Atari: Game Over

As a young child, I grew up squarely in the video game era where the Nintendo Entertainment System was the dominant home console. That being said, my grandma had this "strange black box contraption" (with a controller featuring a single button and a joystick) that I would tinker around with while visiting. Little did I know that I was experiencing the legendary Atari 2600. When I stumbled across this documentary, I didn't know if it would hold my interest. An hour later, I was completely enraptured and on the edge of my seat.

There are two main plot lines that are established during this documentary...

First, the filmmakers explore the legend/reality of the now-infamous "E.T. game cartridge dump", where supposedly a million cartridges of that game were disposed of in a giant hole out in the New Mexico desert. The history of that game is discussed (including conversations with its primary creators themselves), as well as the reasons why the company might have decided to "cut bait and run" after producing what is widely considered to be one of the worst games ever created.

In between the archaeological digs out in the desert, the documentary also explores the history of Atari as a company. This includes its domination of the coin-op business, translation into the home market, and failure to anticipate the expanding nature of the business (like Nintendo would do a number of years later).

As the documentary progresses, I found myself getting more and more invested in what the excavation crews would find out in that New Mexico desert. I won't spoil what the exact findings are, but suffice it to say it has some fairly dramatic moments. It also provided me with some history about a company (Atari) and era (late 70s, early 80s) that I didn't have a ton of knowledge about.

Thus, "Atari: Game Over" really sucked me in and easily exceeded all my expectations coming in. If you have fond nostalgic memories of that time period, or just are a scholar of all things video games, you will enjoy this entertaining and informative little jaunt.

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.

I'm exaggerating of course. But it seems like a particular game on Atari is (was?) considered the worst game ever made. I don't like tags like that - and watching the guy responsible for the game, it is even worse seeing this being said. Now I thought that this would be more of a history lesson on Atari - but that is only the side story here.

With an hour running time not much else could be expected. But digging (pun intended) in the past might uncover something ... well at least will bury the rumors. Ok enough puns - probably. Having watched this I almost want to play ET now ... although ... well at least the documentary is short and really enlightening - for anyone who's interested that is.

If you're into retro video games, or in the video gaming community in general, there's little chance you haven't heard of the widespread story of the video game crash of 1983, which lead to Atari, one of the most recognized and popular video game companies of the time, losing millions in revenue and causing the entire industry to almost collapse as a whole. The crash was eventually attributed to numerous different things, such as inflation and, most notably, the oversaturation of the home console market because nearly every technology company tried to create its own video game console, yet one myth still stands tall amongst the truth. That myth is that the video game crash was because of Atari's video game adaptation of E.T., a video game that is widely considered to be the worst video game ever made.

Such a compelling and unorthodox story owes itself to be covered in a documentary, and thankfully, there's Zak Penn's Atari: Game Over, a sixty-six minute documentary available for free on Microsoft's Xbox 360 video application. The documentary works to establish the story of Atari's rise to fame before it all came crashing down in the early-to-mid eighties, as well as articulate the real reason for the company's financial troubles instead of reiterating the common myth. In addition, Penn covers the fabled story of the cartridge burial in the Alamogordo landfill in New Mexico.

For years, rumor has had it that hundreds of unsold E.T. cartridges were buried deep in the Alamogordo landfill before being smothered by a thick layer of concrete. Spliced in between interviews with people close to Atari, and those who worked for the company during its heyday, Penn covers the excavation of the landfill, as he works with the landfill's employee Joe Lewandowski. Lewandowski is almost certain that beneath the surface of the dump lies the cartridges so much so that he has created an intricate map that reveals the location of where they'd be.

One of the souls interviewed during the film is Howard Scott Warshaw, who was a video game programmer and creator for Atari during its rise, creating the console's classic games like Yars Revenge and the video game adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Warshaw was also tasked with creating the aforementioned E.T., a task he was only given five weeks to complete because Atari wanted a presumably hot title for the forthcoming holiday season. Warshaw tirelessly worked to try and complete the game, but the end result was a game that was widely panned for its cryptic, often frustrating structure and layout among other serious problems. Following E.T.'s release, Atari experienced enormous profit declines, a fact later attributed to not only the oversaturation of the video gaming market but because Atari kept funneling advertising money in their flagship console, the Atari 2600, in a time where it commanded the market share and the next generation consoles were already on their way. Warshaw, among over 7,000 other employees, were eventually let go in the mid-eighties, following continuously abysmal performances and small profits.

Atari: Game Over chronicles all this in a delightfully compelling manner, giving us history and the contemporary excavation in a way that will not only please fans of video games but anyone looking for a quirky, offbeat story. Penn is also careful to note why Atari and the video gaming industry are so significant in the world, affirming the idea that the early video gaming consoles turned the Television, a once exclusively passive medium, into an active medium, where one could control their actions and enter alternate worlds with untold possibilities, only limited by one's imagination. In addition, it's also nice to see some affirmation of E.T.'s legacy and quality rather than harping on mindlessly-uttered derogatory statements concerning the game's quality. Humbly emotional scenes come when Warshaw, who now works as a psychotherapist, discusses the imprint E.T. has had on him during his presence at the landfill's excavation and we see the effect one's panned art has had on him over the years. It's a tender scene in a very well done documentary.

Directed by: Zak Penn.

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.