In 1986 Larry King claimed video games were a dead fad and compared it to disco.

Deleted member 17210 · Feb 18, 2021

Figboy said:
And like I said in my earlier post, the NES didn't become a regular topic among my classmates and friends until around '87 or so, as the NES not only became more widely available, but more affordable for many of the kids in my class.

Yeah, 1987 seemed to be when the NES was starting to become talked about more, although in my experience most people interested in video games didn't own it yet. I remember when I started high school in 1988 and Nintendo ramped up their advertising that Christmas season with all the SMB2 commercials, that seemed to cause a boost in popularity.

DOT_mjo · Feb 18, 2021

I mean video games were definitely dead at one point. Might be one of the greatest comebacks of all time outside of 28-3.

Rats · Feb 18, 2021

Seems like a pretty uncontroversial statement about the fact of the matter at the time he said it.

bionic77 · Feb 18, 2021

Figboy said:
Yeah, most of my friends bar, like 2 or 3, had personal computers, and it was because their parents were well off enough to afford one (two of my best friends at the time had fathers in the military, and another had parents that worked in the medical industry). I didn't get my first computer until I was 19, in 1998! It's easy to think that PC gaming was going to carry the torch forward if you owned a computer back then (and even then, my friends weren't allowed to use the computer for games constantly, as their parents used them for work), but for a lot of people, computers were a luxury they couldn't afford.

And like I said in my earlier post, the NES didn't become a regular topic among my classmates and friends until around '87 or so, as the NES not only became more widely available, but more affordable for many of the kids in my class.

In my specific neighborhood, only a few kids on the block had an NES, but their parents weren't overly keen on having a house full of kids gathered around the TV playing games all day. Most of the time, we were outside exploring and playing in the park, roaming the neighborhood and just doing kid stuff. Gaming was, at least in my friend circle, wasn't exactly as encouraged by parents of the time as it may be to younger people that grew up in the late 90's-2000's, after the resurgence, and gaming became more mainstream and "acceptable" in the US.

Me and my best friend often get a kick out of discussing gaming with his 9 year old, who has literally grown up in a world where, if you don't play video games, something is wrong with you. lol

Even after I got my NES when I was 9, my mom was still like, "Dude, go outside and play with your friends!" She didn't say "dude," but I like to imagine her saying it. The rest is true though XD

Another thing to consider is, many homes at the time only had one television (we did), so splitting time between my mom watching her shows, my sister watching her shows, and me getting to play the Nintendo was a big thing in our family. Affording multiple televisions, especially if you're a single income household, was another luxury many of us couldn't afford, which, probably, slowed down some of the growth home consoles were seeing in the mid-80's and that first year or so of the NES reaching America.

I think by the time I was in middle school the NES was a mainstream thing (this is like 1988-89) and it peaked a year or two later with Mario 3 but A LOT of kids did not have one and the big thing is even of the kids that had one a large amount of them would go long periods of time without playing them. Most of my close friends were into games to a degree that other children did not seem to be. Videogames were just not very popular in the mid 80s in my experience. It got bigger and bigger with each release of consoles.

I also agree with you on the one tv thing. Not only that but most of the people I knew in 1986 did not even have a remote control. I would say the hottest tech items at the time were a walkman and VCR. Outside of maybe Sony tech stuff was generally not seen as cool.

The world was just very different in a way that if you were born well after 1986 you may not be able to understand how different things used to be.

Deleted member 17210 · Feb 18, 2021

bionic77 said:
I think by the time I was in middle school the NES was a mainstream thing (this is like 1988-89) and it peaked a year or two later with Mario 3 but A LOT of kids did not have one and the big thing is even of the kids that had one a large amount of them would go long periods of time without playing them. Most of my close friends were into games to a degree that other children did not seem to be. Videogames were just not very popular in the mid 80s in my experience. It got bigger and bigger with each release of consoles.

I also agree with you on the one tv thing. Not only that but most of the people I knew in 1986 did not even have a remote control. I would say the hottest tech items at the time were a walkman and VCR. Outside of maybe Sony tech stuff was generally not seen as cool.

The world was just very different in a way that if you were born well after 1986 you may not be able to understand how different things used to be.

Looking back, the gaming industry seems small compared to today and what counts as mainstream has changed. A third party game on NES selling a few hundred thousand copies would have been considered a big success given the budgets of the time. Major publishers would count those sales figures as a failure in the current market.

Tuorom · Feb 18, 2021

Lithium Flower said:
Expected Disco Elysium but I'll certainly take this.

oh no is this how I find out people are ignoring me

bionic77 · Feb 18, 2021

NeoZeedeater said:
Looking back, the gaming industry seems small compared to today and what counts as mainstream has changed. A third party game on NES selling a few hundred thousand copies would have been considered a big success given the budgets of the time. Major publishers would count those sales figures as a failure in the current market.

