E.T. — don’t phone home
QUESTION What caused the great video games crash in the 1980s?
In 1983, the video console industry was hit by a recession that nearly spelled the end of the business.
Many companies went bankrupt or stopped making games. It was caused by confusion in the games market and the advent of home computing.
The industry contracted from a worldwide market of $42billion in 1982 to less than $14 billion by 1985.
The wild success of early games such as Space Invaders, Pong, Asteroids and PacMan had led to an explosion of home games consoles.
Alongside the famous Atari 2600, companies such as Odyssey, Intellivision, Vectrex, ColecoVision and Astrocade produced machines.
This created confusion for young gamers. Each console came with its own set of games from the company that manufactured it as well as an expansive web of third-party games.
not only were the games not cross compatible, most of them were rubbish. For each hit such as Adventure and Centipede, there were 20 knock-offs of Pong and Pac-Man churned out on to the market by inexperienced coders.
The focus for the problem was placed on Atari’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial in 1982 — a hastily assembled game that followed the release of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster. It’s widely considered to be the worst video game of all time.
Within the unassuming cartridge lurked a labyrinthine nightmare of bad graphics that haunted children with endless pits, collectible Reese’s Pieces and a lack of any clear way to win.
Furthermore, the rise of inexpensive home computers saw developers turn their backs on consoles in favour of the growing PC market.
The console industry was captured by the Japanese in 1985 with the launch of the nintendo Entertainment System.
Practical design, coupled with a library of decent games, secured nintendo’s dominance of the market until the release of Sony’s Playstation in 1994 and Microsoft’s Xbox in 2001.
Malcolm Cassidy, New Malden, Surrey.
QUESTION How did Scottish club Motherwell FC end up winning the Copa del Rey, a Spanish cup competition?
ThIS was a special version of the Copa del Rey in the 1920s played between touring teams Motherwell FC, runners-up in the Scottish First Division, and Swansea of the English Second Division, and Spain’s Real Madrid and Real Union.
At that time Spanish football did not have a league system and revolved around knockout tournaments.
In 1902, the Copa de la Coronacion was inaugurated after Carlos Padros, later president of Real Madrid, suggested a football tournament to celebrate the coronation of Alfonso XIII.
This became the Copa del Rey, the King’s Cup, a knockout tournament that was Spain’s national Championship until the foundation of the Campeonato de Liga or League Championship in 1928.
Alfonso XIII was a football fan and donated the Copa del Rey trophy. Madrid was his team and he bestowed the prefix Real or ‘royal’ on them in 1920.
In 1927, Motherwell and Swansea were touring the Continent and taking part in exhibition matches.
Motherwell and Swansea faced each other for the right to be the foreign guests in the final of a special version of the Copa Del Rey. Union and Madrid played each other for the other spot in the final. Real Union had won the Copa del Rey that season, Madrid were semi-finalists.
It was the first time two British sides faced each other on Spanish soil, with the Scots winning 4-3 in what was described by the king as a ‘brilliant display of scientific football’.
Real won their opening match. On May 17, 1927, The Steelmen thumped the Spanish giants 3-1 at Estadio Chamartin, then Real Madrid’s home ground.
It wasn’t the only trophy Motherwell took home. A trip to Barcelona followed a few days later. A 2-2 draw with the Catalan side and a 1-0 win over Swansea saw Motherwell win the Barcelona Cup.
Alun Jenkins, Swansea.
QUESTION Is there lost classic literature waiting to be found?
ThE holy grail of lost literature is The history Of Cardenio, a play written by Shakespeare and John Fletcher, the Bard’s successor as playwright for The King’s Men theatre company. It was performed by the King’s Men in 1613, three years before Shakespeare’s death.
Based on an episode of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Cardenio is a young man driven mad after being betrayed in love.
Then there’s the comedic epic poem Margites, written by homer in 700BC, before the Iliad and the Odyssey.
The poem was so famous in the classical world that the phrase ‘mad as Margites’ was a popular saying.
Plato quotes from it in Alcibiades: ‘he knew many things, but all badly,’ as does Aristotle in nicomachean Ethics: ‘The gods taught him neither to dig nor to plough, nor any other skill; he failed in every craft.’ Aristotle stated, ‘as are the Iliad and Odyssey to our tragedies, so is the Margites to our comedies’.
There are works we don’t even know we have lost. In 1258 the Mongols sacked the house of Wisdom in Baghdad, the world’s greatest repository of knowledge.
The Great Library of Alexandria was lost through the purges of Ptolemy VIII, fire and rebellion.
A lost classic novel is The Isle Of The Cross by Moby Dick author herman Melville. On a trip to nantucket in 1852, he was told about Agatha hatch, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper who saved a shipwrecked sailor, married him and was then abandoned.
his novel based on the story was rejected. The author, a literary failure in his lifetime, may have destroyed it.
Jill Cotton, Castleford, W. Yorks.