Atari: Game Over

---

1

Alamogordo New Mexico.

A small town, about

30,000 people

but it seems to attract

more than its fair share

of strange occurrences.

It's right around the

corner from where they

tested the first atomic bomb.

It's also the grave site of

Ham, the first chimpanzee...

and really, the first

American... to go into space.

And it's the place where

this guy broke the land

speed record in a rocket sled.

Which is cool, but

also kind of strange.

Despite all of this, the

thing that Alamogordo is

best known for is its landfill.

The dump.

Because supposedly, that's

where Atari buried E.T.,

the worst video game

of all time.

It's been described

as the worst video game ever.

E.T. for Atari.

Today we're going to talk

about the worst of the worst.

Here's our top 10

worst games ever.

E.T., the Extra Terrestrial?

Now here's the thing

about E.T.,

it's widely regarded as the

worst video game of all time.

WORST GAME EVER!

We have this myth,

or this legend of something

that happened 40 years ago.

Do do...

do do do do do do.

Son of a bitch, get out

of the fucking hole!

If you grab a

piece of the phone,

the FBI agent keeps

attacking you.

And if you take a

step in any direction,

you fall into a hole.

And if you get out of the

hole, you fall right back down!

One of the

major design flaws of the games

was that E.T. fell into pits.

Dammit!

Shit!

Oh, come on!

And guess what?

It now lives out it's

days in a landfill.

It's rumored that decades

ago, truckloads of that game

were dumped in the

Alamogordo landfill.

The idea that they had

so many of these things,

and they were so unable to sell

them, give them away, whatever,

they literally had

to drive them out

into the middle of the desert,

and bury them like a dead gangster.

It's almost too crazy

to be believed.

I think it's kind of silly.

Because it's urban legend.

It's just a great

story, I think.

I believe that this story

endures because the

adults just don't get it.

And that's satisfying

to the young people.

Whatever you look at

what the reasons are for it,

nothing makes sense.

What drove someone to need to

hide this stuff so intensely?

When I was five

years old, Pong came out.

And my dad got it for me

and my brother and sister.

When the Atari 2600 came out...

Atari!

...I got

every cartridge

I could get my hands on.

I played it constantly.

Atari was like Xbox and

PlayStation rolled into one.

It had an 80% market share, and

the 2600 was its killer app.

Adventure was probably my

favorite game on the 2600.

I spent three weeks

sitting in front

of my TV trying to find

the first Easter egg

ever hidden in a video game.

It looks kind of stupid now.

You were just a block, who

picked up an invisible dot,

and carried it into

the special room

to discover the

programmer's name.

But to me, finding that hidden

screen was like a revelation.

As an adult, I still play

a lot of video games.

But I also write and direct

movies, that's my job.

I've worked on a lot

of big comic book movies

the kind they make

shitty video games out of.

And I even wrote some of

the shitty video games.

But I'm also fascinated by

myths and urban legends.

In fact, 10 years ago, me

and this guy Werner Herzog

went to Scotland to find

the Loch Ness Monster.

We never did find

Nessie, but I still

love an adventure, especially

to unravel an urban legend.

Today, video games

are everywhere,

so it might be hard to

understand my generation's

obsession with Atari.

But for us, it was the gateway

drug to a lifelong addiction

to video games.

Rate this script:(0.00 / 0 votes)