yerrasneha93 Atari : game over, 'some stupid documentary on video games and why an I-don't-care video game company collapsed , why did it bury a stupid video game'. This is the plot I got from the first few minutes. Always looked upon those video game geeks. Never understand what's their obsession with that. It's about an Engineer Howard Warshaw ,who created video games getting millions of dollars profit to the Atari video gaming company, the initial years seemed like from that of the Wolf of the Wall street, that heightened exuberance, mad celebrations, partying - as if that's it and life's going to be that way forever. when you see those things, you know an impending doom is on its way. That's what happens here too. Here's this geeky engineer, having the time of his life, getting the opportunity to turn the classics/ one of the greatest movies ever E.T into a video game. I know how geeks work , my brother is one- shut themselves up in rooms and never come out until the game is done. He was given just 5 weeks of time – apparently, that's not at all enough. Here, two crazy things happened – the company is just too ambitious to grow even bigger, and in that frenzy, greed, it took a stupid decision of producing just too many E.T. video games and then, this guy, who knew what's he's doing – i.e. he's turning a predominantly children's movie into a video game. So, it's common sense that it should be simple. But, no, he wanted to prove his genius or just to change things up and give something unique to the world of video games- the game , it seems – was pretty tough. Nobody got it and they returned the millions of video games. Hmm.. not, clear if this is the reason for the company's downfall, but, the company's stocks spiraled down like anything and they had to shut up. And this engineer guy was held responsible for a company's downfall and thousands of people losing their jobs, including his. His career got destroyed , and upon that the guilt and accusation of ruining a company. That guy seemed to have never recovered from it. That was just too emotional to see. So, at the end, at least after like 30 years, the blemish is a bit washed away , and now people kind of seem to understand E.T. is truly a good game. Many ardent video game lovers vouch for it. As one of the head guys said, if too many people say something, it becomes the truth – the reality of the herd mentality and the toll it can take on people like Howard Warshaw's lives. Firstly, kudos to the guy who wanted to dig it out. He's absolutely mad otherwise. Nothing good could have come out of the digging if not for absolving a man's conscience of a false, imposed guilt. The guy who made the documentary , great job.

Argemaluco 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.

Scarecrow-88 Neat little doc on the supposed urban myth regarding a massive Atari game dump in a New Mexico town's landfill after the game company's end. Falsely accused for the demise of the Atari company was the ET game, made in five weeks after a crunch unrealistically asking a video game designer to make a remotely good game in such limited time. This doc focuses on the unearthing of the games in the landfill, with those who love Atari (and want the ET game's notoriety to be disregarded) being responsible for the whole big "archeological dig". If you grew up like I did with Atari, this will be of definite nostalgic value; for the generation hung up on Call of Duty and Halo, this might not be as interesting. To see where it all began, and to have experienced it (and just to be an 80s kid in all its awesomeness), this doc, not long at all and focusing intently on Atari with a sort of loving and sadness for its rise and fall, could be quite a lot of fun. It was for me.What happened to Warshaw, ET's designer, is tragic and should never have blacklisted him so. His game was used as an excuse for the death of a beloved company when a number of other factors contributed to it. That it took this long for Warshaw's name to be cleared is unfortunate, but this dig resurrected his name, and those coming to his aid is satisfying. That so many showed up for the dig was a testament to what nostalgia and curiosity can assure.

jimmsound Great documentary covering the quest to unearth the lost Atari E.T. game cartridges - supposedly buried in landfill in New Mexico because the game was terrible and caused Atari's decline. It's a mix of history - Atari's rise and fall during the early eighties, featuring input from people around at the time, including the E.T. game designer Howard Scott Warshaw - and present day, as we get closer to the excavation. I recommend it if you were a kid in the eighties, especially if you were a gamer then, or even if you just love that decade. Millennial gamers may enjoy learning about the early days of home gaming. Those of a certain age may find it all quite moving.