Definitely. Gaming is also part of pop culture now. Your parents and relatives will likely know who Mario, Sonic, etc. are even if they never played the games.

gilded_Pb · Feb 18, 2021

There were videogames in 1986?

lunarworks · Feb 18, 2021

Typhon said:
Didn't homophobia kill disco?

Heliex said:
I thought hating minorities killed disco.

You're both correct.

It was straight, white, suburban men who felt threatened by music made by and inclusive of the LGBT community, PoC, and women.

I wonder how that can relate to video games in our modern times...

Replicant · Feb 18, 2021

bushmonkey said:
Well the NES came out in the US late 85 so he was just on the wrong side of wrong..

Nes didn't gain a ton of traction in the states until 87. It launched only in NYC in 85.

bionic77 · Feb 18, 2021

beyond_death said:
There were videogames in 1986?

That was actually a pretty badass year for the NES in the US. I think we had Super Mario Bros, Castlevania and maybe Dragon Quest. I am not sure when Mega Man 1 came out but 2 probably came out in 88 or 89 so the first one might have come out in 1986 too.

The crazy thing is no one knew shit about any of those games. You had to consult friends, rent games and read Nintendo power to have a chance.

PHOENIXZERO · Feb 18, 2021

This was like, a room temperature take in the mid-80s for the NA home consolemarket.

bwahhhhh · Feb 18, 2021

it was definitely a huge bubble that had popped in the US. and computer games were nerd territory. most people past a certain age probably didn't see it coming back beyond gimmicky toys. Certainly not as 200+ million dollar budget behemoths

I feel like up until ~90s internet, fads were recognized as fads. they burned out and disappeared. starting with the 90s many fads had the embers kept hot on various internet forums, and it's possible for anything to stay hot, or at least smoldering, and we recognize that now. based on those embers it's a lot easier to see what will "obviously" stay around now.

maybe I'm just old, but I feel like that's why decades are less obviously recognizable post-90s.

edit: I guess aside from electronics. any 2010s photo is probably immediately recognizable by the people in the background looking at phones.
Actually probably nothing really has changed.

Starwing · Feb 18, 2021

Like everyone else said, this was 2-3 years after the crash, so Its not surprising he thought this.

TheEchosOfTheCyborg said:
I never got American's sheer utter hatred for Disco or why they "killed" it (ignoring it was still popular around the world, helped influence many local genres and help make new ones due to no Disco coming from the US etc), like you do realize making pyre in football pitches, causing riots, radio presenters calling for a genre's death etc ISN'T NORMAL behaviour for not liking a genre of music right?

Quite bluntly, given how POC and LGBTQ+ friendly a lot of disco was in the US back then, it just comes across as an early example of how white supremacy was growing in the US and using it's power to shut things down it didn't like. I can't see American's making fun of "Deader then Disco" as nothing more stealth homophobia and racism because they didn't like LGBTQ+ and black people being more popular then their "Real art" rockers.

Also why I give stinkeye to 80s rockers that many of rock bands that benefited and these people trying to kill Disco moved or claim was superior music. So many times have I seen it called "real" or "true" music, yet to me it comes across as just being white and "edgy" and unoriginal (oh, you're using devil imagery, use the same types of instruments as other rock bands, like acting "edgy and dress the same how "original").

wenis said:
it's exactly that. just pure bigotry.

This is interesting, I always thought it just fell out of popularity like a bunch of music genres. Is there anywhere I can read more on this?

Heliex · Feb 18, 2021

lunarworks said:
You're both correct.

It was straight, white, suburban men who felt threatened by music made by and inclusive of the LGBT community, PoC, and women.

I wonder how that can relate to video games in our modern times...

Yeah lol, as someone who was born way after the Disco era, i was shocked to hear how music that sounds so catchy and inoffensive was vilified. Its why i always side eye white people who are into metal and cheer that Disco died.

Typhon · Feb 18, 2021

Starwing said:
Like everyone else said, this was 2-3 years after the crash, so Its not surprising he thought this.

This is interesting, I always thought it just fell out of popularity like a bunch of music genres. Is there anywhere I can read more on this?

Wikiwand - Disco Demolition Night

Disco Demolition Night was a Major League Baseball (MLB) promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, that ended in a riot. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between...

www.wikiwand.com

wenis · Feb 18, 2021

Starwing said:
This is interesting, I always thought it just fell out of popularity like a bunch of music genres. Is there anywhere I can read more on this?

this is the main focal point people point to when you talk about Disco's history and how it was a bigotry that led to its passing in time in music history (when disco just evolved into the 80's and 90's).

Disco Demolition Night - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Disco Demolition Night was a Major League Baseball (MLB) promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, that ended in a riot. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Many of those in attendance had come to see the explosion rather than the games and rushed onto the field after the detonation. The playing field was so damaged by the explosion and by the fans that the White Sox were required to forfeit the second game to the Tigers.

