Atari: Game Over (1 Viewer)

[ghostguy123]

I would consider myself more of a jock than a nerd, but my inner nerd game out wanting to see this documentary.

Not bad. Coulda been better with more interviews and stuff, but worth a watch I would say.

 

[MaxThreshold]

Definitely worth it.

 

[grateful zed]

cliff notes

 

[msudaisy26]

cliff notes

Atari was a video game system in the 70's and 80's.

Lots of people played Atari and liked it a lot.

Atari no longer exists.

 

[Encyclopedia Brown]

Did they mention about the bazillion unsold cartridges of "ET" being buried in the New Mexico desert, or is that an urban legend?

 

[ghostguy123]

Did they mention about the bazillion unsold cartridges of "ET" being buried in the New Mexico desert, or is that an urban legend?

I think they did mention it once.

 

[ClownCausedChaos2]

Did they mention about the bazillion unsold cartridges of "ET" being buried in the New Mexico desert, or is that an urban legend?

Absolutely true. They just dug it up a few years ago.

 

[T Bell]

cliff notes

Atari was a video game system in the 70's and 80's.

Lots of people played Atari and liked it a lot.

Atari no longer exists.

Cliff Notes isn't good enough. I want a haiku.

 

[Copeman]

I enjoyed it. Sounds like Atari was a cool place to work back in the day. Especially if you were a game programmer.

 

[Ted Lange as your Bartender]

cliff notes

Atari was a video game system in the 70's and 80's.Lots of people played Atari and liked it a lot.

Atari no longer exists.

Cliff Notes isn't good enough. I want a haiku.

Atari was king

They made E.T. in five weeks

It did not end well

 

[Copeman]

E.T. was bad, really bad. But it wasn't "the" worst game. The dude that made it comes across as a little self-righteous to me (imo), but I did feel bad for him. Had he had more then 5 weeks to make the game, it would have been a lot better.

Blame the company, not the man.

 

[TheAristocrat]

I liked the documentary. Brought back some memories of waking up at 5:00 AM as a kid and throwing on some Atari until the rest of the family woke up.

 

[Eulogys]

Reminds of waking up in the middle of the night when I was 9 and drinking my Dad's vodka straight out of the bottle while playing. Fortunately, I don't play atari or drink vodka anymore.

 

[Juxtatarot]

Did they mention about the bazillion unsold cartridges of "ET" being buried in the New Mexico desert, or is that an urban legend?

Absolutely true. They just dug it up a few years ago.

Spoiler

It's partially true. This is a major part of the documentary. There was a warehouse dump of many games including E.T. E.T. was only something like 10% of the games found. (Although it was in a New Mexico landfill not some pristine desert.)

 

[mlball77]

I enjoyed it.

 

[Juxtatarot]

Other than the mistakes made with E.T., the documentary didn't really didn't get into why video games sales slumped so much. By maybe 1982 or so, I recall the better games being made by Activision. I'm not sure if Atari got a piece of those revenues. Maybe people just shifted to games on computers like the Commodore 64?

 

[rick6668]

Other than the mistakes made with E.T., the documentary didn't really didn't get into why video games sales slumped so much. By maybe 1982 or so, I recall the better games being made by Activision. I'm not sure if Atari got a piece of those revenues. Maybe people just shifted to games on computers like the Commodore 64?

Decent write up on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

 

[matttyl]

I would consider myself more of a jock than a nerd, but my inner nerd game out wanting to see this documentary.

Not bad. Coulda been better with more interviews and stuff, but worth a watch I would say.

No one else caught that?

 

[rockaction]

Heh. Cool movie. Just rented it on amazon.com due to the recs here. A little choppy in the narrative, but one can catch on. Would have loved to hear more about the archaeology part of it.

Spoiler

Love how the ending is Raiders. And the guy -- HSW? -- didn't come off as defensive; I thought he was pretty cool and explicitly admitted his hubris

 

[Amused to Death]

Just watched this on Netflix last night. Its not just Atari, but does talk about the E.T. debacle and the crash of the gaming industry in the mid-80s.

 

[Osaurus]

Caught part of it. Seemed interesting.

 

[SlaX]

E.T. was bad, really bad. But it wasn't "the" worst game. The dude that made it comes across as a little self-righteous to me (imo), but I did feel bad for him. Had he had more then 5 weeks to make the game, it would have been a lot better.

Blame the company, not the man.

Every other game he made was gold for Atari. Yet, he's only remembered for ET. He has a right to be self-righteous, however, he's never come across that way in any interview I've seen him in. He even appeared in the AVGN's movie about the ET game. Seems like a cool guy to me.

 

[SlaX]

Did they mention about the bazillion unsold cartridges of "ET" being buried in the New Mexico desert, or is that an urban legend?

Absolutely true. They just dug it up a few years ago.

Actually, true and false. There wasn't a bazillion unsold ET cartridges buried there. There was a couple of cases of ET buried there, yes. But there was also several thousand other GOOD games buried there too. The burial wasn't Atari trying to hide their mistake. It was one of their warehouses trying to get rid of inventory that just wouldn't sell anymore.

I see Juxtatarot mentioned some of this above.

 

[ghostguy123]

Other than the mistakes made with E.T., the documentary didn't really didn't get into why video games sales slumped so much

Yeah it did a bit talking about how they overspent with far too much inventory, had to cut 80% of the overall workforce, and things just fizzled out because of it.

ET just sped up a process that was already happening for them.

