Atari: Game Over
- TV-14
- Year:
- 2014
- 66 min
- 418 Views
1
Alamogordo New Mexico.
A small town, about
30,000 people
but it seems to attract
more than its fair share
of strange occurrences.
corner from where they
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
of all time.
It's been described
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.,
worst video game of all time.
WORST GAME EVER!
We have this myth,
or this legend of something
Do do...
do do do do do do.
Son of a b*tch, get out
of the f***ing hole!
If you grab a
piece of the phone,
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!
Sh*t!
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.
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 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.
sitting in front
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
And I even wrote some of
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
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.
And then one day
it was just gone.
Sometime in the mid '80s,
it just disappeared.
And there were no
more Atari games.
And I always wondered
what happened.
Where did it go?
So, this is the famous landfill?
Yeah.
The burial... the final
resting ground of E.T.?
Yeah, this is the place.
This road here, this gate, this
is exactly the way the Ataris
would have came through.
Through that ditch,
and up through here.
This was the only access in.
Back in those days, it
was just pure desert.
And is there any way
to get through this,
or are we, I mean...
Well, yeah, it's a
high security gate.
Just duck under.
Yeah, I guess that works.
Heh, heh, heh.
Joe Lewandowski's
been the garbage guru, if you
will, for a number of years.
He operated various
waste disposal companies
within Alamogordo
and Otero county.
And when it comes to
the Atari graveyard,
I believe he probably
has more direct knowledge
of anybody else.
Joe's the guy that's
advising the city,
and telling the city
where everything is.
And I think that he's the only
guy that might be able to walk
out to that dump, and point to
a spot on the ground, and say,
this is where it's at.
So, so this whole area,
this is where it's buried?
Some people don't believe
it's there, but trust me,
it's there.
You can kind of feel it.
Right?
It that just me?
Ah, that's pretty much you.
It's just me.
So what are these
little boxes, here?
Each one of those boxes
I see.
Someone would write
down, oh, that's
where we put the Atari trash.
That's where we put, you know.
That's the problem.
Nobody did.
We do today.
So it's looking for... it's
like looking for a haystack
in a pile of haystacks.
Pretty much.
And then looking for the
needle inside that haystack.
And find the needle.
So it's two levels.
This picture here
is actually out of an old
El Paso Times article.
This is actually that
day, and that event,
when it actually occurred.
So what we did, is
just to figure out,
OK, if this reporter
took this picture here,
then the reporter
had to be standing
somewhere in this area.
So here's the two cells that
we've pinned it down to, now.
So when you come
back here, and put
picture, and you make that line.
And what you're looking for,
is to make sure the line
intersects with the buildings.
Joe Lewandowski
wasn't just a guy
who knew his way around a dump.
He was also an
amateur archaeologist,
kind of like Indiana
Jones, but without the gun.
Or the whip.
See, the newspaper photo
was like the medallion,
and Joe had used it to
construct his own version
of the Staff of Ra.
And that pinpointed the
location of the Atari
Indy would have done it.
Joe was clearly obsessed.
He believed in the legend.
He'd spent over three
years constructing
a plan to dig up the landfill,
and prove it to the world.
But he wasn't a gamer.
He wasn't trying
to find out why.
And that's what
I wanted to know.
Why would the company I loved so
much decide to bury its future?
The whole E.T. story is a very
small part of the Atari story.
Let me go back and let me
explain how Atari started out.
The video game
came because of the convergence
of me working in an
amusement park summers,
while pursuing an
engineering degree
at the University of Utah.
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