In the late 1970s, dance-oriented disco was the most popular music genre in the United States, particularly after being featured in hit films such as Saturday Night Fever (1977). However, disco sparked a major backlash from rock music fans—an opposition prominent enough that the White Sox, seeking to fill seats at Comiskey Park during a lackluster season, engaged Chicago shock jock and anti-disco campaigner Steve Dahl for the promotion at the July 12 doubleheader. Dahl's sponsoring radio station was 97.9 WLUP, so admission was discounted to 98 cents for attendees who turned in a disco record; between games, Dahl was to destroy the collected vinyl in an explosion.

White Sox officials had hoped for a crowd of 20,000, about 5,000 more than usual. Instead, at least 50,000—including tens of thousands of Dahl's adherents—packed the stadium, and thousands more continued to sneak in after gates were closed. Many of the records were not collected by staff and were thrown like flying discs from the stands. After Dahl blew up the collected records, thousands of fans stormed the field and remained there until dispersed by riot police.

The second game was initially postponed but was forfeited by the White Sox the next day by order of American League president Lee MacPhail. Disco Demolition Night preceded, and may have helped precipitate, the decline of disco in late 1979; some scholars and disco artists have debated whether the event was expressive of racism and homophobia. Disco Demolition Night remains well known as one of the most extreme promotions in MLB history.

a good and easy write up

The Night Disco Died | The Racist & Homophobic "End" to Disco

"It's not so much the music that I dislike, it's actually the culture,"
— Steve Dahl with Tom Snyder on the Tomorrow Show (1979)

an NPR write up

July 12, 1979: 'The Night Disco Died' — Or Didn't

Also at the game was a teenaged usher named Vince Lawrence, who says he'd hoped to snag a few disco records to take home. Then an aspiring musician who was saving up money for a synthesizer, he says he was one of the few African Americans there that night. Soon, he began to notice something about the records some people were bringing.

"Tyrone Davis records, friggin' Curtis Mayfield records and Otis Clay records," he recalls. "Records that were clearly not disco," but that were by black artists.

After the Sox lost the first game, a giant crate full of records was placed in the outfield. Dahl, the disgruntled disc jockey, donned a combat helmet and military jacket and led chants of "disco sucks." Then they blew up the crate. The explosion scattered records high into the air and left a crater in center field.

Just a good overview of disco, its culture and of the night and peoples responses to the night.

Deleted member 17210 · Feb 18, 2021

bionic77 said:
That was actually a pretty badass year for the NES in the US. I think we had Super Mario Bros, Castlevania and maybe Dragon Quest. I am not sure when Mega Man 1 came out but 2 probably came out in 88 or 89 so the first one might have come out in 1986 too.

The crazy thing is no one knew shit about any of those games. You had to consult friends, rent games and read Nintendo power to have a chance.

For North America, Castlevania and Mega Man 1 were in 1987, and Dragon Warrior was in 1989.

It was still a great year for NES, though, with all those black box games getting widespread release as well as stuff like Gradius and Commando.

Launch era Sega Master System in late 1986 was cool, too, with games like Fantasy Zone, Choplifter, The Ninja, Hang On/Safari Hunt, Action Fighter, and Black Belt.

Unknownlight · Feb 18, 2021

DarthBuzzard said:
1986 is when computers were still thought of as a fad, and funnily enough it was the PC fad that was often cited as killing the videogame fad. Fads killing fads.

Steve Wozniak interestingly said both PCs and videogames were a fad in 1985:

See, now there's a terrible take. Video games are understandable—even without the crash, video games are entertainment, and what's popular in entertainment changes frequently. It was too early to understand that video games are a medium (like movies or TV) and not just a product.

But computers in general? What was Wozniak thinking? Computers are a tool, not an entertainment product, and history always favors the tools that make tasks cheaper and faster. His argument seemed to be that computers weren't convenient enough yet, and so therefore they never would be, which is just... bizarre, and he should've known better.

MegaManTrigger · Feb 18, 2021

Hold on, I can understand if this was before 1985, but this is 1986. Is the NES not already destroying sales at that point?

Silvergun-Blue · Feb 18, 2021

As usual it's an incredibly US centric take on the video game industry. It was doing fine in Japan and Europe.

Cyberclops · Feb 18, 2021

Jokes on him. Disco's coming back any moment now.

DarthBuzzard · Feb 18, 2021

Unknownlight said:
See, now there's a terrible take. Video games are understandable—even without the crash, video games are entertainment, and what's popular in entertainment changes frequently. It was too early to understand that video games are a medium (like movies or TV) and not just a product.

But computers in general? What was Wozniak thinking? Computers are a tool, not an entertainment product, and history always favors the tools that make tasks cheaper and faster. His argument seemed to be that computers weren't convenient enough yet, and so therefore they never would be, which is just... bizarre, and he should've known better.

