So sometimes, rather than thinking about a film on Beyonce, your uncle who has Parkinson’s may be the best story you can tell. I think that the short answer is, and Howard [Lincoln, the former chairman of Nintendo America] mentions this in the film, when he says, “We had deeper pockets and better games.”. What do you read on a daily basis? Legend has it that hundreds of thousands of unsold cartridges were placed in the ground and covered with cement, a claim so legendary it was the subject of the documentary Atari: Game Over. Still, there is an endearing generosity to Atari: Game Over. I always tell people that access is key. Filmmaker Zak Penn, also a lifelong Atari fan, sets out to discover the story of E.T. We got our Atari in Christmas of 1980 and so this subject was in kind of a sweet spot for me. Obviously he was personal hero to me and then that’s why I was so excited to meet him and include him in the film. While excavating the truth of Atari’s past, Penn also pursues a more literal excavation in the vast landfill of Alamogordo, New Mexico, where Atari was rumored to have buried perhaps millions of E.T. The fifty-something Warshaw, interviewed for the film, looks back on those days with the perspective only afforded by time. Atari was founded in Sunnyvale, California in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney and are best known for great games like Pitfall and Space Invaders and not so great games like the infamous E.T. Of course, now it looks like blobs moving across the screen. Do you have a favorite documentary — something to recommend? Stay informed with one email every other week—right to your inbox. destroyed Atari was a rumor that the company literally buried its greatest failure in a desert landfill in New Mexico. Filmmaker Zak Penn, also a lifelong Atari fan, sets out to discover the story of E.T.’s creation and find out just what role it played in causing the video game crash of 1983. I’d played games that were exciting, or scary, or whimsical, but E.T. The film paints a lively picture of Atari at its heyday as a place where people partied at least as hard as they worked, a place where keggers were common and where things happened in the hot tub. “I also think that gamers these days don’t know that much about the early days of the industry.”, For those who haven’t yet read or don’t want to tackle the 500 plus page-turner Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that Defined a Generation — a personal favorite — the documentary is a slick, often fascinating primer recapping the wild early days of video game history with some visual flourish and colorful anecdotes straight from the heroes and hucksters who gave the world Atari, Activision, Nintendo and Sega.The network describes it as “a 50-year-long, multi-generation epic featuring corporate coups, industrial espionage, secret burial grounds and the promise of unimaginable riches being just one cartridge away.”. Had run sub assembly departments. Academy Award-Winning Director Daniel Junge Focuses on the Video Game Pioneers of Atari, Nintendo, and Sega, On a recent weekday morning, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Daniel Junge watched his daughter graduate from 5th grade, and yes, the veteran documentarian recorded it. the Extra-Terrestrial was released. What went wrong? With the release of Pong in the late 1970's, Atari established a firm grasp on the video game market, and practically monopolized the industry by releasing one influential best-selling title after another. Do you relate? Adding to the legend that E.T. So you jumped in with firsthand knowledge. cartridges it had produced but could never hope to sell. ’s creation and find out just what role it played in causing the video game crash of 1983. Warshaw comes across as a smart, complicated, likable man, and by focusing on him, Penn makes the story of Atari’s downfall a human story rather than just a story of reckless business decisions and massive financial shortfalls. The other thing is even more basic: the only way to make films is to make films. I was only 8 years old when atari was founded by nolan bushnel in 1972,then by mid 1980's and to see it all come apart in 1983 when i turned 19 years old.what a shame to see fall because of mismanagement and greed. I read the New York Times, I read the New Yorker. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Atari: Game Over splits its attention between the story of the company itself, as told by those who lived through its meteoric rise and fall, and an ambitious excavation of the landfill where a valuable piece of nerd history is thought to be buried. He is a bit of a tragic character in that he was ahead of his time, which you see in the documentary. Of course, I knew about the Odyssey and played the Odyssey as a kid, but I didn’t know Ralph’s story. [Junge] Yes, I’m an Atari kid. Why wasn’t Sega able to successfully challenge Nintendo? had not been an awful game at all. History of Atari. and my interest in Atari’s history, the documentary Atari: Game Over is essentially made for me. The opposite is true about his latest project, Game Changers: Inside the Video Game War, a two-hour documentary he directed about the pioneers of the video game industry premiering June 16 (at 9 pm ET/PT) on History. It captures the clash of cultures between this founder with a very childlike demeanor and the corporation that just bought his company. I just didn't know how to do it.”