
Originally Posted by
GayGeek
Those of you in your thirties and forties may remember the great Atari 2600 crash of 1982. Although you have probably never heard that term, I'll bet that you remember the game machine being all sorts of fun when it was released.
The Atari 2600 caused a massive crazy and the rise of several game reknown companies such as Activision. But as time went on though more and more companies started dumping progressively more cheaply made game cartridges on the market. This had the effect of causing prices to plummet until everyone, even non-game companies wanted a piece of the action by dumping crap product on the market.
This caused waves of problems for the better game companies. Their sales plummeted resulting in less good games being developed. Game players started buying less games because most of what existed was crap. And eventually everything that wouldn't sell, good and bad, was getting tossed in $10 bargain bins.
In 1982 the market hit an all-time low with the release of Kool-Aid Man (yes, this was a real game). Users hung up their Atari 2600's and switched to other platforms like Intellivision and Colecovision. Not everyone, of course, but many did. Other kids decided to go play outside instead. The Atari 2600 had lost its once-massive appeal.
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