Hacker Cinema
Atari: Game Over
2014 · Film · documentary · 66 min
Directed by Zak Penn
The Xbox Originals documentary that chronicles the fall of the Atari Corporation through the lens of one of the biggest mysteries of all time, dubbed “The Great Video Game Burial of 1983.” Rumor claims that millions of returned and unsold E.T. cartridges were buried in the desert, but what really happened there?
6 positivefrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
It really is worth watching “Atari: Game Over” to get a sense of everything that went down during the early video game console era. I highly recommend it
I think you mean the rumored Atari cartridges in the landfill documentary. That was pretty fun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari:_Game_Over
Sometimes when I’ve lost something and am looking for it, I think “what if it’s simply not here?”. Then I think, “it still likely exists, where is it?”
In case this story is interesting, then definitely watch "Atari: Game Over" documentary (available on Amazon Prime). It deals with the company, the people, and of course the dug.
The Atari: Game Over movie is on Netflix. It'll give people more insight. The guy was an exceptional programmer and good game designer who was dealt a death march with a hard deadline.
If you want to learn much more about this, watch the movie, "Atari: Game Over": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/
I loved E.T. when I was a kid and actually managed to finish it. I never got the hate. My guess is that I only saw the movie much later and so had absolutely no expectation whatsoever.
To me, it was just another Atari 2600 game. In fact, after racking my brain for hours on games like Swordquest[1], and almost injuring myself and destroying my controllers playing Decathlon[2], E.T. was nothing. Recognizable characters! A quest that made sense! Challenging controls, not inhuman controls!
After seeing Atari: Game Over [3] I now think this game is significant, not for its reputation but for the story behind it. It is a great case study.
All my admiration to Howard Scott Warshaw[4] for his career as a game developer, what he went through after the E.T. debacle, and finding his way out in the aftermath.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordquest [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Activision_Decathlon [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MT_msVoRAg [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Scott_Warshaw