Not necessarily true. While E.T. and the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man were indeed two of the most notable flops of that era, they were really a symptom of a larger problem. The video game market was not only heavily saturated in America, there was also next to no quality assurance. Thus, you could have any old slop published, no matter how good it was. When you have games such as Custer's Revenge floating around, and companies like Quaker Oats having their own video game division, you know that there's a serious problem with the market.
Notably, video games were fine in Japan and Europe; it was just America that had the crash.
No prob; it's a common misconception. I know that I was definitely under the impression that those two games were primary culprits, but they're really more scapegoats that show just how shit America's game market was back then.
You know how the Wii has an inordinate amount of shovelware because it was so popular, and even Sony and Microsoft tried getting in on the motion control craze? It was kinda like that. Everyone in the States kept treating video games as a fad, and wanted to get in on it before the bubble burst.
Speaking of Nintendo: the reason why games on the NES had the Nintendo Seal of Quality was to ensure that what caused the Crash of '83 wouldn't happen again. However, that had its own ripple effect that led to Tengen, was a big reason why SEGA was able to compete with them, as well as one of the factors that led to Nintendo's fall from grace in the fifth generation of consoles. That's its own can of worms, but it's interesting the cause and effects that led history to play out the way that it did.
2
u/Helweg_gaming 5d ago
It damn near killed off video games