong uses a top 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:09.040 down view. For the table tennis game, players take control 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.839 of bars that act kind of like paddles or rackets. 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.680 Typically they're taking control on the left and right sides 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.039 of the screen, and it's like you're looking down on 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:21.719 top of a of a table tennis board and you 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.799 you move these these bars, these paddles up and down 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:27.400 the screen on your side in order to hit a 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:30.680 ball back and forth. When the ball encounters either the 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:32.800 top or bottom edge of the screen, it bounces off 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.200 and heads towards you know, whichever direction it was going. 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.080 But Tennis for two only had two lines in It 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:41.520 had a line along the bottom of the screen which 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.600 represented the ground, and halfway across the length of this 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:49.960 line was a short vertical line extending up, so this 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:52.760 represented the net. So it's like you're looking at a 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:57.080 tennis court in profile. Players had a dial which allowed 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.440 them to set the angle of the ball, and then 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.039 a butt and you would push the button when the 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:04.240 ball entered your side of the court, and you would 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:07.080 use the dial to set the angle of your strike. 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:09.960 There were no paddles or anything like that on the screen. 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:13.720 Higginbotham didn't really do anything else with this idea. It 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:16.720 was just kind of to demonstrate the technology, and even 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:18.720 though it got a lot of attention, he didn't really 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.440 see any application for it beyond that. Now you could 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.720 argue this was the first video game, but it was 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.600 never a commercial product. But flash forward to the nineteen sixties. 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:32.080 An engineer named Ralph Bear was working for a company 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:36.120 called Sanders Associates, Incorporated. He was exploring how the company 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:40.120 might make a companion technology for the television, which had 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.120 proven to be quite popular by the nineteen sixties. So 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:45.320 the idea was that most folks already had a TV, 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.240 and so creating something that could expand the capabilities of 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:52.840 a TV would tap into a pre existing market, a 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.600 market that already was proven to have spent money on 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.880 a appliance as expensive as a television. So there and 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:05.240 two bills, Bill Rush and Bill Harrison began developing a 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:07.640 box you could connect to a television that would allow 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:10.720 you to play games on the TV. And the engineers 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:14.120 built a few prototypes, and we typically referred to them 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.080 as the brown boxes because they were covered in a 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.120 veneer that made them look like they were made out 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:22.480 of wood. They created a version of table tennis that 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.440 used controllers with three knobs and a button on them. 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:30.520 The knobs or dials controlled the paddles and the ball 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:33.560 itself in fact, so one dial was to control the 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:38.240 horizontal movement of a paddle. And remember this is a 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:40.800 table tennis that you're looking at either the left side 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:43.320 or the right side of the screen, So by controlling 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.200 your horizontal movement, you can move closer to or further 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:49.760 away from the net in the center or the center line. 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.160 And then the second dial controlled the vertical movement of 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:55.040 the paddle, so that lets you move up and down 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:57.280 in order to intercept the ball before it would pass 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.320 you and go beyond your side. And then the third 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:02.960 dial would actually control the movement of the ball itself, 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.959 so once your paddle had hit the ball, you could 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:09.440 use this third dial to put quote unquote English on 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.760 the ball after you'd already hit it. So not really realistic, 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:14.920 but you can control the path of the ball by 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:16.600 turning this dial, so you can make it go up 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:18.720 or down, or you can make it go up and 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:21.120 down really fast as you're heading towards the other side, 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.240 in an effort to make sure your opponent can't hit it. 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:27.680 So you could actually skew the direction of the ball 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.599 as it left your paddle. If your opponent managed to 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:32.200 hit the ball well, then you would no longer be 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.960 able to control its movement. You wouldn't want to anyway, 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.520 because you would be, you know, focusing too much on 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:39.600 trying to make sure you move your paddle in the 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:44.559 right spot to intercept the returning ball. So Sanders Associates 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:47.520 filed a patent on this design and got it, and 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.240 they looked for buyers, and a company called Magnavox, that's 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:53.760 a company I should cover in depth at some point 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:58.520 licensed this design in nine and began working on a 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:02.240 consumer version of