History of Video games 1980-1990

Here comes one of the best periods of all time, especially for music. I get a lot of my inspiration from music, discovering it but rediscovering old and lost loves. I work constantly to music so this is a happy blog entry from me. Although you could have guessed that as I put what I am currently listening to on the bottom of my posts each time (expect a lot of repeats of bands). However, history always makes me happy, so the both combined is excellent.
During this time, a lot of things happened, like the cold war, the miners strike, and the tories with the riots (sound familiar right? Not like it happened recently or anything with the current tories being in power, oh wait?). But video games took off and evolved rapidly from arcades to home gaming and pcs. They became much more personal to everyone.

Let's start right at the beginning, starting off with atari.

In 1982, the lovely atari 5200 was launched, and for me personally, I felt that atari was the beginning of the video games and the development within it. A year later, we got Nintendo on the scene, and they had the unfortunate luck of naming it the Nintendo femicom which sound like a female product. But Nintendo has been around since 1889, so they weren't likely to change their name as they have become probably fond of it by then.

Sega launched their Sega master in 1986, and two years after that, they launched their famous Sega genesis (which I have at home, with Sonic, and Castle of Illusion, the amount of abuse I shouted at Mickey Mouse from a young age is amazing for my vocab, especially as I was not savvy with the language when I was younger as I am now).

1989 was an important year, my brother was born, (who held a lot of influence over me and my games), as well as the Berlin Wall coming down on November 9th. However, the gameboy was released. The original grey brick which opens up the entire world to one addictive game: tetris. Yes, I did have it, and I still have my original one, as well as every generation of gameboy known in history, except the 3DS (I only have room for one 3DS in my life, and that's 3DS Max).

Lastly, in 1990, the amstrad gx4000, which sounds more like a bike and is a mouthful, was launched.

This was a short period, despite like my last blog entry which had everything coming out year after year. But this was when gaming became much more personal to homes. Before hand it was for work and office use (the development of computers), whereas now the market decided to target homes for their sales. From cracking german codes, to becoming a blue hedgehog collecting rings, I have to say it has gone from one extreme to another, from being a life or death situation to a "nah I've got another 5 lives left till it's game over" or "where are my damn rings?".

The most significant developments during this time period in my opinion was not the technology exactly, but how it's audience had changed, as well as purpose. An industry strives on it's audience and market, and if it's audience changes then so does the industry to suit the audience, so it can survive. Less companies became interested in video games, and more the general public, from arcades to wanting it in their households. Video games became a new industry, away from the computer industry, with the sole purpose of entertaining. It became the computer industry's little brother which plays pranks, but seemed to be as much in high demand from the public than computers were, both growing up together and evolving in different separate ways but still having some of the same connections, and the same beginning.

Another significant point, was the rise of the war between the companies. I do not think that it had much impact on the industry up until when the three major ones hit later in the 2000s. However, it was the beginning and start of the competition between the companies, and the sales. Which made them more determined to out do the other one in graphics, games, sales, audience and technology.

Currently listening to: Rage Against The Machine.