Go Home: The History of Video Games Two

The history of video games thus far can be neatly divided into three eras: the Arcade Era, which was covered in part one of this series, spanned the rise of video gaming up from the primordial, pixilated ooze. Second was the Console Era, when gamers finally gained the opportunity to play lame, half-assed knockoffs of their arcade favorites at home, for the quarter-saving initial outlay of several hundred dollars. But it did mean less time spent developing cancer in the smoke-filled game room of the local bowling alley, so progress was progress. Thirdly came the No-Arcade Era, after home consoles got so good that there was no reason to go to the arcade any more, unless you were too broke to buy Camels and needed a fix of second-hand smoke, or you wanted to play that life-sized Stuck In Traffic driving game.

But forget about that third era for now, you'll just get confused since this column is all about the second one, the rise of the consoles. From the first, shitastic home Pong in 1972, through the Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision and Chevy's little-known and ill-fated foray into the gaming business, Impallavision, home consoles have sprouted hair on the nads of an entire generation.

The very first home video game console was Magnavox's Odyssey in 1972, an impressive bit of engineering done in by the fact that they never made any games for it. This oversight on Maganvox's part quickly became apparent in 1973, when home gamers grew bored of playing with the console's menu screen and realized there were no games in this game console. Magnavox attempted to re-release the Odyssey as simply a "console" in 1974, hoping to profit on mystery alone, but this tactic soon proved as futile as their attempts a year earlier to convince gamers that the Odyssey was actually full of fun games, but that finding them was the most challenging game of all.

The Odyssey was soon superseded by Coleco's Telstar in 1976, a big oval box that put out more radiation than a Russian microwave. Coleco originally started out as the Connecticut Leather Company (I shit you not), which over the years had made leather craft kits for shoe makers and, just for the hell of it, plastic kiddie pools. Their experience with kiddie pools made them a natural to enter the highly competitive world of complex consumer electronics, but unfortunately a complete lack of engineering know-how left Coleco with a product more deadly than Hasbro's ill-fated "Exploding Porcupine" doll in the mid-70's. Coleco made one last stab at saving the Telstar with their "It glows in the dark!" ad campaign in 1977, but after a while the mounting death toll began to hurt the company's bottom line.

In spite of never having put out a home console, Atari was dominating the home console market by the mid-70's due in large part to the criminal ineptitude of their competitors. The company was started by a couple of computer science drop-outs, Noel Bushnell and Cole Dabney, who had both been kicked out of college for refusing to toe the party line about things like not making grilled cheese sandwiches on hot motherboards or obeying programming language syntax. Though they originally wanted to name their company Syzygy, for the sound a keyboard makes when you sit on it, that name was already being used by an Indiana roofing company. So the two had to settle for Atari, a Japanese chess term meaning "Eat shit and lose."

After the success of their initial run of arcade games, Atari decided to take the next logical step by opening a chain of restaurants featuring singing robot animals in 1977. Pizza Time Theater and its mascot, a terrifying man-sized rat named Chuck E. Cheese, was an instant success. But once he saw his vision in action, Bushnell, who'd thought of the concept while getting stoned at Disneyland the year before, was scared straight and immediately steered Atari's course toward the home console market.

Atari released the 2600 later that year, which was quickly followed by Bally's copycat console, the Bally Professional Arcade. Though Bally would not answer questions about who exactly these video gaming professionals were that the console was being marketed to, the system was a minor hit due to the workout provided by kids moving the unreasonably heavy console from TV to TV whenever they wanted to play the console's only game, Meathead.

Again boosted by the ineptitudes of their competitors, Atari made another bold move in 1978, releasing the Atari 400 to compete with Apple's line of home computers. Consumers, however, prefered the way Apple's computers went "boop" and did nothing useful, and Atari quickly withdrew from the shitty computer market. Magnavox would also briefly try to dethrone Apple with their Odyssey 2 home computer, which quickly failed due to a complete lack of software.

Sales of Atari's 2600 skyrocketed in 1980 with the release of the system's first game, Space Invaders. Finally finding the key to home console success through the synergistic combination of system hardware and games, Atari was quickly aped by toymaker Mattel with the release of the Intellivision later that year. Realizing Mattel's console wasn't selling well due to its association with intelligence, Coleco named their new console Colecovision in 1982 and cleaned up, in spite of the system's bizarre controllers that looked like some kind of garage door opener from hell.

Later that year, a Chicago man would drop dead of a heart attack while playing Atari's Berserk, sending video game sales through the roof.

That event was to be Atari's last hurrah for some time, however, since at around the same time Atari released their home port of Pac-Man for their 2600 console, in a version so stupefyingly shitty as to cause the infamous video game crash of 1982.

From late 1982 through 1985 the home video game market went down in heinous flames, due to the dozens of different consoles being released almost daily by anyone with a soldering kit and a bad idea. Consumers eventually grew confused, trying to play Danavision games on their Scatari console, or trying to plug Donkey Kong Jr. into their toasters. Soon gamers gave up and went back to playing Stratego and throwing rocks at squirrels, spelling death for the video game industry. And it wouldn't be until 1985 that a fat ethnic plumber would roust the industry from its watery grave and once again enslave the minds of a generation. But that's a sunshine story for another day.

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