the prototype technology. And this would become 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:07.840 the first Magnavox Odyssey console, which essentially played table tennis 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:11.160 without being able to keep score. That you had to 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.959 keep score, you know, on your own. Uh. The Magnavox 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:19.000 Odyssey came out in September nineteen seventy two. The console 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:23.040 could accept game cards. These were printed circuit boards that 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.760 were kind of like a proto cartridge. UH. The cards 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:30.000 modified how the console would send signals to a television 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.840 and how it would interpret inputs, which gave the players 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:36.800 a few different game types that were all mostly based 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:40.959 off of table tennis. Magnavox even created the first video 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:43.840 game console peripheral. For an extra charge, you could buy 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:46.840 a light gun that you could use with some basic 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:50.800 shooting games. Again, um, just like you know, they would 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.440 display a white square in your TV and you would 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:55.720 aim the light gun to it, pull the trigger, and 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.880 if it had detected that the white square was in 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.280 the sight of the gun, then it counted as a hit. Well, 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:05.920 the Odyssey would enjoy some modest success. Some would say 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:08.760 it was actually a failure. It would eventually sell around 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:11.760 three units when all of a sudden done, but early 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:14.880 on it wasn't making that much of an impact, except 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:17.800 it would have a huge impact on the history of 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:21.320 video games, just not necessarily on the consumer market right 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:24.640 off the go, because one person who saw the Magnavox 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:28.680 Odyssey and Action was Nolan Bushnell. Now Bushnell and his 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:32.920 partner Ted Dabney had created the first arcade video game 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:37.000 in nine under a company that was called Scissor G. 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:41.600 And this arcade game was called Computer Space, And in turn, 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:44.400 this was based off a game that had been created 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:46.600 by folks at M I T way back in nineteen 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:51.440 sixty two. Called Space War. Now I emphasized that title 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:55.520 because the actual title has an exclamation point after the 0:11:55.559 --> 0:12:01.360 word space War. Anyway, computer Space was largely an adaptation 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:04.679 of Space War, and it would become the first commercial 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:09.559 arcade game, but it wasn't particularly successful. However, Bushnell thought 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:12.000 there's gonna be a big business in video games, and 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:14.440 so he was convinced that they needed to stick with 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:18.240 this kind of this market. So he goes off and 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:21.600 then found the company Atari, specifically with the goal of 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:26.040 creating games that the company would then license to manufacturers. 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:29.360 So the original idea was that Atari would create the 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:33.640 i P and would program a game, but then effectively 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:38.040 sell that design to some established gaming company like Bally 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:44.040 or Williams. Bushnell hired on an engineer named Alan Alcorn. Now, 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.640 the video game world is really young at this point, 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:50.480 like pretty much the only people who have made any 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.920 games were engineers and programmers who are really just trying 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:57.360 to create fun ways to misuse company or research lab 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:01.600 or university property. Like, they weren't games for the general public. 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.040 They were typically making games for themselves and for the 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.960 folks who worked closely with them. And Alcorn had no 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.679 experience in creating games. So Bushnell decided to give him 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:16.000 the assignment of making a table tennis game similar to 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:20.160 the Magnavox Odyssey home console game, but this time in 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:23.680 arcade format, so not a home console, but like an 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:26.840 arcade cabinet that you would encounter in a place like 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.439 a theater or a bar, because this isn't the time 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:34.959 before arcades themselves, so this was kind of like a 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:39.720 programming exercise for Alcorn. So Alcorn pretty much reinvents the 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.720 table tennis game we saw with the Magnavox Odyssey, which 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:45.920 again Bushnell had actually had a chance to see in 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:50.800 person before it was released, and Uh and Pong would 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:54.600 be the result of this. He created an interesting variation 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:58.600 on this table tennis game. For one thing, it could 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:01.600 keep score so you didn't have remember it. For another, 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:04.400 he went so far as to program the little bars 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.840 that act like your paddles or your your rackets. They 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:14.680 actually have computationally different angled surfaces along the front of 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:18.080 the bar. So that's just mathematics at this point. So 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:21.000 by that, I mean if you were to look at them, 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.240 they would be rectangular, right they don't. They wouldn't look angular. 