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The Great Video Game Crash of 1983: Difference between revisions
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When it was revived, it was done from the outside: via the introduction (and overwhelming success) of the [[Nintendo]] [[Nintendo Entertainment System|Entertainment System]]. As a result, Japan replaced the USA in dominating the home market. This was particularly evident in the case of [[Sega]], whose American parent company, Gulf & Western, sold it to a Japanese corporation in 1984, minus its former U.S. division.
The Crash was a uniquely American phenomenon, and even there, it never risked killing video games as a medium. The rise of the home computer (particularly the [[Commodore 64]]) continued home video gaming, and while the American arcade scene was beginning its slow decline, arcade games were still near the height of their popularity. Minor arcade classics like ''Paper Boy'', ''[[Punch
Across [[The Pond]], the European market was dominated by early home microcomputers (predominantly the Sinclair [[ZX Spectrum]] and [again] the C64), with an outrageous number of one-person coders writing games for the far-cheaper tape distribution system. These machines became the backbone of the industry for the next decade; the so-called "bedroom coders" would receive status ranging from "cult hero" (Jeff Minter, Matthew Smith ''et al'') to "legend" ([[Elite|Bell and Braben]], the Oliver Twins). That didn't prevent some quite talented developers from making enough stupid decisions to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, of course (Imagine Software, most notably; see [http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/bruceworld/ here] for info, with a big example of an [[Orwellian Editor]] as a bonus). Even with the missteps, the European gaming industry remained solid.
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