More on the details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_video_game_crash

I'd love to know if any of you remember this, or were affected by it (sorry, that sounds like I should be giving you a helpline number you can call in confidence )...

I wonder was it actually beneficial in the long run, as it allowed Nintendo and Sega to come to the fore with higher quality games overall, not to mention the emergence of the PC market

I also wondered how you could tell a 'low quality' title apart from even the top sellers

I remember it vaguely. A lot of the smaller players died out, some tried to move into the personal computer business, with Atari being the most successful, although they had already had limited success with the expensive 400 and 800 models, and later the 600. The ST brought them success, but they, like Commodore, were fighting against the IBM PC clones moving from businesses into the home on the one side and Apple on the other, which had a better ecosystem built up.

Atari were trying to sell it as a games machine that also did serious stuff. Commodore never really got their message straight and the Amiga fizzled away into nothingness as well.

Coleco and Vectrex were probably the most notable casualties, at least in the UK. They were the only "big" names that got to this side of the Pond. The Vectrex was very interesting, including its own cabinet and screen, but never really took off - too little, too late, it had a black-and-white vector display, hence the name, and only a few games. The ColecoVision was a little more "on target", being pretty much a 2600 clone. Philips also had their own console, which was head and shoulders above the Atari 2600, but never caught on - it was too expensive, much like their CD-i video player...

Yeah, I got into the games side of things with an Atari ST - Streetfighter 2 with a rubbish joystick FTW!