In the early 1980s, after years of being on top of the world, Atari made the fatal mistake of investing millions of dollars into an E.T. video game, based on the wildly successful film of the same name, only to see it flop. It is regarded as the biggest flop in video game history. Landfills were filled with millions of unsold E.T games due to many publications labeling it as the ‘worst video game of all time.’
Then came the crash.
The video game crash of 1983, also known as 'Atari shock' in Japan, was a massive recession of the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985. Revenues that had peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, fell to around $100 million by 1985. The crash was a serious event that brought an abrupt end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. You can read the rest of the article after the break.
