Atari: Game Over

[jdbailey1206]

So has anyone watched said documentary on Netflix?  It looks interesting.

[Generic Eric]

I heard about it on the reddits.  Haven't watched it yet.

[wp34]

It is really good.  What's nice is that the movie has a sense of humor without making fun of the people or the subject matter.  It would have been easy to make fun of the video game geeks but they do not. 

My teenage daughter was doing homework in the room while I was watching it.  She got so engrossed she stopped doing homework so she could watch it.

[Slippyblade]

She got so engrossed she stopped doing homework so she could watch it.

So that's the excuse she used to avoid doing homework?  Got it. 

[Mr_Numbers]

I found it pretty interesting, I would recommend seeing it if you haven't.

[wp34]

She got so engrossed she stopped doing homework so she could watch it.

So that's the excuse she used to avoid doing homework?  Got it. 

I'd sign that excuse.

[Donkey_Kong]

Watching now... 

[Malenko]

I watched it, meh.

Felt like 2 documentaries spliced into 1. The been there done that "rise and fall of atari", and the landfill part we already knew the results of. Was not entertained, would not recommend.   

[Ginsu Victim]

I enjoyed it enough, even if I didn't learn anything. I watched it a few months ago on Xbox 360.

[ark_ader]

I didn't know the coder for ET was the guy who coded Yars Revenge.

Man, that guy got a crap deal.  Try coding a game in assembler with only 4k in five weeks.....



Edited thanks to my dumb android tablet, and its tard dictionary.

[wp34]

I didn't know the coder for ET was the guy who coded Yars Revenge.

Man, that guy got a crap deal.  Try coding a game in assembler with only 4k in five weeks.....

I didn't know he was the same dude nor that he only had 5 weeks either.  Five weeks is insane.

I also didn't know that Spielberg approved the final version of the game.  The video of him talking about the game was priceless.

[pbj]

So did they fudge the legend from "millions of copies of ET under a cement slab" to "someone lowered the tailgate on their pickup truck and pushed a pile of crap onto the side of the road?"

[wp34]

So did they fudge the legend from "millions of copies of ET under a cement slab" to "someone lowered the tailgate on their pickup truck and pushed a pile of crap onto the side of the road?"

Maybe one tractor trailer?  It was hard to tell. 

They found much less than the hyped "millions" but at the same time a lot more than I expected from the news reports.

[RoyalScam]

I watched it, meh.

I'm with you on this one.  I saw this quite awhile ago and then just last week was looking for something to watch on Netflix and thought "Hey, this looks interesting!".  Ten minutes in I remembered it and was surprised how forgettable it really was.

Scam

[ChanceKJ]

I was ok, a couple lame jokes by the guy making the film. It was interesting to learn some of the backstory of the game, and Atari in general.  It was a documentary on Netflix, it's not like it's value is really worth more then what you've paid to binge watch Orange is the New Black or House of Cards.

(Apparently an ArcadeSD attract screen made a cameo in the background behind one of the guys getting interviewed? did i miss that??)

[behrmr]

I was ok, a couple lame jokes by the guy making the film. It was interesting to learn some of the backstory of the game, and Atari in general.  It was a documentary on Netflix, it's not like it's value is really worth more then what you've paid to binge watch Orange is the New Black or House of Cards.

(Apparently an ArcadeSD attract screen made a cameo in the background behind one of the guys getting interviewed? did i miss that??)

Yeah. The ArcadeSD was on the attract menu on a cab right next to a Nintendo cabinet.

[behrmr]

I didn't know the coder for ET was the guy who coded Yars Revenge.

Man, that guy got a crap deal.  Try coding a game in assembler with only 4k in five weeks.....



Edited thanks to my dumb android tablet, and its tard dictionary.

I didn't know Yars Revenge was based on Star Castle so that was an interesting tidbit. 5 weeks to code a game is pretty amazing.  That must've been one of those drop the mic and walk off stage moments for him.  When I watched that segment I remembered the commercial jingle from when I was a kid "Yars Revenge is new from Atari.... Have you played Atari today?"

[BadMouth]

Much better than expected.  I think it was a really well made documentary.
I was expecting footage of the dig with useless shallow drivel from random people. (I call it the VH1 style documentary)

While I thought the praise for Warshaw was piled on a bit thicker than necessary, the people interviewed were genuine and genuinely interesting.
I felt like I learned something and gained a greater appreciation of the people in the industry at that time.
 

[jdbailey1206]

I love how every documentary/docudrama that took place in the eighties starts with "I was coked up by the 9am meeting."

[Ginsu Victim]

The thing I always remember from this documentary:
Ernest Cline has a DeLorean and he let George RR Martin borrow it.

[RayB]

For free? Watch it.

It opens up with the fairly ridiculous question that's supposed to be the great mystery behind the entire documentary: WHY on earth would they dump working merchandise into a landfill!?!? OH NOES! The simple answer, and we knew this before, is for the tax write-off. But they don't ever say that. They hold the line that it's this great mystery. Anyways...

But overall it's fairly meh, with only a couple new / interesting tidbits mixed in (which are SO interesting, I can't even remember them now). They never mention over-producing a ---smurfy--- Pac-Man and all the other mistakes that lead to Atari's downfall. It's all ET ET ET taking the blame and them trying to say it wasn't such a bad game.

[pbj]

Went ahead and watched this last night.  RayB pretty much nails it.  I find the argument that ET isn't a terrible game to be laughable and the "five weeks, bro, five weeks!" argument doesn't impress me much.  Whatever helps Howard sleep in his crummy apartment at night, I suppose.

Was also quite amused that we get 80 minutes of build up and then maybe 5 minutes of footage of what they actually pulled out.  Considering as that dig was one of the main points of the documentary, where was the "two weeks later, here's what we found" followup? 

[behrmr]

Went ahead and watched this last night.  RayB pretty much nails it.  I find the argument that ET isn't a terrible game to be laughable and the "five weeks, bro, five weeks!" argument doesn't impress me much.  Whatever helps Howard sleep in his crummy apartment at night, I suppose.

Was also quite amused that we get 80 minutes of build up and then maybe 5 minutes of footage of what they actually pulled out.  Considering as that dig was one of the main points of the documentary, where was the "two weeks later, here's what we found" followup?

I'm sure the local gov't, the owners of the stuff from the dig, didn't want what was dug up fully disclosed as part of the deal.   Because then you'd see 10,000 cartridges and they wouldn't be "rare" anymore and therefore more worthless.

[BadMouth]

I agree it's lame that they didn't show much of what was found.  It gave me the impression that they didn't really find much.
Maybe it was a few boxes rather than the tens of thousands of cartridges.

[RayB]

Here's what happened after:


CASH GRAB!

[RoyalScam]

Was also quite amused that we get 80 minutes of build up and then maybe 5 minutes of footage of what they actually pulled out.

Geraldo, Al Capone and the Coke bottle all over again.

Scam

[pbj]

Sigh.  It's the new king of kong and tilt.  Every friend is going to make me watch it when I visit.

After the second viewing, I felt like this...