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:29.040 They're just the rectangles but mathematically there are different sections 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:32.320 of the bar that act like a slightly different angle 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.960 of attack of a paddle. So if you hit the 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:41.200 ball smack dab in the middle of your um, your 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:45.320 your paddle, you would have a pretty simple deflection. If 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:46.760 it was coming straight at you and you hit it 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:50.440 right dead in the center, it would go straight back um. 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:51.960 If it was coming at an angle, then it would 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:55.080 bounce off at a ninety degree angle deflection. But if 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.920 it hit other parts of the bar, like toward the end, 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.960 they would have a more severe deflection, a sharper angle. 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:05.920 So where you hit the ball with your paddle would 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.400 change the way the ball flew back towards your opponent. 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.240 It was neat that he was able to mathematically do 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:17.120 this anyway. Atari would choose to manufacture pong itself rather 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:19.400 than license it to some other company. There's this whole 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:23.520 story about how Atari had approached a couple of different 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:27.880 companies about the possibility of making pong and then told 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:30.080 each of the companies, Hey, it turns out the other 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:33.440 guys aren't interested in making this for us, which then 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:37.160 discouraged the company. So they backed out that that was 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:39.520 Atri's plan because they wanted to make it themselves, but 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:41.880 they first had to get out of this commitment that 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:43.920 they were going to make it for some other company. 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:46.280 So they did that. They went out and they got 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:49.560 a line of credit in order to produce this. Because 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:51.480 Atari was still a very young company, didn't have a 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:55.280 lot of money, and manufacturing an arcade machine is expensive. 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:57.520 You have to go through the whole manufacturing process, so 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:00.720 this was a big risk, but it paid off. Pong 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:04.400 would become the first commercially successful arcade game. It would 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:09.720 also prompt Magnavox to sue Atari for patent infringement, saying, hey, 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:13.200 we paid for this patent and you clearly have copied it, 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:18.960 so what's up with that. This lawsuit would eventually get 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:22.760 settled out of court. Now, Atari would subsequently make its 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:27.080 own table tennis video game console, which it called, fittingly enough, 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:32.440 Home Pong. They released that console in the original Odyssey 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:34.320 had been on the market for a few years at 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.200 that point, and Atari would sell around a hundred fifties 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:41.920 thousand units all told, so, you know, still not a 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.000 huge number in the grand scheme of things. Now, Pong 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.200 the arcade game was wildly successful, and you can kind 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:50.320 of understand why I mean, the game is simple, so 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.200 it's really easy to understand how to play, unlike say 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:57.840 Computer Space, which was notoriously complicated. It only costs to 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:03.000 play Pong for a session, whereas home consoles were upwards 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.040 of a hundred dollars, and when we adjust for inflation, 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:09.160 that's around the same as six hundred twenty bucks today. 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:14.280 So while the home consoles were moving okay, the arcade 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.119 was doing a little bit better. Between nineteen seventy two 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:19.680 and nineteen seventy seven, pretty much all the video game 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:23.399 home consoles were focused mainly on table tennis, are games 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:27.440 that were very slight variations on table tennis, So in 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:31.520 other words, everything was Pong pretty much like it may 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:33.920 not be called Pong because that was an Atari thing, 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.440 but they were all essentially Pong. So there were numerous 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.919 copycats out there, and there was a massive oversaturation of 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:44.760 first generation consoles, and they pretty much all played Pong 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.760 or some variation of that, and by nineteen seventy seven 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:50.639 that had all played out. Dozens of companies that had 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:52.959 jumped into the market in an effort to cash in 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.800 on what was seen as a craze found themselves over 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.880 extended and many of them would go out of business, 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:00.760 and it was a tough sell. I mean, a lot 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:04.240 of folks who were interested in video table tennis had 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.800 already bought a console, and since all the consoles offered 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.680 more or less what wasn't a largely identical experience, there 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:13.800 wasn't much reason to go out and buy another one. Right, 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:16.440 you already have a Pong machine. You don't need another one, 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.159 So why would you shell out a hundred dollars or 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.600 more to buy something that you essentially already have. So 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:26.959 the arcade game business wasn't in much better shape at 0:18:27.000 --> 0:18:29.520 this point. While Pong had been a high point in 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:33.480 the arcade industry, there was a real lag and innovation 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:37.840 in the arcade space, and so the whole industry, consoles 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:39.879 and arcade went into a bit of a recession. In 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:44.080 by in the night a game would come out