![]() ![]() All games had to be released on cartridges manufactured by and purchased from Nintendo, only five games per publisher could be released a year, and the publisher couldn't release the game on a competitor's console for a couple of years. And to prevent a repeat of what had gone before, Nintendo made the most of their monopoly by restricting the activities of the publishers who wanted to release games for their console. The NES quickly became the console that all the kids wanted - mostly because it was the only console available. The inevitable collapse resulted in most console manufacturers exiting the industry, with Atari remaining as the sole survivor, but much smaller and much poorer than they once were.įilling the void and arriving in America as the saviour of the video game industry were Nintendo with their exciting new grey box of fun, the Nintendo Entertainment System, with Mario and his Bros. Arguably, they were helped along this path of self-destruction by Coleco and Magnavox who also appeared to allow their Colecovision and Intellivision consoles to play host to countless cartridges of crap. Yes, Atari's apparent "policy" of passing any old garbage off as a video game was partly responsible for the entire gaming industry pretty much imploding in the early 80s in the USA. The Extra Terrestrial for the VCS, it was probably all of the above. Was it corporate greed, bad planning, ridiculous deadlines, publisher arrogance or contempt of their customers? In the case of Atari, famous for releasing two of the more notorious bad games, Pac-Man and E.T. Is it down to poor design or bad controls? Is it too easy, too hard, totally unfair, completely unfathomable or simply not any fun? What was the reason for games that were so clearly terrible still managing to find their way into shops? Why did nobody at any part of the process between the first code being written to the game being put onto a disc, tape or cartridge say "This is complete shite!" and attempt to stop things from going any further. More that I'm fascinated by what makes them so bad. ![]() Not because I get some perverse pleasure out of attempting to play them. I've always been interested in bad games. ![]()
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