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To fight back, video-game leaders have forged into the home-computer business. Atari's line (priced from-$199 to $399) has captured 15% of the market, but Mattel's Aquarius ($85 to $100), unveiled last year, is selling poorly. Wall Street has been enthusiastic about Coleco's Adam computer, scheduled to reach stores this month. Besides being able to play Donkey Kong and Zaxxon, the $600 Adam system includes a high-speed memory, a built-in program for editing text and a letter-quality printer. Before now, assembling a computer system with Adam's features would have cost at least $1,000. Adam's prospects have been clouded, however, by a Wall Street Journal article two weeks ago contending that the computer did not work as well as promised. Last week a Coleco shareholder sued the company, claiming its officers had concealed serious production problems.
any companies have avoided the hazards of building computer hardware and concentrated on the games themselves. The strategy at Parker Bros, is to sell multiple versions of games that can be played on a wide variety of machines. Says Parker Bros. Executive Vice President Richard Stearns: "Trying to decide which systems will survive and which will be dinosaurs is a volatile and risky guessing game." The company's new $28-to-$40 Q*Bert game, which was designed to be used in eight different computers or cartridge players, jumped to No. 1 on Billboard's Top 25 video-game chart within two months of its release.
None of the newest home video games, however, seem to be blockbusters in the same league as Atari's alltime champ Pac-Man, which came out 19 months ago and has sold more than 7 million cartridges at up to $40. "The day of the big hit looks to be over," says Spencer Boise, a Mattel vice president. Teen-agers seem to be growing weary of watching blips bounce around on a screen and are demanding more imaginative games with greater realism.
One may have already arrived. At scores of arcades, which have always been the proving ground for new games, players are lining up to try their luck at Dragon's Lair. Unlike any of its predecessors, the game uses a laser video disc to project a movie-like color picture. By wielding a joy stick and mashing a button, a player can direct his own animated cartoon, in which the hero, Dirk the Daring, tries to kill villains, elude traps and slay the dreaded dragon in a gallant quest to rescue the king's imprisoned daughter. Arcades have ordered some 10,000 of the games at an average price of $4,300 in little more than three months. Ironically, Dragon's Lair is being manufactured by Cinematronics of El Cajon, Calif., an ailing company that has been reorganizing under Chapter 11 for the past year. The firm's president, Jim Pierce, says that Dirk the Daring may save Cinematronics along with the king's daughter.