Classic Gaming is running a nice retrospective piece on the 20th Anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The video game generation begins in 1977, the same year Star Wars came out, with the Atari 2600. However many peoples first relationship with games and gaming was the lovable and quite awesome NES. Initially marketed with R.O.B., the home console robots thing, due the wariness of retailers after the video game crash of 1984, the NES was the rebirth of gaming in the living room. Happy birthday NES. You are almost old enough to drink.

Some alcohol might just clean those connectors enough so that it will actually load games again.

Happy birthday NES, and damn you for taking over my life. *cries profusely*

The NES was my first system and is partially the reason I am such a Nintendo fanboy. Its seems so long ago. Sooooo many memories...

Oh, and my NES would be arrested for underage drinking by now. I've been using alchohol on him since he was about 10. ;-)

The oldest system I ever used was the RCA Studio II. But I think I had an Atari before I got that.

That should be "Initially marketed with R.O.B....". Yes we've got that tech spec covered. Both games!

Actually as a bit of an aside, when I was younger, I spent many years trying to find "the robot videogame system" that my friend had a long time ago. I looked far and wide and couldn't find any systems sold in the Consumers Catalog or trade shows that came with a controllable robot. Eventually I ended up with a NES and over the years, several fun cartridges (inlcuding River City Ransom, the original over-the-top violent videogame!) but I was always looking for that "Robot System".

It wasn't until the mid-90s came along when the Internet and gaming fansites came along and taught me the truth about R.O.B. I'm grateful that I never actually found him, since it most certainly would have been a waste of money on my part.

I am always pondering: Is there ever going to be a second video game crash?

Part of the reason why the crash occurred is because too many companies were developing for the one system. Isn't that the case now? Did they add more measures to prevent another crash from happening again?

I don't think there will be a crash per se. Everyone now understands the the console VG business is a cyclical business which was not understood back then. Publishers and the console makers prepare their finances and investors for the downturn and position themselves for the upswing. During the crash Atari, Colleco, Matel, Activision were caught wholly unaware and each reacted to the downturn differently. Some didn't have enough cash or credit on hand to survive others fled the market or went into the barest of survival modes. Also none of the companies really expected the subsiquent uptick and got passed by virtual unknowns like Nintendo, Sega and EA.

The other major difference is the handheld market is quite large so when the console market is down the handheld market is often quite healthy.

The big wildcard is PC gaming. The retail model has been steadily shrinking for sometime. I doubt in 5 years you are going to see any retail AAA PC games. The market will either go niche like casual gaming or some subscription model like WoW. Take for example Id. Even though Doom 3 sold well on the PC John Carmack has said that they have moved to the Xbox 360 platform as their dev environment. The expectation should be that Id and other PC game developers become increasingly console centric.

Everyone is always expecting another huge video game crash, especially that pompous guy at Pointless Waste of Time. I enjoy his other articles, but I can't stand it when people toot their own horn about how they try and point out the signs of a video game crash.

Okay, I've already said too much about that. Don't flame me (I'm looking at you, Von Katze).

Anyway, flipkins got some good points, especially with the whole handheld market. I would say that we are pretty safe. The video game industry has a lot of different outlets, if one falls I'm sure the others won't follow as easily as they did in the first crash, where every metaphorical egg was in one basket.

Of course it can crash. As Flipkin pointed out, it is all in the mindset. The video game crash was a bubble, just like the IT bubble of a few years ago.

It is worth pointing out, that people never stopped playing video games, but they moved on to computers instead of consoles, and the console players didn't pay as much for their games since there were too many on the market.

All that is needed for another crash is a group of wealthy men in suits who invest heavily and uninformedly into the business so that there is an over-production of games and no sound market logic behind the business of the companies.

Which is pretty ironic since Id Software's original game Commander Keen was the one that proved PCs could compete with consoles as serious gaming platforms. But what about online FPSes? Id has a huge following of online gamers from Quake 3 and 4, they'd be stupid to throw that away just to join the console bandwagon.