Set the Wayback Machine for 1981, Sherman!

[GameDoctorKunkel]

  While Electronic Games is well remembered by most of the gaming world, I almost never see any references to Video, the magazine in which Arnie Katz and I created the first videogame review column, "Arcade Alley." More than that, however, Arnie (then writing under the pseudonym "Frank Laney Jr" in order to protect his regular editorial gig) and I wrote quite a few features for Video editor Bruce Apar.

  "Arcade Alley" launched in 1978 but continued to appear in Video until around 1983, overlapping the appearance of EG. In the December '81 issue, in fact, we produced the following look at the gaming world a decade after the arrival of Pong. So take a trip into a past in which you may not have even been alive and feel some of the raw passion that was building for this amazing new hobby... videogames!

[nestlekwik]

I would have most likely been three months old when that article ran.  Very good stuff.  I love getting my hands on '80s, early '90s publications so this is a good treat.

And, also, Peabody's Improbable History was always my favorite segment of The Bullwinkle Show.

[MixMasterLar]

But wasnt it W.A.B.A.C ? (or something along those lines?

[nestlekwik]

But wasnt it W.A.B.A.C ? (or something along those lines?

Yeah, but it was pronounced as the Wayback Machine.

[rolenta]

  While Electronic Games is well remembered by most of the gaming world, I almost never see any references to Video, the magazine in which Arnie Katz and I created the first videogame review column, "Arcade Alley."

Video magazine has always been mentioned in Phoenix, as your column was an integral piece of videogame history.

[stevefulton]

It was very productive day, but now the rest of afternoon will be ruined because I have to read this $@&! article.
Thanks a lot Bill!!!

-Steve

[jay]

What was that robot on the cover (dressed as Santa)?  I remember it but can't place what it was called!

[GameDoctorKunkel]

What was that robot on the cover (dressed as Santa)?  I remember it but can't place what it was called!

  Can't remember what that robot was called -- and it was never mentioned inside that issue -- but Arnie and Joyce wound up with it and dubbed it "Bruno" (after wrestler Bruno Sammartino). It was too light to carry much of anything but it came with a tray. We tried delivering sodas from the kitchen to the living room but Bruno always fell over during the trip.

  Interestingly, we did a similar cover on the Dec. '83 issue of EG, but we used the robot toy TOPO.

[GameDoctorKunkel]

  You know, looking at that cover up there must be kind of shocking for those people who believe the Atari generation of games crashed and burned in 1983, given that that December '83 issue was a robust 136 pages (over 66 of those pages being ads). Atari was advertising its hot, new Crystal Castles coin-op and our coin-op column featured Disks of Tron. Amiga was still making controllers and Lode Runner had just been released by Broderbund on the Apple ][. Coleco was hyping the Adam with a 4-page ad insert and the most popular new videogames were Tutankham (Parker Bros./2600) and Decathlon (Activision/2600). Pac-Man had just gotten his own Saturday morning cartoon show and Gameline, the first downloadable videogame system (it would eventually evolve into AOL), was available.

  In fact, from my POV, the crash actually took place in 1984, since that's when everybody felt its effects. By late '84, we were down to 12 pages of ads but the Christmas of '83 was actually gaming's last hurrah. The VCS was still viable, people liked the Intellivision and Coleco had yet to disgrace itself by actually allowing hands-on with the Adam. Computer sales were starting to grow and the next generation game systems were all about to come into play.

  Even as a member of the press, I did not foresee how quickly it would all burn down -- and from how many different directions.

[jay]

Coin-Op advertising, that is something we don't see anymore!

I'm guessing that Christmas of '83 was the final straw that broke the industry.  The flood of crappy games and the growing home computer market really shook things up.  I can remember getting my first C64 home computer in June '84 and from that point, the Odyssey2 got packed up and put in the attic.  I think we got 1 or 2 games in Christmas '83, but both my brother and I were growing out of gaming at that point.

We need Steve to comment here - he's always a wealth of info on the crash.