Task 3: A history of computer games, part two: 1980s - 1990s

The start of the 1980’s, saw the push of consoles and simple computers into the houses of many families. The Atari 2600 was the first major games console released, it boasted an array of games that would lead the way for all modern classics, games like ‘Pitfall!’ ‘Pac-Man’ and ‘Adventure’. ‘E.T the Extra-Terrestrial’ game was also released for this console, we will be coming back to this game later. The Atari had at the time amazing 8 bit processors and an astounding 128 or 104-colour pallet depending if you used NTSC or PAL.

In 1980 The Intellivision was brought to the market by Mattel. Over 3 million Intellivision units were sold and a total of 125 games were released for the console. Third party developers that used to work solely on the Atari games such as Activision and Imagic started to release games for the Intellivision also.

Another home console to dominate in the second generation of consoles was the ColecoVision which was released in August 1982. The Coleco was (in my opinion) a rip off merchant it was tiny arcade machine and stole games from the Atari. The Coleco wasn’t known for its originality in creating new games. Here are some of the arcade games that it played: ‘Donkey Kong’, ‘Donkey Kong Junior’, ‘Carnival’, ‘Mouse Trap’.
The Coleco had expansion modules which were hardware add-ons, the first made it compatible with the Atari. This meant that the Coleco had the biggest library of games on any console for its time.

Activision was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games. Activision was started by programmers that used to work for Atari they quit their jobs because they didn’t receive any bonuses for games that sold well, and did not receive credit for their games. Activision released Pitfall! In 1982, this is considered by many to be the first platform game. Activision later changed their name to Mediagenic because they started to create software other than games. This is one of the biggest mistakes they could have made as they lost the reputation they had gained under their previous name. Mediagenic went bankrupt but managed to find investors and in 1992 Mediagenic changed its name back to Activision and again focused on their core business of computer games and not software development.

‘Battlezone’ the first 3D game with a wireframe view by using vector graphics was created in 1980 by Atari. Three people worked on this arcade game Ed Rotberg (main designer), Owen Rubin (exploding volcano) and Roger Hector (tank & enemy graphics).

At the end of 1983, the industry experienced losses more severe than the 1977 crash. This happened due to lack off sales in companies that were selling both home computers and video consoles. Also poorly made games like ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game)’ to give it its full title were released. This game was made in six weeks due to Steven Spielberg wanting a Christmas release (the normal production time for an Atari game was 3 -4 months). Spielberg also wanted 5,000,000 copies of the game to be made when at that time an average game would have sold 300,000 copies.

1983 to 1995 saw the Third generation of consoles appearing. Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) which was bundled with ‘Super Mario Bros’ which was a very smart move because Mario is now one of the most known IPs in the world. The NES was the leader of the pack and other consoles followed it by getting rid of joysticks, paddles and keypads and introducing the game controller. The game controller had a directional pad and normally more than two buttons. This was a massive change to the gaming world  so new IPs had were created to fully use the new controllers.

‘The Legend of Zelda’ series made its debut in 1986, ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘Metal Gear’ were also introduced to the NES.

In 1991 ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ was created and gave the Sega Mega Drive a huge boost in sales and popularity which would rival the NES and Mario. ‘Sonic the hedgehog’ became the mascot of Sega and one of the most recognizable video game characters. It could be argued that the characters became better known than the consoles they were created for.

3dfx Interactive released the Voodoo chipset in 1996, this lead to the first affordable 3D accelerator cards for personal computers. This allowed games like ‘Quake’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto III’ to be played in third person view, a whole new experience for computer gamers. This was the beginning of the explosion of new titles and consoles that appeared in the next decade.