 

[SlaX]

Other than the mistakes made with E.T., the documentary didn't really didn't get into why video games sales slumped so much

Yeah it did a bit talking about how they overspent with far too much inventory, had to cut 80% of the overall workforce, and things just fizzled out because of it.

ET just sped up a process that was already happening for them.

I don't recall because it's been awhile since I saw the doc, but they didn't mention how much Pac-Man was the original catalyst in the eventual crash, did they?

 

[grateful zed]

cliff notes

Atari was a video game system in the 70's and 80's.

Lots of people played Atari and liked it a lot.

Atari no longer exists.

when did they officially go under.

i was the master of asteroids, joust and defender at out local arcade. the only thing i would hold against them is their single handed destruction of pinball.

 

[pats3in4]

I was going to post this in the Netflix thread. Very entertaining documentary. I love the archaeological dig for the buried E.T. cartridges and the event it spawned. I had no idea those were dug up last year. The programmer who made E.T. absolutely got a bum rap. I cannot imagine cranking out a finished video game in 5 weeks to meet Christmas sales.

The one thing I thought the movie lacked was more detail on why Atari failed. It talks about financial losses, huge layoffs, etc. and the lone rationale given (if I recall correctly) was that Atari tried selling 2600s into a saturated market. The teenager I was back then remembers it as much better game platforms entering the fray and Atari couldn't keep up.

 

[Bonfire]

Was underwhelmed, was ok but that's it. Probably because I was ready for something more like King of Kong, which is fantastic.

 

[Tom Skerritt]

Other than the mistakes made with E.T., the documentary didn't really didn't get into why video games sales slumped so much

Yeah it did a bit talking about how they overspent with far too much inventory, had to cut 80% of the overall workforce, and things just fizzled out because of it.ET just sped up a process that was already happening for them.

I don't recall because it's been awhile since I saw the doc, but they didn't mention how much Pac-Man was the original catalyst in the eventual crash, did they?

Yeah, I wish it would have talked more about Pac Man. I remember waiting for that game to come out, and expecting it to be like the stand up arcade game. We were beyond excited. And the Atari game was terrible. It wasn't even close. I think that was the most disappointed I ever was for Atari.

 

[T Bell]

cliff notes

Atari was a video game system in the 70's and 80's.Lots of people played Atari and liked it a lot.

Atari no longer exists.

Cliff Notes isn't good enough. I want a haiku.

Atari was king

They made E.T. in five weeks

It did not end well

That was beautiful, man.

 

[NorvilleBarnes]

Really enjoyed it. Could watch documentaries about early games and computers and software every single night.

 

[Psychopav]

Other than the mistakes made with E.T., the documentary didn't really didn't get into why video games sales slumped so much

Yeah it did a bit talking about how they overspent with far too much inventory, had to cut 80% of the overall workforce, and things just fizzled out because of it.ET just sped up a process that was already happening for them.

I don't recall because it's been awhile since I saw the doc, but they didn't mention how much Pac-Man was the original catalyst in the eventual crash, did they?

Yeah, I wish it would have talked more about Pac Man. I remember waiting for that game to come out, and expecting it to be like the stand up arcade game. We were beyond excited. And the Atari game was terrible. It wasn't even close. I think that was the most disappointed I ever was for Atari.

True, yet didn't we all still log hours of playtime on that game...

 

[ghostguy123]

The dude working at the dump site was MONEY. I wonder if the guy who made this documentary would have even made it if he hadn't met that guy first Then again, I have no idea if he met him before or not. If not, then wow, what a stroke of luck that that guy was so damn MONEY!!

I kinda see why most of the focus was on the ET game, considering the end was based on the build up of the dig and the urban legend of the million ET games buried in the desert.

Still pretty darn good though.

 

[SlaX]

Other than the mistakes made with E.T., the documentary didn't really didn't get into why video games sales slumped so much

Yeah it did a bit talking about how they overspent with far too much inventory, had to cut 80% of the overall workforce, and things just fizzled out because of it.ET just sped up a process that was already happening for them.

I don't recall because it's been awhile since I saw the doc, but they didn't mention how much Pac-Man was the original catalyst in the eventual crash, did they?

Yeah, I wish it would have talked more about Pac Man. I remember waiting for that game to come out, and expecting it to be like the stand up arcade game. We were beyond excited. And the Atari game was terrible. It wasn't even close. I think that was the most disappointed I ever was for Atari.

True, yet didn't we all still log hours of playtime on that game...

I did the same on ET too. I bet I can still beat it today without playing it for over 20 years on my first try.

 

[Nick Vermeil]

I caught this last night and enjoyed it quite a bit. I felt bad for the game designer who had his career fall apart when there were so many heavy hitters from Hollywood in the film that came up through the game industry. Gary Whitta was at PC Gamer for a long time, wrote a bunch of video games and just wrote the first script for "Star Wars Rogue One." Stephen Speilberg is attached to direct the film adaptation of "Ready Player One", the book from the guy in the Delorean. And of course Zac Penn has done a thing or two.

 

[OC Zed]

I watched this tonight on Netflix. The interviews with Atari's designers/programmers and business executives from the time are great. Tying everything to ET and the subsequent ET landfill dig was just a dumb, cheap dramatic plot device. The 3 minutes at the end given to explain the real reason of why the industry crashed in '83-'84 was also really sloppy. Overall, this was decent but the subject matter deserved so much better.

Also, I remember playing ET as a 6 year old. I thought it really sucked because it tried to do way too much with the technological limitations of the system. It wasn't a system killer though by any means.