If you\’re a parent who has purchased a video game unit for your child\’s entertainment, you are aware of much they can set you back. Between the console, the game discs or cartridges, and the various controllers available, the expenses seem never-ending. It\’s not absolutely necessary to spend exorbitant sums in order to enjoy the gaming experience. Cheaper games are available to you, such the free flash kids games you can find online, but if you\’re looking for state-of-the-art gaming action, it\’s going to involve a fairly significant investment. It may feel like gaming just gets more and more expensive, but if you look at the history of home video games, you\’ll see that the experience has always come with a stiff price tag.

Consoles that could play multiple games first hit the market in 1976, with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. But the first widely successful system to capture the public imagination was the now-legendary Atari 2600. Atari\’s answer to the Fairchild system took a while to find its feet, but when the home game market was flooded by competition from Magnavox and Bally the following year, the 2600 was the last system standing.

The killer app that made the Atari 2600 a must-have at the end of the Carter era was its port of the smash hit arcade game Space Invaders, where gamers could fought against an inundation of alien spacecraft by picking them off one by one. Families would buy the console for that game alone. The price of a VCS upon its initial release was $200, which works out to over $750 in today\’s economy, and Atari had not lowered the price when it started selling in droves four years later. A Space Invaders cart that went for $21 works out to $80 today.

Success breeds imitators, and toymaker Mattel decided to get in on the action when Atari\’s sales exploded. Their entry in the market, the Intellivision, hit the market in 1979. The Intellivision\’s graphics and sound exceeded that of the Atari 2600, and so did its price tag, selling for $300, equivalent to almost $800 when adjusted for inflation. The Intellivison was relatively successful, and Mattel put out 125 cartridges for the system before the next video game crash led to its demise in 1983.

Not wanting to appear a technological weakling compared to the Intellivision, Atari brought out its own up-market home game system when it released the Atari 5200 in 1982, also costing households $300. That works out to over $600 in today\’s economy. (Yes, inflation was that bad when Reagan took office.)

Mattel wasn\’t the only toy company to try to capture video game market share. Milton Bradley took a break from board games to develop and release its Vectrex system in 1982. Offering graphics based on vector-shapes rather than pixels, its $200 price tag works out to about $450 now. Coleco jumped into the water in 1983 with the ColecoVision, with graphics that rivaled arcade machines and a $175 price point that would cost under $400 now.

Nowadays, $400 would fetch you a game system whose experience would be as rich as a blockbuster action movie, and the games of the eighties seem quaint in comparison. But those quaint games are still as fun as they ever were, and many have been reborn online, as free flash games for kids and adults. You have to buy a computer to play them, but of course, you can do a whole lot else online, like reading informative and interesting articles.

The fun never ends with free kids games, with dozens of games based on your favourite kids shows.

For awesome free kids games based on your favourite YTV shows, check out the latest and greatest at YTV Games!
http://www.ytv.com/games/

Author Bio: The fun never ends with free kids games, with dozens of games based on your favourite kids shows.

Category: Recreation
Keywords: free,online,games,kids,family,computers,technology,arts,entertainment,leisure,tv,internet,teens