Atari: Game Over Page #3

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that my life could

still be this or better.

I just didn't know how to do it.

It's really intense for

me to come back here.

This is the first time I've

been back here in 30 years.

And this was the place

where I was introduced

to what life could be, for me.

What a working life could be.

What real creative

satisfaction could be.

What doing something

really meaningful could be.

Those are all things that come

back to me in this moment.

And it's just...

it's very intense.

So what really

happened back in 1983?

People heard the

rumors, but Atari denied

the dump ever took place.

And eventually, people

forgot about it.

But with the growth

of the internet,

and all of its best and worst

lists, E.T. and its burial

went from small town gossip

to full blown urban legend.

By the mid '90s, videos begin

to appear online that seemed

to suggest that anyone with a

shovel go out in the desert,

and dig up the buried games.

That's what I thought too, but

it wasn't close to that easy.

Joe had spent years

researching the burial.

If his information

was correct, the games

were not only deep

underground, they

were covered with concrete.

Joe was still wading

through a sea of red tape.

But if and when the

city approved his plan

to excavate the landfill,

he was going to need

more than just a shovel.

He would need giant

yellow digging machines.

And a bunch of guys in hats

and vests to operate them.

This is one of the

photos of the actual burial,

when they did it.

So we're looking at, like, 15

feet down, to hit the concrete.

Under the concrete

is mostly dirt.

It's just the... it's

the bottom of the pit.

What's that thing,

right over there?

That's a motor grader.

A motor grader?

Yes.

That's for, really,

just fine grading.

You know, like the

highways and roads.

And fine planing large areas.

So, we conceivably might

need that, for this, right?

No.

No.

I mean, but you

might... you could

bring it out before, right?

I mean, you might want to

park it there so it's ready.

No, not really.

No.

We're fine.

I don't know.

Not my field.

I am

concerned that Joe's

moving kind of quick.

And we do need to throw some

brakes on, and slow it down.

The opposition comes

from environmentalists,

maybe within the community.

And the concern is

that Alamogordo also

may have something else

buried in the landfill that

may be hazardous.

And we may not know exactly

where this location is.

Nobody

really and truly

has dead honest

records as to where

everything is buried out there.

And we're talking

potential mercury laced

pigs, malathion, possibly DDT.

There's potentially

lead in there,

and maybe some other

dangerous metals

that are in those cartridges.

I don't want to be in an area

where we might crack open

a sealed tomb, so to

speak, of these hogs, where

mercury the gas comes out.

So I don't want the

Stephen King novel of,

we hit the wrong spot,

and all of the sudden

we are evacuating Alamogordo.

That is unacceptable.

If there's

a problem that the New Mexico

Environmental

Department perceives,

we're not going to

be able to proceed.

Until I'm satisfied it's

safe, it's not going to happen.

At least within my power.

You know, there's only so

much power that I have.

So, for my first game,

they wanted me to do

a coin-op conversion.

Although I had only

been there for about

a week, I went to my manager,

and I said, you know something?

I said this game, Star

Castle, on the 2600

is just going to suck.

I know it's going to suck.

And I said, but I think I can

take some of the key things

that I think make it fun

game, and re-work it so

that it would work on the 2600.

And so they said, OK, go ahead.

Do what you want to do.

So, how did you

learn how to program a game?

I just read the manual

and started writing the game.

No one had ever done, like, a

backstory for a game before.

And I thought, this

is my first game,

and I want to be involved

in every part of it.

And I want to make it the best

thing it could possibly be.

So I wrote this, like,

seven, eight page story.

I stayed up all night

just writing this story.

Knocked it out.

And it was a science

fiction story

about flies that get on the

first interstellar spaceships,

and mutate, and evolve, and

take over the solar system.

But now they're under attack by

this other monster, and stuff.

And that's the short

version of the story.

So I thought, well,

I need to name it.

So what I did, was I named

it Yar, because that's

Ray spelled backwards.

And Ray Kassar was

the CEO of Atari.

Right?

So I've got his name

keyed into the title.

And I thought, revenge,

great action word.

You know, so that's compelling.

And so that's how it

became Yar's Revenge.

When Yar's Revenge

came out, it was a hit.

It was huge.

Games that could look

like Yar's Revenge

looked... that could draw

that kind of stuff...

were, like, magical.

Even though Yar's Revenge might

look primitive... you know,

it looks like a

superconducting super collider

compared to a lot

of the games that

were out there at the time.

I remember the first time

I put the cartridge in,

and I was like, what is this?

It really is a very innovative

shooter of that era.

Getting

a ship to fly around.

So it's fun just to

fly the ship around.

It was a trick, especially

on that hardware.

The enemy was cool and scary.

And it felt really

good to defeat it.

You feel like it's your victory

when you beat those challenges.

And you feel like it's your

defeat when they beat you.

And you keep coming

back, because you

didn't lose by being cheated.

You didn't lose because the

game did something unfair.

You lost because you

weren't quite good enough.

And all of the great games

sit right on that edge.

I remember playing

Yar's Revenge one day,

and we happened on

trick that let you...

if you were on this right spot

at the right time in the game,

and it was in between levels...

these initials came up.

And the initials were HSW.

To us, it was some

weird mystery.

And like, we had to

figure out what HSW meant.

And finally, in one

of the game magazines,

they published what HSW meant.

Turns out, HSW means

Howard Scott Warshaw,

the guy who made the game.

Yar's Revenge

was the first game

that Atari ever did, where

the programmer's name

went outwith the cartridge.

Yar's Revenge had

a lot of firsts,

and that was just one of them.

Yar's Revenge is

the bestselling original game

for the Atari 2600.

It sold something

like a million copies.

Every reviewer at

the time thought

Yar's Revenge was one of the

best games Atari put out.

You know it made a lot

of money for Atari.

In 1981,

this was a company

that made operating profits of

something like $375 million.

One of today's greatest

marketing triumphs

in the entertainment

field is video games.

It was

beyond comprehension.

The fastest growing company

in American history.

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