Back in the day, people left their homes to play video games. Play Value Episode “The Death of Arcades” Libi: When we talk about arcade games you have such awesome memories of like either going with your friends or just like that’s what kept your attention for hours and hours and hours when you were a kid. Jeff: Arcades were great because when you were a kid they were a fad for awhile, but looking back now it’s almost, what it’s almost like looking at a mulch shop in the fifties. It’s just not a thing we have anymore. Dan: You know in the early seventies Pong actually was a hit in bars right, but it wasn’t until the end of the seventies that games like Space Invaders came out, these huge money makers actually established a reason to have dedicated arcades. TJ: And here you have dedicated gaming centers for people to say lets put a center for kids to play games, and the games will come. And sure enough hot on the heels. Pac Man was on the hype. Josh: So Pac Man is in a lot of ways the first video game character. Before that there are a lot of spaceships, a lot of boxes ad triangle bleeping and blooping. But Pac Man is kind of like a person and you know you can put him on a Saturday morning cartoon. You can put him on the cover of Time, you can put him on kid’s lunch boxes, and he has a wife! Dan: That time period between 1978, and maybe 82, 83 was sort of the golden age of arcades. Every year you had new games that were pushing technology, making a heck of a lot more money. Josh: You got Donkey Kong, you got your Pole Position, and you got your Frogger. Dan: You know you had the Star Wars arcade game which was huge, centipede. They all used different control mechanism some were joysticks some were paddles. Others used the trackball. Josh: Video games eventually became so mainstream that there was a movie based on video games, Tron. And then in turn of course there is a video game Tron, of course based on the movie. TJ: So by the early eighties you have one and a half million arcade machines in the country together. People are playing about 2 million hours on these machines. That is a lot of time for them to stand going, up pa pup, pup, pup, like that. Josh: And we all just pulled together. Someone had to stop the centipede invasion, had to be us. Dan: The video game industry in that period from the late seventies to the eighties it was out of control. It was pulling in twenty billion dollars a year which was more than major league baseball basketball and football were pulling in combined. This is ridiculous. Christ I think that’s why Americans are pretty fat. TJ: Now this was a peak, but we new it couldn’t last forever. Dan: Every year the video game industry was just growing and it was growing in terms of the money it was bringing in. In terms of the people who were actually visiting the arcades. People who were involved in the industry didn’t really think there as any way for it to go but up. And it actually ended up peaking and not growing any further because the investment started to exceed how much you are actually going to play the games. Josh: When arcades started to fall the first places to feel it where places that should never had games in the first place. Places like grocery markets, restaurants, senior citizen homes, synagogues. Those all disappeared. After that the huge theme parks that were built around the idea that video games were just a never ending gross business. Those started to fall. By the end the only places that are left are in the middle. The medium sized arcades, little, dark, not as glamorous, but just reasonable enough to turn a profit. TJ: And then right around 86, 87 Nintendo. The Nintendo came out and became really popular and that revitalized the entire game industry but it moved the focus back into the living room. Josh: Arcade games because it was such a business made up of a hundred companies. They wouldn’t advertize on TV, where as Nintendo they are like, mom buy your son this! And then for the son they are like tell mom to buy me this. Birthdays, Christmas you can’t give an arcade game realistically, but you can give a Nintendo. Shandra: So actually the Nintendo systems and arcades could kind of peacefully coexist. The nail in the coffin for Nintendo games is when the Sega Genesis came out, in like 89, 90. Because it was arcade games that you could play at home. It was direct competition. TJ: Now Sega was making arcade games, but they decided to make the same version of games for their new console. Now why did they do that? It is not because they didn’t want to make money in arcades anymore, but they said we can do better if we start to sell these games directly to the consumer. You don’t have to go to Joe bob pizza shack anymore. We can just say hey, Mr. Consumer, watch this commercial on TV and go out and buy this game yourself. So Sega was cannibalizing their own arcade audience but they had seen the writing on the wall. They knew that home gaming was the way of the future. Dan: They were able to replicate the arcade experience pretty well. First and foremost, the fact that you could get Strider, Altered Beast, and Afterburner on your home systems when you bought your Genesis eliminated the need to go to the arcade. But then the other thing that started happening was playing these games at home people started to ask for longer more involved video game experiences than they had previously had. Josh: Arcade games are designed to kill you. They are designed to be frustrating; if you just sit there and play it for ever it would not be a profitable business. Where as home games work with you a little more, they are a little more fun, you can do things like explore, you can tell a story. Libi: Like the levels unto which you were stimulated were just completely changed and they were like more