. Because of my fondness for E.T. The wildly entertaining new documentary Atari: Game Over has a theory, and it's one that's shared by countless video game geeks all over the world. Go to Todd Guardin Atari on Google, if it's still there to read the one newsletter composed by the secretaries. Do you have a favorite moment in the documentary? How do you go from the fastest growing company in the history of the United States to a debt-infested and dissolved empire in less than a decade? The idea that you could follow normal people for three hours and have a Shakespearean drama was very moving to me and opened my eyes to the possibilities. He’s such a forward thinker that he wanted to talk more about his current ideas and the future of any number of things that he’s designing than to talk about the past and about Atari. This is meant to shed light on their company’s growth and rapid advancement into the gaming market, along with their decline and market loss to competitors like Nintendo. and my interest in Atari’s history, the documentary Atari: Game Over is essentially made for me. I didn’t generate this idea. The project represented a mammoth task for Warshaw, and an investment of tens of millions of dollars for the company. But in selecting people to offer commentary on the events, Penn interviews novelists and screenwriters, collectors and scholars, all of whom have interesting things to say, but all of whom are also white men. was the first game I played that felt poignant. Whether warranted or not, this history has spawned an urban legend of sorts for gamers over the years, a scenario made even more delicious with the rumor that Atari dumped hundreds of video games in a New Mexico landfill upon going out of business, including many returned cartridges of the ill-fated E.T. Surely there are women and people of color with something to contribute to this conversation, but the film unwittingly perpetuates the idea held by many that video games and geek culture exclude their input. He was, after all, the programmer of some of Atari’s most massive hits. and the man who created it of the charges of killing the video game industry. The film challenges popular notions of Atari’s history and sets the record straight, clearing E.T. What I don't get is that they decided to bury games.. must have been different times. He’s one of the most magnanimous, charismatic guys you’ll ever meet. It's a free compilation of all documentaries posted each week, straight to your inbox. figure in the passenger seat, are so self-indulgently geeky and packed with so many pop-culture references that they diminish the film, sending the message that you’re either in on the joke or that this story is not for you. In the same way that a novelist’s first book is usually somewhat autobiographical. Broken and frustrating, sure, but also distinctive, ambitious, and most of all, emotionally resonant in a way most games weren’t. How Free-to-Play Games Trap Players by Design, Developing Compelling Game Narratives | Tips from Sam Barlow — Her Story, How a Video Game Helped Me Connect With My Daughter, 5 Video Game Sequels We Can’t Wait For Much Longer. The interesting thing that I found about Nolan is that he — and this is a little tricky when making a historical doc — is not one to look backwards. But as for one favorite, no, I have a new favorite docs all the time. So in a way, Ralph is undervalued for his contributions in the earliest days of the industry. Is Nolan Bushnell a hero or a huckster? This interview has been edited from a longer conversation. I waited around too long myself, pledging fealty to other filmmakers and working, bringing coffee to people. They see him as more heroic, and I understand that. Atari founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. image copyright AP I was given a couple of different options and this one jumped out at me, because it means so much to me personally. A film company was making a documentary about a legend that had persisted for 30 years - that in 1983 Atari had buried truckloads of the unsold ET games in the New Mexico desert. Nolan sold the business. But also, I could see right away that there were these incredible people stories to tell, and that’s what I always look for. Unfortunately, it also uncritically presents an almost exclusively white male perspective on game design and Silicon Valley culture. The film bounces back and forth between these two strands, but despite the tremendous symbolic power in the act of attempting to literally unearth the past of a once-massive and beloved company, the scenes focused on organizing the landfill dig sometimes get bogged down in talk of red tape and excavation equipment, making them feel like a detour from the real story. “It doesn’t look very good, though,” he says. I do love the moment where, after Warner acquires Atari from Nolan, Manny [Gerard] is saying they had to bring in adult supervision to Atari and our archival researcher found a great reaction from Nolan in front of his employees. But by the mid-1980's, the video game behemoth was no more. Yes, the movers and shakers central to the story itself that Penn interviews—Warshaw, Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, and Warner executive Manny Gerard—are all white men; there’s no way around that, and they give illuminating interviews.