Many members of today's generation love playing video games, but how many of them actually know where this interactive entertainment art form began? This is where Syzygy, now Atari, comes in. At its peak, Atari almost single-handedly initiated and supported the arcade video game and home console market, but was also a major contributor to the collapse of this same market in 1983. gaming history with their arcade video games. While it didn't actually start arcade video games, Atari made the first selling and commercially successful arcade games. Their first game, made in the 1960s, was Computer Space and it was a flop. It only sold around 1,500 units as it was expensive to produce and required players to read detailed instructions so they actually knew what to do. Nolan Bushnell, the creator, even said: “You had to read the instructions before you could play, people didn't want to read the instructions. To be successful, I had to invent a game that people already knew how to play; something so simple that any drunk in any bar could play. This showed him that his dream could come true and exactly how to do it (Pong-Story “Beginning”). In 1972, Baer's dream was realized with the development of Pong, the first highly successful arcade video game. All it was was a ball and two rackets, yet its popularity increased exponentially. Originally placed in a local coffee shop, the game exceeded all of Atari's expectations, earning well over $100 (over $600 today) in quarters alone in the first two weeks of the test period. This data shows that the game could get “one hundred thousand spins per month” (Alcorn). Pong eventually sold more than 19,000 game consoles, further supplanting the...... middle of paper ......Days_of_Atari_and_the_Video_Game_Industry>."Atari 2600 History." Atari Age. AtariAge and Web. March 16, 2014. .Frum, Larry. "Pong! Atari Celebrates 40 Years of Games." CNN Technology. CNN, June 27, 2012. Web. March 16, 2014. .Oxford, Nadia. “Ten Facts About the Great Video Game Crash of '83.” IGN. IGN Entertainment, September 21, 2011. Web. March 16, 2014. .Pong-History. Np, 2014. Web. 14 April 2014. . Sitemap "Useful Notes: The Great Video Game Crash of 1983." TV tropes. TV Tropes and Web Foundation. 16 March. 2014. .