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1983 has seen many sequels and prequels in video games, such as Mario Bros. and Pole Position II , along with new titles such as Astron Belt , Champion Baseball , Dragon's Lair , Elevator Action , Spy Hunter and Track & Field . Major events include the video game crash of 1983 in North America, and the third generation of video game consoles beginning with the launch of Nintendo's Family Computer (Famicom) and Sega's SG-1000 in Japan. The year's highest-grossing video game was Namco's arcade game Pole Position , while the year's best-selling home system was Nintendo's Game & Watch for the third time since 1980.
Pole Position , a racing game by Namco, was the most successful arcade game of 1983. [4]
In Japan, Game Machine magazine began publishing half-monthly charts of top-grossing arcade games from June 1, 1983. [5] The following titles were the top-grossing arcade video games on the Game Machine charts from June to December 1983.
Month | Table arcade cabinet | Upright/cockpit cabinet | Ref | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
First half | Second half | First half | Second half | ||
May | Champion Baseball | Astron Belt | [6] | ||
June | [7] [5] | ||||
July | [8] [9] | ||||
August | Champion Baseball | Elevator Action | [10] [11] | ||
September | Elevator Action | Ultra Quiz | Astron Belt | [12] [13] | |
October | Pole Position | Star Wars | [14] [15] | ||
November | Xevious | Joshi Volleyball | Laser Grand Prix | Pole Position II | [16] [17] |
December | Exerion | Hyper Olympic | TX-1 | [18] [19] |
In the United States, the following titles were the highest-grossing arcade games of 1983, according to RePlay magazine, the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA), and Cash Box magazine.
Rank | RePlay | AMOA [20] | Cash Box [21] | Play Meter |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Pole Position [22] | Pole Position [23] | Ms. Pac-Man , Pole Position | Dragon's Lair [24] |
2 | Dragon's Lair , Mr. Do! [25] | Bump 'n' Jump , Galaga , Ms. Pac-Man , Mr. Do! , Bag Man , Nibbler , Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom , Jungle King (Jungle Hunt) Donkey Kong , Joust , Time Pilot , Q*bert | Unknown | |
3 | Dragon's Lair | |||
4 | Unknown | Millipede | ||
5 | Unknown | — | ||
6 | ||||
7 | ||||
8 | ||||
9 | ||||
10 | ||||
11 | ||||
12 | ||||
13 |
The following titles were the best-selling home video games of 1983.
Rank | Title | Platform | Publisher | Licensor | Release Year | Genre | Sales | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Ms. Pac-Man | Atari 2600 | Atari, Inc. | Midway | 1983 | Maze | 1,963,078 | [26] |
2 | Donkey Kong | ColecoVision | Coleco | Nintendo | 1982 | Platformer | 1,500,000 | [27] |
3 | Centipede | Atari 2600 | Atari, Inc. | — | 1983 | Shoot 'em up | 1,475,240 | [26] |
4 | Pitfall! | Atari 2600 | Activision | — | 1982 | Platformer | 1,000,000+ | [28] [29] |
5 | Pac-Man | Atari 2600 | Atari, Inc. | Namco | 1982 | Maze | 684,569 | [26] |
6 | Night Driver | Atari 2600 | Atari, Inc. | — | 1980 | Racing | 580,959 | |
7 | Space Invaders | Atari 2600 | Atari, Inc. | Taito | 1980 | Shoot 'em up | 435,353 | |
8 | Warlords | Atari 2600 | Atari, Inc. | — | 1981 | Action | 372,672 | |
9 | Breakout | Atari 2600 | Atari, Inc. | — | 1978 | Block breaker | 312,672 | |
10 | Centipede | Atari 2600 | Atari, Inc. | — | 1983 | Shoot 'em up | 100,499 |
Rank | System(s) | Manufacturer | Type | Generation | Sales | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Japan | Worldwide | |||||
1 | Game & Watch | Nintendo | Handheld | — | — | 5,300,000 [30] |
2 | Atari 2600 (Atari VCS) | Atari, Inc. | Console | Second | — | 3,000,000 [31] |
3 | Commodore 64 (C64) | Commodore | Computer | 8-bit | — | 2,000,000 [32] |
4 | ColecoVision | Coleco | Console | Second | — | 1,500,000 [27] |
5 | Family Computer (Famicom / NES) | Nintendo | Console | Third | 1,000,000+ [33] [34] | 1,000,000+ |
6 | IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) | IBM | Computer | 8-bit / 16-bit | — | 850,000 [35] |
7 | Intellivision | Mattel | Console | Second | — | 750,000 [36] |
8 | Atari 400 / Atari 800 | Atari, Inc. | Computer | 8-bit | — | 500,000 [32] |
9 | Apple II | Apple Inc. | Computer | 8-bit | — | 420,000 [32] |
10 | NEC PC-88 / PC-98 | NEC | Computer | 8-bit / 16-bit | 360,000 [37] [38] | 360,000+ |
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Personal computer
Console
Arcade
Console
Personal computer
Pitfall won the award from Electronic Games magazine as the best video game adventure of 1983, and in 1982 sold more than 1 million copies.
Within two months of the Famicom's July 1983 launch around 500,000 had been sold. By the end of the year sales had topped the million mark.
The Nintendo Famicom was released in July of 1983 and by the end of the year had sold more than a million units.