The video game crash of 1983 was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality, as well as waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers. Home video game revenues peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985. The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the arcade video game market also weakened as the golden age of arcade video games came to an end.
The May Department Stores Company was an American department store holding company, formerly headquartered in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. It was founded in Leadville, Colorado, by David May in 1877, moving to St. Louis in 1905. After many changes in the retail industry, the company merged with Federated Department Stores in 2005.
Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebranded under its current name with an emphasis on consumer electronics in 1983.
The Macintosh Performa is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1992 to 1997. The Performa brand re-used models from Apple's Quadra, Centris, LC, Classic, and Power Macintosh families with model numbers that denoted included software packages or hard drive sizes. Whereas non-Performa Macintosh computers were sold by Apple Authorized Resellers, the Performa was sold through big-box stores and mass-market retailers such as Good Guys, Circuit City, and Sears.
Waldenbooks, operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain, from 1995 as a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as a children's educational toy chain under Walden Kids. In 2011, the chain was liquidated in bankruptcy.
EB Games is an American computer and video games retailer. First established as an American company in 1977 by James Kim with a single electronics-focused location in the King of Prussia mall near Philadelphia, the company has grown into an international corporation. EB Games's parent corporation, GameStop, has its headquarters in Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. When Electronics Boutique was an independent company, its headquarters was in West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania, near West Chester.
Service Merchandise was a retail chain of catalog showrooms carrying jewelry, toys, sporting goods, and electronics. The company, which first began in 1934 as a five-and-dime store, was in existence for 68 years before ceasing operations in 2002.
Paul Terrell is an American businessman. In December 1975, he founded Byte Shop, the first personal computer retailer shop. He helped popularize personal computing to the hobbyist and home computing markets, and was the first retailer to sell an Apple Computer, the Apple I.
Computer City was a chain of United States-based computer superstores operated by Tandy Corporation; the retailer was sold to CompUSA in 1998 and was merged into the CompUSA organization.
IMS Associates, Inc., or IMSAI, was a microcomputer company, responsible for one of the earliest successes in personal computing, the IMSAI 8080. The company was founded in 1973 by William Millard and was based in San Leandro, California. Their first product launch was the IMSAI 8080 in 1975. One of the company's subsidiaries was ComputerLand. IMS stood for "Information Management Sciences".
The Apple Pan is a restaurant in Los Angeles, opened in 1947, that is locally famous for its hamburgers, apple pies served with vanilla ice cream, and banana cream pie.
The Record Bar is a former U.S. retail music/entertainment store chain founded in Durham, North Carolina. The company eventually grew from a single location to 180 stores. One of the largest music retailing chains, it was located primarily in the southeastern United States. From 1960 until the late 1980s, the owners were the (Barrie) Bergman family of Durham. In the mid-to-late 1980s, Record Bar began opening large new stores and remodeled Record Bar stores under the Tracks name, to better reflect the changes taking place in retail music merchandising.
Right Start was a retailer of children's products. They began in 1985 as a catalog company, based out of Los Angeles. The company was founded by Stan Fridstein, Lenny Targon, and Harry Rosenthal who identified a growing market in young, first time parents who were looking for expertise and guidance in choosing high quality baby products. The company opened its first retail store in 1991, in Westlake Village, CA. In 1992, they began expanding, opening up their first location in a Rich's department store in Atlanta, Georgia.
Desmond's was a Los Angeles-based department store, during its existence second only to Harris & Frank as the oldest Los Angeles retail chain, founded in 1862 as a hat shop by Daniel Desmond near the Los Angeles Plaza. The chain as a whole went out of business in 1981 but Desmond's, Inc. continued as a company that went in to other chains to liquidate them. Desmond's stores in Northridge and West Covina were liquidated only in 1986 and survived in Palm Springs into the first years of the 21st century.
Retail in Southern California dates back to its first dry goods store that Jonathan Temple opened in 1827 on Calle Principal, when Los Angeles was still a Mexican village. After the American conquest, as the pueblo grew into a small town surpassing 4,000 population in 1860, dry goods stores continued to open, including the forerunners of what would be local chains. Larger retailers moved progressively further south to the 1880s-1890s Central Business District, which was later razed to become the Civic Center. Starting in the mid-1890s, major stores moved ever southward, first onto Broadway around 3rd, then starting in 1905 to Broadway between 4th and 9th, then starting in 1915 westward onto West Seventh Street up to Figueroa. For half a century Broadway and Seventh streets together formed one of America's largest and busiest downtown shopping districts.
Federated Group was an American chain of consumer electronics retail stores with 67 stores in California, Texas, Arizona, and Kansas. The company was founded by Wilfred Schwartz in 1970 and opened the first deep discount consumer electronics "superstore" in the United States. In 1987, Federated Group was the fourth-largest discounter of consumer electronics in the U.S. Its company headquarters were in City of Commerce, California and later in Sunnyvale, California. Federated Group was sold in 1987 to Atari and sold again in 1989 to Silo.
IBM Product Center was an American retailer wholly owned by International Business Machines that sold the company's office equipment, which consisted at the time mostly of photocopiers, typewriters and personal computers. The first store opened in 1980 in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The Keyboard Company, Inc., was an American electronics company based in Garden Grove, California. It was contracted by Apple Computer to produce the keyboards of their microcomputers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company also produced a number of peripherals separately for Apple's systems. Apple acquired the company in 1982 and renamed it the Apple Accessory Products Division (APD).
