The rise of video games in the 1980s

The title of this article is a little misleading as the video game craze actually started in the late 70s, with arcades and a few TV systems, with games built into them.
And while it was not the first cartridge based system then, it was the Atari 2600 which was released in 1977 and has revolutionised the way that we would play games in the home, and by the time the 1980s rolled around video games were just huge!

Atari is a king!

Atari 2600 game system (on the top right picture) has some popular game cartridges that include: Asteroids, Combat, Defender, Demon Attack, Lock n Chase, Missile Command, Pac Man, Super Challenge Baseball, Target Fun (Air-Sea Battles), Warlords.

We could really say that since the mid 90s, home gaming consoles have consisted of just three brands, battling out for supremacy.
Well back in the early 80s it seemed like there would be some random video game console coming out on a monthly basis. The Atari 2600 dominated home gaming market well into the 1980s, thanks to its long line of ports of various arcade games such as famous Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Q Bert, just to name a few.

Many other companies joined the video game craze and as a result we have seen many different gaming systems on the market that would have games built into them. However, only few innovative companies did have gaming console with cartridges, and the most notable ones that stood up against Atari were the Intellivision and the Colecovision.
These two mentioned did put up a decent fight, but ultimately they would come and go, but a few other consoles were released on the market during the early 80s that made very little impact if any at all.

Arcades give us a joy of playing classic games

The Intellivision Trivia gaming console (on the left picture) was released in North America in 1980. In the first major console war, the Intellivision Trivia ended up in second place (behind Atari, of course) but well ahead of the Bally Professional Arcade or Odyssey2.
The Intellivision Trivia was the first gaming console on the market, to have a 16-bit processor and was the first console to have downloadable games. We should also mention that this system had the first console strategy/simulation game, Don Daglow's Utopia, released in 1981.

Let's get back in the 80s, when the arcade scene was well and truly alive. We were able to play classic games like Donkey Kong, Star Wars, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and many many more, just famous classic games. Players that love retro games, still enjoy playing them up to now. Standing in a dark arcade with a bunch of other gamer was something that was really fun.

Thanks to the consoles like the mentioned earlier Atari 2600 and the Colecovision (shown on the right picture) many of these games were ported to the home systems.
Some say that the classic CBS ColecoVision console was the best console of the early 80s. For sure, this console has good graphics and it had some great games, like Mr. Do! I'm talking about you. Of course, it faced stiff competition from Intellivision and Atari gaming consoles. However, it was still the closest thing you could have to an arcade at home.

The Nintendo gaming system

In 1983 there was the video game crash. The cause of this has long been debated and many attribute the crash to the fact that pretty much anyone with a personal computer, could release a video game. This situation resulted in just a ton of terrible and low-quality games being released, which getting stuck on store shelves. This caused retailers to panic and they no longer wanted to sell video games.
It looked like the home video game craze was over.

This situation lasted until a Japanese company called Nintendo released their Nintendo Entertainment System (on the left picture) and change the world of video games forever.
The Nintendo Entertainment System originally was released in Japan in 1983, where it was called the Famicom. The North American market get the console on sale in 1985, and by 1987 the whole world would be under the spell of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Nintendo has changed everything and truly brought video games into the mainstream, with their own classic games such as Super Mario Bros, The Legend Of Zelda, Metroid and many more. In fact, Nintendo also changed the way that we play games by giving us the true control pad.
This was a real gaming experience changer and even now, all these years later, we could enjoy a control pad instead of a joystick with our consoles. Nintendo had a very tight stranglehold on the video game industry, but there was a rival who would push them all the way.

However, Nintendo has divided opinion on every console that they have released and many gamer have a love/hate relationship with them. Most of the Nintendo products has been successful consoles that could entertain everyone in the family. The most popular Nintendo models include: Game&Watch, Famicom (NES), Game Boy, Super Famicom (SNES), N64, Game Boy Advance and Game Cube.

The rise of Sega retro arcade game consoles

Of course, we are talking about Sega company and their Sega Master System. Sega had good success with their Master System, but as the 80s drew to an end, they had released their 16-bit Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. This world's gaming event came really close to bringing the arcade experience home.
Sega is the brand that is best known in the United Kingdom, for the early-mid 80s.

The famous arcade games like: "Out Run", "Hang-on", and innovative fighting gaming experience like "Golden Axe", are massively played on the Sega consoles. Sega is a retro gaming legend that entered the console market later than their main competitors. However, Sega brought us the innovative legendary "Master System" and (later on) the revolutionary "Mega Drive" (sometimes marketed under name "Genesis").

As the 80s drew to an end, the arcade scene was still very strong. However, with the emergence of the 16-bit video game consoles in the 90s, the arcade scene would be on borrowed time. In all while gaming started in the 80s it really exploded in the 90s.