involved, you know like you were actually becoming the character. And you had to like think of where to go and what to collect and what to do. And like where to find things. Josh: The real case in point is the Neo Geo. This is a system that was designed to be as good at home as it was on the arcade. The games were the same in both. And even though the price for one was abnormally high, the games were very boring. They weren’t the kind of games people wanted. TJ: Why do I want to spend, in this case $54 for a game that gives me three minute burst of fun. Nobody wants that, they want something deeper. Girl2: Gamers grew up and they wanted more variety, and the home console offered that. They wanted board games, adventure games, role playing games, sports games. I mean how do you play a sports game in the arcade, it’s like impossible. Josh: So when you go home you have this rich tapestry of genres you can play with, and that’s why arcades died. They have a very narrow set of fleeting experiences. And we just outgrew them. Dan: What was interesting is when you were in the arcade, your basically putting in quarters and trying to last as long as you can with a limited amount of money. And there is a real financial incentive, when you get Final Fight at home and you can just continue and you can play till you beat it. It totally sucks all the fun and you realize right away that those game suck. Josh: The dead, dead cat bounce of arcades, right when they bounce, and right before the final death cry is Street Fighter 2, and Mortal Kombat. TJ: These games are going to test your skill against complete strangers, people you don’t know. And you know complete bragging rights; people are always stepping up to the challenge trying to challenge them. Josh: That is something that is very important to the development of video games, it never went away. It is just now we do it online. And there is elaborate ranking systems so you know exactly how good the person you are playing is versus how good you are. TJ: So the last thing that the arcades had to hold onto was that social interaction and that competitiveness against strangers. Well you know what that even fizzled as soon as the internet came along. Shandra: I think there will always be arcade games around though just for like nostalgic purposes. Just like I don’t want to get rid of that Frogger game that’s been sitting in the back of the store because it has been part of history. You know it’s like its sad but it happened. TJ: So we grew up and the games grew up but the arcades they couldn’t grow up and change for us, so they died. But they died so we could have Oblivion and World of War Craft and really complex artistic games like that. Josh: Arcades had to die for the art to evolve. You know you can’t make an omelet without destroying a few businesses, that’s the bottom line.
The story of an upstart leather company that took on a corporate titan.. Play Value Episode “Colecovision” Dan: Now a lot of kids growing up had an Atari 2600, they had a Nintendo maybe even had a Sega Genesis, but not everybody had a Colecovision. If you did I salute you, you are a true video game fan. TJ: You did not see too many Colecovision’s, you had one friend who had one, but still everyone knows what a Coleco is. Jeff: Like all the important video game consoles the Colecovision started in Hartford Connecticut with a leather company. TJ: Coleco stands for Connecticut leather company, Co le co that is where the name came from. Jeff: They started out in the leather industry, and in the fifties they started making above ground pools, in the sixties that kind of turns into a business where they’re making foosball tables and tabletop hockey games. Then in the seventies finally they started developing video games. Dan: Beck in 1976 they started the Telstar line, and this is a line of basic boxes that you would hook up to your TV and they each played one game. They had a shooting game and they had a pong knock off but then Atari came out with a system where you could use interchangeable cartridges a brilliant idea. You could play different games on the same box, and that was how the Telstar was buried. Jeff: After Atari comes in and captures the entire home market Coleco said is what is left? They start developing some of the world’s first a handheld video games. The most famous of which was electronic quarterback. Josh: They also maybe solid state little mini arcade games that people loved. TJ: They had Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and Space Invaders. Jeff: Which are great for taking home, and they are full size arcade machines if you have any tiny people around. Josh: But Coleco was waiting trying to make its next move to get back into the home market in a big way. Jeff: What nobody realized it is about Atari’s Technology is that there’s so much competition in the video game place that it was getting a little old. And Coleco comes in with this brand new system. It is five years later technology wise which is enormous amount of time; it is an entire generation of video game consoles. This is the difference between a Super Nintendo and a PlayStation. TJ: Even though the Atari 2600 is five years old at the time it does not matter because Atari has so many games and so much money. Dan: Atari is the 800 pound gorilla of the video game industry and any good arcade game that comes along Atari locks up the rights and home version, so where is Coleco going to find an in? TJ: They scour the arcades and find the cult classics that Atari missed, these great games that Atari just never picked up like Zaxxon, Mr. Do. Josh: The other thing they did it, which is crazy is they created an adapter that you can actually play Atari games on the Coleco vision. Dan: It had never been done before and it had never been done since. If you had tried to pitch an idea like this today your lawyers head would just explode. Josh: The last piece of their planned to launch this in a big way, they needed to have a secret weapon and Coleco’s secret weapon was Donkey Kong. TJ: In 1981 Donkey Kong is the second big as arcade game in the world. Pac Man is number one, and Donkey Kong is made by this real small Japanese company no one had heard of it at the time called Nintendo. Dan: Nintendo wanted to get a home version of donkey Kong into living rooms across America and they said that we are a small guy, lets partner with another small guy like Coleco and maybe we can help each other out and take a little bit of the wind out of Atari sails. Jeff: The two small companies at the dance, they see each other from across the room, they lock eyes and the rest is history. Libe: So in July of 82 Colecovision comes out with Donkey Kong and it happens to be a really great translation of the arcade game. Dan: Now keep in mind that this is only after two months that Pac Man came out for the Atari 2600 and that was a complete debacle, completely terrible. So in one step they are already making the head guy look bad. Jeff: Donkey Kong for all intensive purposes was the Mario of Colecovision, the only problem is that it was about to throw a barrel at them and they did not know it, and they were nowhere near the hammer. Josh: Very close to when their about to launch they got a very not so nice call slash letter from Universal Studios and it was the equivalent of a cease and desist. Jeff: We are on the eve of the launch of the Colecovision, it is about to come out and Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal here is about it and says hey, Donkey Kong, King Kong, guerrilla, that is kind of similar, I could probably make money on this. TJ: He goes after both Nintendo and Coleco and he says look you have 48 hours to provide me with all of the receipts from all of your sales of Donkey Kong related material and you have to destroy all of your inventories and any kind of Donkey Kong related merchandising that you have. If you don’t, we’re going to sue you. Josh: Coleco, they were a company that had been around for a long time but they were not a huge company. They immediately buckled. Jeff: Nintendo, Donkey Kong is this huge hit for them, this huge hit and they’re not willing to settle as easily. Josh: Through a little digging Howard Lincoln of Nintendo of America found that only a few years earlier Universal had brought a lawsuit that actually disproved their claim to the copyright. TJ: In 1975, which is just seven years earlier, Universal Studios does a remake of King Kong, starring Jeff Bridges of the movie Tron fame and Jessica Lang. Josh: To bring that film to market they actually had to prove that the rights to King Kong have lapsed and it had become public domain. TJ: So basically Universal Studio seven years ago is in court proving that King Kong is public domain, and nobody owns the rights to it, now they’re doing a complete 180. Jeff: Universal kind of gets caught in there own lie and they’re forced to pay Nintendo 1.8 million dollars for a frivolous lawsuits, just for wasting that the American legal systems time, Nintendo’s time, your time, you’ve had to hear about the story now. TJ: And all Universal Studios was trying to do was scare these two little companies into giving them free money and it backfired. Jeff: Universal flat out abused the legal system; they flat abused it much like Donkey Kong would abuse Mario. TJ: So thanks to Nintendo, Coleco comes out with a DK cartridge, it ships with the Colecovision and now the Colecovision is on its way. And Donkey Kong was not the only great game that was going to come out on Coleco; there was Montezuma’s Revenge, Miner 2049’er. Jeff: Games like a Gateway to Apshai, the first home RPG. TJ: Rocky, Popeye, Pit Stop, I mean the list goes on and on. Dan: But unfortunately they got into the business at exactly the wrong time. 1982 was cool, 1983 that was when the whole home gaming business fell apart. TJ: And the big video game crash happened and swept Coleco, Atari, and everyone else off of the map. Jeff: It looked like Coleco was going to be the next big thing, just kind of bad timing. TJ: So after the big video game crash of 1983 the public has moved on to personal computers, they do not want anything to do if your games anymore so Coleco responds with two products, one is a huge success and the other is a huge failure. Josh: Trying to compete with the influx of personal computers and this interest with that they came out with the Adam. Jeff: Unfortunately they were really rushing to get it out the door, and about half of the units did not work. TJ: If you have half of your product return as defective then your name is soiled, you’re never going to recover from that, so that is what happened. Jeff: The other product was a huge success, something a little low tec but the Cabbage Patch doll. TJ: The fact that they come up with Cabbage Patch Kids is great, it is a huge success for them. But the problem with having a huge success with a toy is that it is only for one year after that Christmas season people move on. Jeff: You know the next year is replaced by Teddy Ruxpin, in 1986 Teddy Ruxpin is replaced by laser tag, the year after that laser tag is replaced by Nintendo. TJ: So we have come full circle video games at the top, the huge crash, to being on top again, but this time Coleco is nowhere to be found. Jeff: By 1988 Coleco had filed for bankruptcy and so ends the legacy of their great Connecticut leather company. Dan: It was fun while it lasted, sorry you had to go.
Intro Movie from Namco's kart racing game. Namco also developed Mario Kart GP for arcades in Japan. Original Resolution: 640 X 448, 29.970 FPS
