Atari: Game Over film review: Unearthing the El Dorado of video games - growcapassicer

Hey ma, I successful it into a film! For about two seconds. In the backclot of a shot. Still counts, true?

Last week I went to a special set ahead screening of Zak Penn's Microsoft-produced documental Atari: Courageous Over, which centers or so the E.T. landfill get the picture I attended in Alamogordo, New Mexico early this year.

For the unknowledgeable: Back off in 1983 the video game industry crashed and burned, and a jolly terrible game adaptation of Spielberg's E.T. took (deservedly operating theatre undeservedly) a jumbo part of the blame. On its last legs, Atari was forced to dump millions of unsold and returned cartridges of the E.T. video game into a landfill—or so the legend goes. For years, this was one the gaming industry's biggest urban legends, the likes of a computer game Elevated Dorado.

Making history

In light of its cult legend status, the half-length-lived Microsoft Amusement Studios helped investment firm a crew to excavate E.T.'s grave earlier this year and invited the public to come. I drove down to attend the event, along with a couple hundred others, and we stood in the whipping dirt and wind quite an literally observation garbage be dug up.

Atari: Game Over takes the dig as its centerpiece, chronicling both the lead-capable the dig and the actual daylight of tally. As someone World Health Organization attended (read: suffered through) the factual dig, I can say that the sections in Alamogordo do a decent job of capturing the feel of the event—or as untold equally they can through the safety and comfort of a movie screen. I can't emphasize enough how dusty and windy it was that day in Alamogordo. I had a spare t-shirt tied around my face, and even so I left-handed that day feeling like I'd swallowed about a l of trash-dust.

The film doesn't footle long on the true dig though, which I think is a benediction. The actual process that day was excruciating—six hours in the simmering New Mexico summer sunshine, waiting for some sort of announcement. There wasn't much to look at, nor much to do. The film misses out on whatsoever of the "party" atmosphere of the day (people were playing E.T. on CRTs in the back of cars) and I think the shoot also skims all over how varied the attendees were, but Atari: Gage Over has a more important story to tell.

Redemption song

To a higher degree a film about the dig itself, Atari: Game Over is a redemption piece for Howard Scott Warshaw, the programmer on E.T. Preceding to E.T., Warshaw was an Atari legend. The man designed Yars' Retaliate and Raiders of the Lost Ark, both of which were instant classics for the 2600. He was so angelic that when it came time to make an E.T. television game in a simple five weeks, they went straight to Warshaw. And Warshaw said IT would be none job.

Howard Robert Falcon Scott Warshaw at Atari.

He underestimated, of course, and E.T. was a good deal of a game that satisfied au fon nobody. But the film's main point (and I agree) is that it wasn't Warshaw's fault. He had to become around a blockbuster game by himself in an reasonless sum of time. Non just that, but he did churn out a game low-level those ridiculous constraints, albeit a pun that wasn't great.

The play industry needed its pinata though, and Warshaw's E.T. made a convenient target. Warshaw's never ready-made another game, and a important portion of Atari: Game Finished is dedicated to his viewpoint—what it's like for him to visit the onetime Atari offices, e.g., or what it's the like for him when the 1st E.T. cartridges are dug improving in Alamogordo.

Further version: How hacking fixed the pessimum computer game of all time

A film alone about the Alamogordo dig would be interesting in its own way, just I think unremarkable. Subsequently all, this is a story approximately exhumation trash. Warshaw puts a homo face along the whole debacle, and his participation (and the the absurd exploits of In order Musician One author Ernest Cline) makes this the top-grade video games documentary since Indie Game: The Movie.

Howard Scott Warshaw at the E.T. stab earlier this year (in blue).

It helps that there's a real respect for the subject matter here. Different the spirit-deaf mass that is Video Games: The Movie, director Zak Penn clear has a love for the topic that shines through without making him the focus of the whole film. Atari: Game Over provides a great (if abbreviated) look at the origins of both the gaming diligence and Silicon Vale culture, and it does so while simultaneously staying autofluorescent and humorous. Directive you through information technology all is Penn's frequently hilarious narration, which easily garnered the biggest laughs at our screening.

Bottom line

I'm quite serious when I say this is i of the best video game documentaries ever made. That's tranquillise a pretty niche field, simply Atari: Game Over belongs raised there with Indie Game: The Movie and King of Kong as a real standout.

It's easy to rag on the dig itself. "Why bother digging up trash? Who even cares if the games are buried at that place?" But trust me, watch the film and watch Howard Robert Falcon Scott Warshaw. This isn't a story about a trash pile up, really. This is a narrative about a guy whose career was done for past one stupid err of a game, and observation him get to grips with it three decades later.

My biggest ill is that the documentary is slated for release only happening the Xbox Unmatchable at the start, as per the terms of Microsoft's funding. I hope the film makes its agency terminated to strange platforms soon, because this single deserves to be seen by other people. It's enough to make me wish Microsoft Entertainment Studios hadn't crumbled—the play industry deserves more warm, inclusive documentaries the likes of this.

Now if you'll self-justification ME, I'm pretty sure I buttocks tranquillise gustatory modality that gourmet Alamogordo trash-dust in my calendar month six months after the fact.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/436437/atari-game-over-film-review-unearthing-the-el-dorado-of-video-games.html

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