The title of this documentary is a bit misleading since it focuses on the infamous E.T. video game and an excavation to find out whether the legend of burying millions of E.T. cartridges in a landfill is true. I expected it to tell the story of Atari and it's definitely there, but there's a lot more focus on E.T. than I expected.Anyway, it's an interesting look on Atari - how it started, its success and its demise. It shows how E.T. the video game was born, what made it be called "the worst video game ever" and whether it's justified or not. There are interviews with the key people at Atari and it's both interesting and fun to watch while also giving a great sense of nostalgia.Recommended.

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.

What's the worst video game ever ? I'm rather lost as to how you'd even go about using criteria for worst video game ever . As someone who plays video games on my laptop I'm often frustrated as to how in-depth they are these days . Where as playing a football management game from 15 years ago such as CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER I could complete a season in about two hours where as playing FOOTBALL MANAGER 2015 I have to sacrifice closer to two days to finish a football season . Likewise a real time strategy game like AIRLAND BATTLE is breath taking in its dedication to units , maps and tactics but by the same token the gameplay and micro management needed to play in order to win on a consistent basis is off putting so it's very subjective as to what qualifies as a bad game . This documentary tells the story of the Atari game E.T which we're told to believe is the worst video game in the history of humanity Again we're asked to buy in to the S word - subjectivity - and this is where everything falls down . Atari once had an absolute monopoly on video games both in arcades and home consoles . Everyone remembers Pong , a tennis like game involving two players knocking a ball in to their opponents space . Then you had Space Invaders and the likes taking up the market in arcade games and I often remember as a child popping in to the local amusement arcades in Rothesay watching patrons play these games wishing I had the money to play . When I did arcade games had moved forward slightly and grown more intricate and visually better and just all round more fun . It wasn't until I consulted Wikipedia that I found out something important which GAME OVER fails to mention and that is how very few games in the mid 1980s arcades were Atari games . And this means this documentary must be taken wit a large salt mine . By the mid 1980s other consoles by the likes of Sega were eating in to the market and despite what the interviewees are claiming it simply wasn't a bad press revolving around a single game that ended Atari it was simply market forces and more innovative rivals that beat them This is a pity because this selective rewriting of history damages a very interesting documentary that gives us the story of how video games came in to being . Where it works best is with the visuals . Director Zak Penn best known for his Hollywood superhero screenplays uses the documentary as almost a literal comic book cum video game which works very well in what could have been a boring docu featuring talking head interviews . The history of Atari is also fascinating where game developers were allowed to get stoned at work , think outside the box and makes lots of money . As the laws of evolution show however hippies become yippies become yuppies and there's distinct lack of irony involved when people who have done so much to make a corporate company an absolute minority thinks it's a good idea to dig up a land fill site in Alamogordo causing possible environmental harm as a bit of an ego trip while blaming all the world's problems on a video game that didn't sell . Modesty like truth isn't exactly in evidence here but it still makes for an interesting documentary

I really didn't know what to expect from this film. I had heard about the search for the Atari games buried in a landfill and never gave it much mind after that. Curious as to what happened, I decided to give this movie a look when it came on Netflix.This documentary is the strangest piece of propaganda I have ever seen. It tries to salvage the reputation of ET The Extra Terrestrial, largely regarded as one of, if not the worst video game of all time. In doing so, it skews factual information and presents minority opinions in an attempt to give this a new reputation.I grew up in the 1980's and I was very excited when I got ET for my Atari 2600. Being 8 years old, I had seen the movie and loved it and I was so into video games that it seemed like an unbeatable idea. However, after several hours of pain and agony, I gave up on ET. I would come back to it several times later in life, never with any improvement.This movie skews information to exonerate ET from its role in Atari's "death." When the games are found in the landfill, the narrator remarks that only 10 percent of the games were ET. He then lists other popular games that were found, such as Defender and Centipede. Conveniently, however, the percentages found for any of the other games are not mentioned. They then present this as proof that ET didn't kill Atari. You then get about three people talking about how great the game is, including one guy who you don't know and never will remarking how he'd rather play ET than Call of Duty. Well, so would I and I don't like either game.The narrator never makes the obvious point that the reason there were more games than ET in the landfill is because the landfill was filled around the end of Atari, Inc's existence. Atari got rid of a lot of unsold games and ET represented a larger portion than any other game.So, if you want to get an actual unbiased account about this, this movie will not provide that. It's clear purpose is to try to make this horrid video game look good.