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 b*tch, get out

of the f***ing 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!

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.

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.

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

represents where garbage is.

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

the reporter taking the

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

dump, which is exactly how

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.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes