Of course, bad games are hardly uncommon. E.T. is unique for another reason. According to legend, when Atari realized it had made millions more E.T. cartridges than it could ever sell, the company surreptitiously decided to destroy the evidence of its folly. All unsold copies of this game -- a chief flaw of which was its protagonist’s penchant for falling into inescapable pits -- would ironically be sent to the bottom of a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, never to return.
Or at least, so the story goes.
Atari: Game Over is the first original documentary in Xbox Live’s Signal to Noise series. In it screenwriter and filmmaker Zak Penn (PCU, Incident at Loch Ness, X-Men: The Last Stand) simultaneously explores the legend of E.T. the video game and the rise and fall of gaming juggernaut Atari. With a cheeky, foul-mouthed sense of humor not typically found in documentaries, Penn delivers an insightful if somewhat superficial rebuttal to commonly held beliefs about E.T.’s supposed awfulness, its secret burial and its role in Atari’s collapse. (Penn is a great fit for the topic. He has written movies that, like E.T., were turned into lackluster video games. As he proudly notes, "I've even written some of the sh--ty video games.")
If you've been following IGN’s coverage of the Alamogordo excavation you already know exactly what dig crews found beneath that 30-foot-deep concrete vault. If you don’t know, I won’t spoil it for you. The anticipation of getting to the bottom of the legend (I make no apologies for that pun) is plenty entertaining. But it’s far from essential to the experience and, significantly, you could have gotten there without any help from this movie.See, what really went into the ground in Alamogordo 30 years ago -- and how much of it -- has long been known. The real story just isn't as well-traveled as the sensationalized version, which would have us believe that millions of copies of a single cursed game were secretly interred in the desert to conceal Atari’s corporate shame.
The truth, as usual, is somewhat less exciting and Penn knows it. He’s cheating a little by not coming clean from the start, relying on a manufactured mystery to create tension. He allows his audience to wallow in misinformation even though the results of the dig aren't necessary to separate fact from fiction. It’s for this reason he opts not to include his interview with the warehouse manager who actually oversaw the dumping back in 1983. In 30 seconds that interview provides a concise, thorough answer to a question that has tantalized amateur game historians for decades. Yet it’s not included in the movie proper. Instead it's hidden in the Xbox companion app, intended to be viewed after the documentary, if at all.
But really, that’s my only complaint. In all other respects, Game Over is a breezy, engaging documentary peppered with delightful interviews with game industry vets such as Nolan Bushnell, Manny Gerard and Seamus Blackley. Its subject matter may seem light at first but Game Over manages to wrap a solid historical perspective around an unexpected emotional core.
The heart of the movie isn't the garbage dump archaeology trip at all, though that’s the primary marketing draw. Game Over is far more concerned with designer Howard Scott Warshaw, who created E.T. the game. In just five weeks this man singlehandedly produced the game that supposedly destroyed the fastest growing company in American history. For the past 30 years Warshaw has therefore shouldered the blame for bringing down Atari’s empire and inciting the great gaming crash of 1983.The defense of Warshaw and his creation is Game Over's most noteworthy contribution. The dig is just window dressing. It’s enticing and fun, sure, but it has no real meat or mystery. Certainly it informs no important opinions or arguments. It’s just a spectacle, drawing legions of fans and celebrity nerds like Ernest Cline to watch events unfold. It's active and exciting and, thanks to a fortuitous sandstorm, even mirrors aspects of two other Spielberg films, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Penn is more than happy to play up those ties, often to humorous effect. But he’s commendably more interested -- as should all devotees of video game lore be -- in noting that Raiders was itself adapted into an acclaimed, million-selling game designed by none other than Howard Scott Warshaw.
Atari: Game Over is available for free right now on Xbox Live.
