Kate Willaert is a video game historian and essayist. She recently released part one in a series of video essays on the origins of Nintendo’s famed mascot Mario. This first video looks at how Mario’s video game debut in the 1981 arcade hit Donkey Kong started out as licensed game based on the syndicated comic strip character “Popeye.”

In August 1987, Apple announced HyperCard, a new type of middleware for the Macintosh that made it possible for anyone to create a polished application combining text, graphics, and hyperlinks. One of the first companies to embrace HyperCard was Activision, the well-known game publisher, which released Focal Point and Business Class, two business productivity tools created by Danny Goodman, who also authored the first definitive book on HyperCard.

But why would a company known for games like Pitfall! on the Atari VCS and Ghostbusters on the Commodore 64 get into business software for the Macintosh? The answer to that question requires looking back at the early history of Activision and the company’s struggles to stay afloat after the collapse of its original home video game cartridge business.

Kevin Bunch is perhaps the world’s foremost historian of the Atari VCS–also known as the Atari 2600–and other 1970s home video game consoles. Since 2017, Bunch has produced Atari Archive, a series of videos available on YouTube that document the history of every VCS game in release order. More recently, Bunch authored the first in a series of books based on his video series, Atari Archive Vol. 1: 1977-1978 (Press Run, $34.99), which chronicles the first 20 games released for the system and provides additional information on Atari’s competitors during this time period, including Fairchild Semiconductor, Magnavox, and RCA.

At the June 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Commodore International announced a cut in the wholesale price of its Commodore 64 (C64) computer from $360 to $199. This move was the latest salvo in a price war initiated the previous August by Commodore’s arch-nemesis, Texas Instruments, which announced a $100 rebate on its TI-99/4A computer, bringing its effective price down to $199. This had been TI’s attempt to undercut Commodore’s VIC-20, the predecessor to the C64, which was then priced at $239. But now that Commodore had brought the price of the newer and more capable C64 down to $199, TI was boned.

When Computer Chronicles debuted as a national program in the fall of 1983, the IBM Personal Computer dominated what was then still called the microcomputer market. But the PC standard had yet to cement itself as the only approach to small business computers. Hewlett-Packard, one of the original Silicon Valley companies, offered its own MS-DOS machine, the HP-150 Touchscreen Personal Computer. Cyril Yansouni, the general manager of HP’s personal computer division, appeared in the inaugural Chronicles broadcast to demonstrate the HP-150 and explain how its touchscreen display and 3.5-inch floppy disk drives help drive the evolution of the micro forward.

There were three basic means of distributing software in the 1980s: retailers, mail-order catalogs, and bulletin board systems (BBS). The latter provided the earliest form of “online” distribution, albeit one that was difficult to commercialize. After all, a developer couldn’t ask users to post their credit card number on a BBS.

But you could attach a message to a program uploaded to a BBS that invited people to pay you for software they found valuable. That’s exactly what Andrew Fluegleman did in 1982. Wendy Woods profiled Fluegelman in a January 1985 Computer Chronicles episode that I previously covered. His IBM PC communications program PC-Talk became the first example of “shareware” (although Fluegelman used the term “freeware,” which he trademarked.)

In 1980, Mattel Electronics released the Horse Race Analyzer, a calculator-type device that promised to help you pick winning horses at the track. Developed by a former cosmetics marketing executive and a college mathematics professor, a Mattel executive claimed you would get a better return using the Analyzer to place winning bets than from purchasing U.S. government Treasury Bills. But at an initial retail price of $100, the device failed to match the success of Mattel’s earlier handheld games. Yet the Horse Race Analyzer continued to be sold for more than a decade after Mattel Electronics itself collapsed and even made a brief appearance on a March 1987 Computer Chronicles episode.

Tax preparation software was always a favorite topic of Computer Chronicles. This next episode from March 1988 included some returning guests and updates to several products featured in prior shows. As I discussed in an episode of the Chronicles Revisited Podcast, this was a period when a number of small developers competed in the tax preparation software market. We would not start to see the industry consolidation towards TurboTax under Intuit for another 5 or 6 years.

At the 1985 summer Consumer Electronics Show, Jack Tramiel’s Atari Corporation demonstrated a CD-ROM drive running the Grolier’s KnowldegeDisc, a digital version of the Grolier’s encyclopedia based on software created by Gary Kildall’s Activenture, Inc. At the time, Tramiel and his team said they would soon ship a working CD-ROM drive for its new Atari 520ST computer that would cost no more than $500.

It was a ludicrous promise. The companies actually developing CD-ROM players in late 1985, such as Sony, Hitachi, and Philips, were all quoting retail prices of between $700 and $1,000. Even Tramiel knew that he wouldn’t be able to deliver a $500 CD-ROM drive in 1985. That didn’t stop him from continuing to promise it in 1986 or 1987 or 1988, however.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, WordStar was the gold standard for word processors on microcomputers. The publisher of WordStar, MicroPro International, was one of the first successful computer software companies. But as the early CP/M machines gave way to the MS-DOS-based IBM Personal Computers, WordStar quickly lost market share to an upstart rival, WordPerfect. To add insult to injury, WordStar also faced a split in its loyal customer base thanks to a clone backed by longtime Computer Chronicles contributor George Morrow. While WordStar survived, it never again thrived.