Video Games

Video Game Facts As Told by Cats by BuzzFeed

No one thing defines a decade but video games come pretty close with the 1980s. Cartridge home video game consoles garnered ground in the 1970s; their titles coming out of the arcade and into the living room with the Atari VCS (Video Computer System). Not a hot seller in 1977, it took off in 1978 and came into popular culture on its own by 1979 with some of the classic games even 80s kids today would drool over in all their 8bit glory. But Atari was not without its competition- Magnavox, Milton Bros, Coleco, General Consumer Electrics, Mattel and finally ’90s giants Sega and Nintendo all got into the market to capture our hearts, quarters and after school hours with Donkey-Kong, Pac-Man, Mario and thousands of others.  As home computing became possible, games made their way cross-platform onto Acorns, Commodores, Dragons and Sinclairs. Follow the links below to dive into game lists, company histories and the wild and wonderful world of computers and consoles that died in the 80s and their successors still alive and well today. 

Arcades

Atari 

Coleco

Magnavox Odyssey

Intellivision

Acorn Computers

Commodore

Namco

Activision

DEC-PDP

Dragon 32

Sinclair 

Sega 

Nintendo 

Sources for all pages in Video Games:

Classic 80s Home Video Games Identification & Value Guide – Robert P. Wicker, Jason W. Brassard

The Ultimate History of Video Games – Steven L. Kent

 

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