Week 3! The 80's and 90's, when video games ruled the earth!

So following on from my previous entry we have witnessed the birth and early development of the computer game industry and now move into the middle ages and a period in which I first ventured forth into the world of games.

However the first significant event, other than me starting to play games, was on the 17Th of June, 1980. Atari's "asteroids" and "lunar Lander" became the first video games to ever be registered at the copyright office and ushered in a new era in the computer game industry.

In the 80's it was all about the personal computers such as the spectrum, commodore and the Atari which was also my first system and my introduction to games.

The Atari ST to be specific, was my first ever computer if memory serves me correctly. Although I can't remember what the first game I ever played was I do have memories of playing such titles as outrun, golden axe, and lotus esprit turbo challenge on my trusty Atari amongst others.

I also seem to remember spending a lot of time playing on a very basic flight Sim pretending to be maverick after watching a little film you may of heard of, TOP GUN!!! anyone??

So, around the same time I was initiated into Top gun with all the other top pilots the gaming industry of the 80's was producing the building blocks of the future. Games such as final fantasy, the legend of Zelda and metal gear all made their debut during this time.

It seems the 80's were a time of new beginnings. Franchises were created, new and, though it wasn't known at the time, legendary characters were introduced, link and Mario to name just a couple, and the market seemed to be gathering momentum all the time.

Which leads us onto the 90's. A decade which See's me move into the console world after father Christmas saw fit to bestow upon me the gift of SNES (or super Nintendo). A Christmas were I proceeded to vanish to the solitude of my room and attempt to complete starwing, calling upon all my previous Top gun training, only venturing downstairs for turkey and those little sausages wrapped in bacon.

By the 90's the gaming industry was well and truly established and it was all about growth and the developing rivalries of the big name companies. Sega and Nintendo dominated the market and had a massive ongoing war of the consoles. Sega's master system followed by the megadrive versus Nintendo's NES and then SNES.

This rivalry continued and with the ever increasing market more companies became involved in this competition for computer game supremacy, namely Sony and in December of 1994 the PlayStation was released.

This again resulted in another Christmas day spent in solitude. One of the stand out games for me on the PlayStation was tomb raider. The new system, along with the then groundbreaking graphics added up to all night stints trying desperately hard raid some tombs.

It appears then that this time was of great importance to the industry, it was established and had grown into an industry to rival that of the film industry and several new and important names entered the foray both in terms of new game franchises, popular characters still in existence today and big name companies becoming interested and in fact staking claim to their share of the market.

this then brings us to the 00's but also in turn then end of this chapter.