pacman000 wrote:Under: Atari 2600
I know this system has a lots of respect here, but on newer game sites it's blamed for the video game crash of 1983-1984, and that's all anyone remembers. That's so unfair. The 2600 was the 1st successful system with interchangeable media. That's a huge accomplishment. The games may have been simple, but they formed the foundation for other games that followed.
Good points.
The games for the 2600 (and its immediate competition like the Odyssey 2 and Fairchild) are shockingly primitive from what most gamers under 40 ever experienced. The games are just a few kilobytes of data long, the graphics are just crudely suggestive of what they represent, the gameplay is a simple direction joystick and a single button, etc. Yes, most of us here can appreciate them (some because we grew up with them), but we should remember that its just we have drawn the line a rung up from many others. One rung down might be pong games, ASCII games, simple text adventures or early type-in BASIC games, which are often more primitive. Even the foundation laid by the Atari 2600 was not built on a vacuum.
As for the Crash, which happened 6 years into the Atari 2600's lifespan, had lots of contributors. Some of those issues - like spending lots of money for a license but the game not meeting expectations, or an abundance of low quality games due to a low barrier for entry, still remain.