He should have known better, true. But the world agreed with him regardless, even though they were wrong. History is littered with experts that pegged hugely beneficial tools as fads; everything from phones to computers to tablets to the internet.

Steve Wozniak built the first home PC, but he tried to get HP to sign a deal with him before he co-founded Apple. HP's higherups didn't see it as a smart investment and lost out on the creation of the PC market. It's amazing just how many people even in a related field just don't get it.

Border · Feb 18, 2021

Computer games and arcades were still big. Unsurprisingly, King was pretty out-of-touch. It's hard to blame him since the early 80's saw so many other flash-in-the-pan fads, but anybody actually paying attention at the time probably would have observed plenty of thriving areas in the gaming world.

Starwing · Feb 18, 2021

Typhon said:
Wikiwand - Disco Demolition Night

Disco Demolition Night was a Major League Baseball (MLB) promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, that ended in a riot. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between...

www.wikiwand.com

wenis said:
this is the main focal point people point to when you talk about Disco's history and how it was a bigotry that led to its passing in time in music history (when disco just evolved into the 80's and 90's).

Disco Demolition Night - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

a good and easy write up

The Night Disco Died | The Racist & Homophobic "End" to Disco

an NPR write up

July 12, 1979: 'The Night Disco Died' — Or Didn't

Just a good overview of disco, its culture and of the night and peoples responses to the night.

Thanks for the links, I'll give them a read and watch.

lunarworks · Feb 18, 2021

Heliex said:
Yeah lol, as someone who was born way after the Disco era, i was shocked to hear how music that sounds so catchy and inoffensive was vilified. Its why i always side eye white people who are into metal and cheer that Disco died.

I was an '80s kid, and discussion of disco was met with nothing but mockery and ridicule back then. It wasn't until my peers in high school in the '90s started listening to disco ironically, to be contrary to mainstream tastes, that we realized how good it actually was. It had been underground in new forms the whole time, and in that period it resurfaced back to the mainstream.

Shitty nu metal surged in popularity late in the decade, but that couldn't kill the revival.

Also, back to the death of disco, it coincided with a sharp rightward turn in national political sentiment in the US, followed by the election of a right-wing populist who campaigned on the slogan "Let's Make America Great Again", if we want more parallels.

Yuli Ban · Feb 18, 2021

People saying "well, he was kinda right, video games were pretty much dead up until Nintendo brought it back"
In retrospect, that's the equivalent of "Nirvana killed heavy metal and led directly to Justin Bieber." Parts of that are true, and parts of that are utter bullshit and is extremely Ameri-centric. (but that's a topic for another day)

The console video game market in North America alone was dead after the Atari crash (and the loss of such a lucrative market obviously meant there was a recession in the wider industry); however, home computers and arcades were still doing fairly well. In fact, the decline of arcades has more to do with home computers than the Crash of '83.

Even if the console market never fully recovered in North America, computers would've still kept getting better. Maybe it would've taken longer since it was consoles that led to the development of dedicated GPUs and video gaming would've remained even more of a niche until the widespread availability of cheap PCs (as a PC capable of running Doom in 1994 would've set you back a few thousand dollars in current money), but at some point momentum would've kept building.
Read more: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...hy_video_game_crash_1983_didnt_occur_in_west/

"Video gaming" was only dead insofar as you separated "video games" from "computer games" and "arcade games," which I suppose some people did back then.

FFNB · Feb 18, 2021

NeoZeedeater said:
Yeah, 1987 seemed to be when the NES was starting to become talked about more, although in my experience most people interested in video games didn't own it yet. I remember when I started high school in 1988 and Nintendo ramped up their advertising that Christmas season with all the SMB2 commercials, that seemed to cause a boost in popularity.

Yeah, it definitely really seemed to pick up around '87-88 from my recollections. I was only 8-9 years old, and most of my class didn't have one (me included lol, at least until Christmas '88). But I have fond memories of playing SMB2 at friends and family's houses the year it released, and it was definitely the talk of the school for that school year lol

I actually didn't own it myself until years later, as we couldn't afford many games. In general, I didn't have a large NES library, just a handful of games. It was mostly trading/borrowing games with friends, as stores like Funcoland weren't widespread at the time, and I didn't really have any spare money for trade ins anyway. To this day, I only have a handful of NES cartridges I kept (like SMB2, 3, Final Fantasy 1, and a few more I'm forgetting). I didn't really grow into my hardcore gaming habit until after high school, when I landed my first job and was able to buy video games myself, so, around '97, and then it was all about PlayStation lol

Okabe · Feb 18, 2021

Septimus Prime said:
Oh shit, is it Friday today?

In 1986 Larry King claimed video games were a dead fad and compared it to disco.

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