that 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:47.320 would breathe new life into the arcade industry and later 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.800 on into the home video game market. We'll find out 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:53.720 which game that was when we come back from this 0:18:53.920 --> 0:19:06.000 short break. Okay. So there was this early glut of 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.000 table tennis based video game consoles in the early to 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.960 mid seventies, and that market ultimately collapsed By the time 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:15.440 the dust had cleared, only a few companies were still 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:18.560 in that market. Atari was one of them. Atari had 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:22.119 continued making arcade machines as well as some consoles and 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:25.639 handheld devices as well. You probably wouldn't be surprised to 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:27.639 learn that a lot of those still remained kind of 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:31.080 Pong inspired, because that game had been such a big 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:33.560 success for Atari. It was something that the company was 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.760 leaning on. Some of the other titles that were uh 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.080 the Atari was producing we're racing game titles. They had 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:42.119 a couple of military games, like some games where you 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:45.560 would control a tank or a jet fighter game. Also, 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.600 in nineteen seventy six, Bushnell made a deal to sell 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.520 Atari to Warner Communications, and he stayed on for a 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:56.879 short while anyway, to continue to lead Atari. But lots 0:19:56.920 --> 0:19:59.240 of other companies that tried to cash in on the 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:02.679 video tape old tennis trend. We're not so fortunate. And 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.359 once the market was saturated, you know, once pretty much 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:06.960 all the folks who one of one of these things 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.840 had one, there was nowhere to go. Plus, the second 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:12.479 generation of consoles were beginning to come out, and that 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.320 was the real nail in the coffin, and a big 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:20.119 change with these consoles is that these were predominantly cartridge based. 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:25.200 So instead of hardwiring games into the console itself, where 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:28.359 the console is limited to which every games were programmed 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:32.720 onto the the actual circuit boards of the console. Programmers 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:36.000 were designing games that a company would print onto a 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.880 circuit board that was housed inside a cartridge. You would 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.639 plug the cartridge into a console and the console could 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:45.280 run the game. So this was kind of like if 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.280 you were actually physically switching out part of a circuit 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.120 board in the console every time you were playing a game. 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:53.760 That's effectively what you were doing. The games were all 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:58.000 written in ROM format. ROM stands for read only memory. 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:01.680 That means that a machine can only pull from the 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:05.600 data that's stored on that cartridge. It cannot change or 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:09.520 overwrite that data. RAM memory is non volatile, meaning the 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:11.879 game would always exist on that cartridge unless you were 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:15.159 to actually physically damage the cartridge itself. It's it is 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:20.720 a physical program on a circuit board. Now, this switch 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.760 to cartridges allowed companies to make consoles that could run 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:26.639 any number of games. You just had to program it 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:30.119 onto a ROM and have that housed in a cartridge 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:32.639 and have it be compatible with the machine. Then you 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:35.240 were off to the races. And in the beginning, each 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:38.720 company making a console had its own game titles, like 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:41.520 they were producing their own games. So a few of 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:43.680 the big consoles to come out around that time, where 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:46.600 the Callika Vision it was actually one of the later ones, 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:51.359 Mattel's in television, the Magnavox Odyssey to which was a 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:55.439 cartridge based game console, and of course the giant in 0:21:55.480 --> 0:22:00.960 the space, the Atari Video Computer System or VCS, better 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:04.000 known to me at least as the Atari twenty hundred. 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.920 Now there were other consoles as well. Um. In fact, 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:11.040 sometimes people cite that as one of the reasons for 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:13.920 the video game crash, as we'll learn not so much. 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:18.120 And really these four consoles were the most popular by far, 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:22.560 and the Attori twenty hundred commanded the overwhelming share of 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:26.760 the market. Um depending upon which source you look at, 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:30.479 Atari would ultimately sell between twenty five million and thirty 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:37.000 million at twenty units. So that's a lot, especially when 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:40.800 you look at second place in television, which depending upon 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:43.760 which source you're looking at, sold between two and three 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:47.520 million units, so twenty to thirty million units for they 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.639 two to three million for second place, which was in television. 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:57.160 Atari was the home video game market in in many 0:22:57.240 --> 0:22:59.560 respects Now, I should also add that the Atari twenty 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:02.119 six it came out a year before The Odyssey to, 0:23:02.720 --> 0:23:06.199 two years before in television, and five years before the 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:08.800 Collique of Vision, so it really had a head start 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:11.600