3507: The Video Garfield Crash of 1983
| The Video Garfield Crash of 1983 |
 Made by: Camwoodstock & Tori |
Explanation[edit | edit source]
This strip's premise is largely explained in the author's notes; to this day, it is still unknown the exact date within 1982 the infamous E.T. game was first released on. Contrary to some popular belief, E.T. was not the sole cause of the crash of the American video game industry, nor even the game that first set it into motion; while the crash tends to be associated with a massive glut of low-quality games, those alone weren't enough to crash the industry (E.T. as well as the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man have long been known to take the misblame for setting the crash into motion)--supply outpacing demand was also a key factor (as evidenced by the explorations of the site of the 1983 Atari video game burial; while there were indeed copies of E.T. there as had long been known, copies of a wide selection of titles were ultimately found at the site, including some known to be among the best games for the wikipedia:Atari 2600).
Contrary to what this strip appears to portray, Garfield would likely not have known the E.T. game was bad by prior word-of-mouth; a December 1982 release would not have allowed time for word-of-mouth about the game to spread fast enough (that being years prior to the Internet being commonplace), thus the game actually sold quite well initially--and as a result of the game's quality, copies of the game were returned in high numbers as a result, mostly in the time after Christmas 1982.
Garfield itself got caught up in the video game industry crash of 1983; games for the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 intended to be the franchise's first video game adaptations, intended for 1984 releases, ended up cancelled as an effect of the crash, namely the restructuring of Atari when Jack Tramiel took over the company. 1985's Garfield, Eat Your Words for the Apple II would end up being the first video game adaptation of Garfield as a result, with Garfield not seeing consoles until 1989's Japanese-exclusive A Week of Garfield for the Famicom; the west would not get a Garfield game on a home console until 1995's Garfield: Caught in the Act, though they were preceded in the handheld sphere in North America by a 1991 Tiger handheld game simply called Garfield and in Europe by 1993's Garfield Labyrinth for the Game Boy (that game's Japanese and North American releases carried different non-Garfield licenses).
The author writes:[edit | edit source]
Obviously, everyone and their pet capybara has heard of the failure that was the E.T. game for the Atari 2600. I'm surprised nobody ever made a strip of it, though! Thusly, this.
Surprisingly enough, as infamous as the game is, it has a lack of info on its release - but some surprising info in what we do know. For instance, it came out in 1982 despite often being associated with 1983 (the crash was in 1983, but the game was in 1982), but it even has an unknown release date! We know it's December 1982, but no known specific day.
I also think this is the only time a soul has used the Stretch or Skew functions in MS Paint - I had to use those, since Paint.NET lacks that function.
Original strip: 1982-12-23.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
{We see Garfield at a Christmas tree}
Garfield: I hope this gift is mine!
SFX: rattle rattle rattle
{E.T. for the Atari 2600 falls out of the box... why the box was long, I dunno}
{Garfield sets down the box, unamused. Supposedly he also put the game back in the box, but forgot to close it}
Garfield: I hope it's Odie's
