1980's Video Games

In the early 1980s, the computer gaming industry experienced its first major growing pains. Publishing houses appeared, some being honest businesses (and in rare cases such as Activision and Electronic Arts (now EA), successfully surviving to this day), and perhaps just as many being fly-by-night operations that were quick to rip off developers. While a significant number of early 80s games were simple clones of existing arcade titles, the low entry costs of the personal computer allowed for many bold, unique games, a legacy that continues to this day. The primary gaming computer of the 1980s emerged in 1982: the Commodore 64. Possessing some of the best graphics and sound of its day, yet put out at a bargain price, it quickly gained a huge share of the market.

The Golden age of arcade games reached its full steam in the 1980s, with many technically innovative and genre-defining games in the first few years of the decade. Defender(1980) established the scrolling shooter and was the first to have events taking place outside the player's view, displayed by a radar view showing a map of the whole playfield. Battlezone(1980) used wireframe vector graphics to create the first true three-dimensional game world. Pole Position(1982) used sprite-based, pseudo-3D graphics when it pioneered the "rear-view racer format" where the player's view is behind and above the vehicle, looking forward along the road with the horizon in sight. The style would remain in wide use even after true 3D graphics became standard for racing games. Pac-Man(1980) was the first game to achieve widespread popularity in mainstream culture and the first game character to be popular in his own right.

In September of 1982, the Commodore 64 was released to the public. It found initial success because it was marketed and priced aggressively. It had a BASIC programming environment and advanced graphic and sound capabilities for its time, similar to the Colecovision console. It would become the most popular home computer of its day and the best-selling single computer model of all time.

By the middle of 1983, the video game industry crashes.

In 1984, the computer gaming market took over from the console market following the crash of that year; computers offered equal gaming ability and since their simple design allowed games to take complete command of the hardware after power-on, they were nearly as simple to start playing with as consoles.

In 1985, the North American video game console market was revived with Nintendo's release of its 8-bit console, the Famicom in the United States under the name Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was bundled with Super Mario Bros. and suddenly became a success. The NES dominated the North American market until the rise of the next generation of consoles in the early 1990s. Other markets were not as heavily dominated, allowing other consoles to find an audience like the PC Engine in Japan and the Sega Master System in Europe and Brazil. At this time, Squaresoft was struggling and Hironobu Sakaguchi decided to make their final game a fantasy role-playing game, and the Final Fantasy series was born. Final Fantasy saved Squaresoft from bankruptcy.

In the new consoles, the gamepad took over joysticks, paddles, and keypads as the default game controller included with the system. The gamepad design of an 8 direction D-pad with 2 or more action buttons became the standard.

In 1988 Nintendo published their first issue of Nintendo Power Magazine.

(Information from http://encyclopedia.lockergnome.com)