Atari: Game Over

I don't want to spoil the ending of "Atari: Game Over", but it's one of the major reasons this was a disappointment. The filmmakers go to great lengths to play up the urban legend of the long-buried "E.T." cartridges that supposedly killed the video game industry in 1983, but the end result is an underwhelming payoff to say the least.

But the movie itself is all over the road, covering everything from the history of Atari, the guy who actually made "E.T.", the key players in the company, the guy who oversaw the actual burial, a legion of tourists who dropped by to see the excavation, the dispelling of the myth that "E.T." killed the industry . . . to Ernest Cline and his DeLorean thrown in for good measure, apparently. There's just so much going on.

As such, the best parts of the movie are the interviews with Atari personnel. These are the most worthwhile of the talking heads, and I would love to have seen more. To the movie's credit, it does have some nice production values. But the ending feels like a cheat on the part of the filmmakers, especially with so much editorializing.

5/10

A crew digs up all of the old Atari 2600 game cartridges of "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" that were tossed into a landfill in the 1980s.

There seem to have been a growing amount of video game documentaries over the last few years (roughly 2012-2015), and many of them understandably focus on Atari and bring up the E.T. story. Most of these are pretty good documentaries. And this is one of them.

This was the first I heard that Atari was filled with drugs and had a party atmosphere. However, knowing what I do of computer geeks in the 1980s and 1990s, this hardly surprises me. Even Steve Jobs had his share of experiments with drugs. (Did Bill Gates?) We also get a cool back story on Yars' Revenge (Atari's best-selling original title for the 2600), but E.T. is really the central focus of this story and it pays off. The truth finally comes out about its promotion, failure, alleged burial and the rumors that the game's notoriety "killed" Atari in 1984. Of course, the brand still exists, but that is a whole other story.

My earliest memory was Pac-Man in the video arcades. So, even though the 2600 was innovative, true video game addicts knew how bad EVERY game was for the 2600. It wasn't until the 5200 that the console really improved: Pac-Man looked like Pac-Man/Centipede looked identical to the arcade game AND had a track ball accessory to improve it! I never played E.T. and so I don't care to comment on it. I don't understand why they focused so much on this topic without talking about so many other facets of Atari. How did they go down with the success of arcade games and the 5200? Remember, this was the first home console that not only resembled the actual arcade games but had a PAUSE as well! The best feature ever! Plus, it's hard to have empathy for a designer that had so much ego that it blinded the reality of coming out with a hit game, in a fraction of the time it took previously, that would be of any quality. I have to give it a low rating because it spent too much time on this excavation.

Atari: Game Over (2014)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Entertaining documentary from director Zac Penn about the fall of Atari and how many people blamed the disaster sales of the video game E.T.. The documentary talks about the rise of Atari and of course it's fall from grace as well as goes into details about the making of the video game based on the Steven Spielberg movie. We also get current footage of them digging up a landfill where legend has it contains millions of copies of the game that didn't sell.

The term video game nerd is used several times throughout this documentary but you certainly don't have to be one in order to enjoy this film, which is without question a fun little gem that makes you realize how the truth is often very far from the legend. We're told about the history of this video and we get interviews with video game experts as well as the man who designed the game. They discuss what kind of pressure was on for it to be released by Christmas and why something just went wrong along the way.

If you're a fan of video games or familiar with the legend of the E.T. game then you're really going to love what's offered here but I think those unfamiliar with the legend will probably enjoy it even more because it's just fascinating to think that one video game brought down a billion dollar industry. Of course, the truth is eventually revealed. Video nerd or not, this is a very entertaining documentary that's worth watching.

I should say in opening, that the whole Atari games console thing passed me by.

This is, on the surface, the story of how a nostalgic geek had a chunk of desert dug up to hunt for games cartridges that were dumped back in the early 80s.

As the film develops it becomes more than that, and delves into the story of how a household name company and an intrinsic part of many peoples childhood, crashed spectacularly.

Many of the individuals at the heart of the success and failure of the games' development, come together to tell their part in the story and to be present at the enjoyable final conclusion.

Whilst seemingly aware of the geekieness of the subject matter, the story is informative and told with obvious affection, nostalgia and an ample share of humour. All in all, an entertaining piece of film-making.