Atari: Game Over Review

BEE DOO.....BE do BE do BEE DOOO

On a whim, I decided to watch the documentary Atari:Game Over last night.  It's a film covering the 2014 excavation of the Alamogordo landfill that Atari supposedly buried millions of cartridges of the ET Atari 2600 game.  The film questions why Atari (a company) threw away millions of copies of "the worst video game of all time" (an unwanted product) as if this is a mystery or something.  Unfortunately, while getting to the MOST OBVIOUS ANSWER EVER, most of the movie comes off as a love letter to Atari and since this movie is barely over an hour long, it's not like they didn't have time for more depth.

The history lesson about the rise and fall of Atari is pretty good for the first 2/3rds.  The movie does a good job of storytelling the humble origins of Atari with Pong and other coin-op arcade games.  It gets to the point about Atari being the fastest growing company in America after the release of the 2600 and making some blockbuster games like Yar's Revenge and even Raiders of the Lost Ark before ET decided all movie licensed games must suck.  And I mean, Edmonton Oilers suck here.  It lasts for years.

Sometimes decades.

It was important to bring up those games though as the guy who programmed them, Howard Warshaw, programmed ET.  At this point, the documentary goes almost out of it's way to say how much Steven Speilberg liked the game and how Warshaw only had 5 weeks to make it.  That's fine.  He's forgiven.  Warshaw even gets a bit emotional when he is invited to the excavation and is overwhelmed by the amount of people who showed up.  This includes the author of Ready Player One, Ernie Cline, who went to the excavation after picking up his Delorean from George RR Martin because this is a factual sentence I get to write.  I'm not kidding.  This happened.

But what's weird about this film, other than nerdy authors owning a nerdy car that he loaned to another far more famous nerdy author, is that Atari seems to take zero flak.  At times, it seems like Atari was just being a "bold, new, innovator that takes risks" rather than a "frat boy with too much money taking stupid risks" which seems more like the truth.  The fact that Atari killed the game market in 1983 due to over saturation is glossed over while simultaneously excusing ET.  I agree that ET didn't single-handedly kill the market, but come on movie, it was a part.  It's like they wanted to make a bumper sticker that read "Atari doesn't kill games, people not buying ET killed games."

The climax of the film is kind of a let down.  They DO find ET cartridges but it ends up being only about 10% of the total Atari games they find.  It's like, this totally mundane urban legend has a totally mundane explanation.  Yeah, Atari threw away a bunch of copies of ET but they also threw away all of their other unwanted product.  Then, the movie ends with a bunch of people talking about how awesome ET actually is and that's it's actually a good game and revisionist history shit.

"So, you see, this is why Atari didn't land on the moon."

Listen, I don't think ET is "The Worst Video Game of All Time".  For one, it actually works.  The game isn't a glitchy mess, something even modern day games have problems with.  It's also one of only a handful of Atari games you can actually finish, which was innovative for the time.  ET isn't even the worst Atari game, nor the worst Atari "thing" since the Atari Jaguar CD exists.

It's a toilet.

That said, it's by no means a good game.  I'm one of the lucky, or, unlucky few to have played this game when I was, like, 5 years old.  My parents had an Atari 2600 and about 10 or so games.  Obviously, my memory is fuzzy and possibly corrupted, but I remember Combat, Space Invaders (obvs), Asteroids, Missile Command for sure (my Dad's favorite), and ET.  I never beat it.  When the point of the game is to collect parts to your spaceship that randomly appear in holes, holes that are difficult to get out of due to shitty controls, enemies that are significantly faster than you and take away the parts you already collected.....AND your health decreases simply by fucking walking, you're not gonna have a good game.  No amount of sunshine and rainbow filled nostalgic thoughts are going to change that.

I have a soft spot for Atari.  It introduced me to games at a young age and it kick started a hobby I've never left...except for one time but eh that's a different blogpost.  But let's not pretend Atari is not without fault here.  It's fine to be nostalgic for the good ole days, but don't gloss over the bad too mmmkay?

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I do wish my parents never sold that Atari 2600.