Atari: Game Over

2014, Art and Artists  -   6 Comments
8.20
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Ratings: 8.20/10 from 61 users.

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?

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. They epitomized the American success story through innovation, hard work and by producing a series of stellar cutting-edge products that appealed to the masses. But by the mid-1980's, the video game behemoth was no more. What went wrong?

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. Anticipating a massive reception to Steven Spielberg's blockbuster film E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial prior to its initial release, Atari programmer Howard Warshaw was commissioned to create a video game tie-in within five weeks. The project represented a mammoth task for Warshaw, and an investment of tens of millions of dollars for the company. The game's eventual release was met with a deafening thud, and its failure to ignite the marketplace has long been cited as the beginning of the end for Atari.

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. title.

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.

The film's tone is one of warm and playful nostalgia, but it's also characterized by an undercurrent of melancholy. For the spectators who stand on the sidelines of the landfill and await word on whether the precious loot has been uncovered, the excavation represents more than just the demise of a beloved company; it seems to mark an end to the innocence of their adolescence.

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6 Comments / User Reviews

  1. Todd Guardin

    Nolan sold the business. Told me. Go to Todd Guardin Atari on Google, if it's still there to read the one newsletter composed by the secretaries. I'd been laid off. Had run sub assembly departments.

  2. elizabeth shoebridge

    I loved this movie!!!

  3. ocie mayfield

    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.

  4. Ashley

    ...why does this video no longer exist?

  5. Brian

    OK...that was as boring as the games themselves. Only fitting they were buried in Alamoghetto.

  6. Lee

    What I don't get is that they decided to bury games.. must have been different times. These days we would realise that there is a good percentage of valuable material in those cartridges that we would simply recycle them