Atari: Game Over (2014)

Just what I expected

As Good As It Gets

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

My earliest memory was Pac-Man in the video arcades. So, even though the 2600 was innovative, true video game addicts knew how bad EVERY game was for the 2600. It wasn't until the 5200 that the console really improved: Pac-Man looked like Pac-Man/Centipede looked identical to the arcade game AND had a track ball accessory to improve it! I never played E.T. and so I don't care to comment on it. I don't understand why they focused so much on this topic without talking about so many other facets of Atari. How did they go down with the success of arcade games and the 5200? Remember, this was the first home console that not only resembled the actual arcade games but had a PAUSE as well! The best feature ever! Plus, it's hard to have empathy for a designer that had so much ego that it blinded the reality of coming out with a hit game, in a fraction of the time it took previously, that would be of any quality. I have to give it a low rating because it spent too much time on this excavation.

It's a well known fact: the event which provoked the collapse of the video game industry in the early '80s was the release of E.T. the Extraterrestrial, such a bad game, but with such high sales expectations, that its failure ruined the company Atari while also caving the whole industry. But, how true is that fact? Filmmaker Zak Penn seeks the answer to that and other questions in the documentary Atari: Game Over with the help of fans of the company, the original programmer of that fateful game and even some defenders of E.T. the Extraterrestrial (such as novelist Ernie Cline). And all that happens while Penn tries to clear out the big mystery about the final destiny of the millions of cartridges which were never sold. Were they really buried in some remote place of the desert? The search of that mythical place forms the narrative structure of Atari: Game Over. According to testimonies of witnesses, old documents and the personal investigation of historians such as Mike Mika, it has been determined that the likeliest place of that collective grave of cartridges is a huge municipal dump in the outskirts of Alamogordo, New México. But it won't be that easy: the dump covers many hectares and the modern archaeologists contributing to the search lack of verifiable data regarding the exact site, or even the veracity of the legend; and besides, the local government doesn't think it's a good idea to dig randomly, due to the possibility of finding toxic or radioactive material (Alamogordo had a big prominence in the first nuclear tests made in the United States during the '40s). While Penn solves the legal and logistic problems of excavation, we can learn a lot from the interviews to ex- directors of Atari, former employees of the company and analysts with enough experience to adopt a more sober and less reactionary about the authentic effect of E.T. the Extraterrestrial over the collapse of the video game industry. Many of these points were superficially covered in documentaries such as Video Games: The Movie and and Indie Game: The Movie, but Penn deepens on them like no other, and he could even create an atmosphere of nostalgia and suspense I didn't expect in a tale about something so specific and, at the same time, trivial. But besides of seeking old cartridges or defending the bad decisions of "stoner" programmers, Atari: Game Over is a tribute to "geek" culture on each one of its manifestations. Penn understands the inherent irony in his mission, and accepts the implicit humor in taking such an absurd search seriously... but he never becomes it a joke against "geeks"; on the opposite, this is a genuine tribute to the passion all these ephemeral manifestations of popular culture wake, and even though they didn't change the world, they were (and keep being) important for many people. The reason of those obsessions might need a deeper analysis, but that isn't the purpose of Atari: Game Over; its purpose is entertaining and illustrating us about a famous (maybe apocryphal) chapter in the History of video games, and it fulfills that mission with a lot of style and enthusiasm. Those interested in the general History of video games should check the previously mentioned documentary Video Games: The Movie; but for those who are fans of Atari, Atari: Game Over is the definitive film... at least until someone makes a deep academic dissertation about the "easter eggs" of Pitfall.

The movie kept me amused from beginning to end. It was filled with great facts and interviews from the awesome people at Atari. The creative staff was successful to bravely call it as they saw it - unlike the filtered and censored media for people who ca not handle the truth.Heartwarming interview with the main programmer for "E.T." explains how to successfully transition from the world's most successful game programmer, into a life which can continue to reward to avoid what otherwise attacks many people in a downward tragic spiral of depression.The movie was also successful to reveal the greedy position the city imposes that disguises their evil methods claiming to uphold public safety.If you are careful with the pause and rewind keys on your DVR, you can catch some very interesting photography that flips by too fast.

A crew digs up all of the old Atari 2600 game cartridges of "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" that were tossed into a landfill in the 1980s.There seem to have been a growing amount of video game documentaries over the last few years (roughly 2012-2015), and many of them understandably focus on Atari and bring up the E.T. story. Most of these are pretty good documentaries. And this is one of them.This was the first I heard that Atari was filled with drugs and had a party atmosphere. However, knowing what I do of computer geeks in the 1980s and 1990s, this hardly surprises me. Even Steve Jobs had his share of experiments with drugs. (Did Bill Gates?) We also get a cool back story on Yars' Revenge (Atari's best-selling original title for the 2600), but E.T. is really the central focus of this story and it pays off. The truth finally comes out about its promotion, failure, alleged burial and the rumors that the game's notoriety "killed" Atari in 1984. Of course, the brand still exists, but that is a whole other story.