Atari: Game Over Page #8

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that's affected his career,

and what people will

remember him for.

And that's... that's pretty bad.

The fact that a guy's career

got destroyed because

he did E.T.,

given the circumstances

surrounding doing E.T.,

is... it's completely unfair.

I mean, it's sad.

It's really sad.

There's this

video game walk of fame.

There's also this show called

DICE, where they give out

lifetime achievement awards.

Howard's not in that.

He's not put in that same group.

They kind of keep him

out of all these things,

and it's kind of a shame.

The day I left Atari.

When things had really fallen

apart, and it was over.

And I'm literally carrying

my garbage out to my car

to leave for the last time.

That was a very

depressing moment for me.

Because I felt I

was losing the most

important thing in my life.

And I also knew it

was so unreal that I'd

never be able to recreate it.

The burial in Alamogordo is

basically Atari's funeral.

The burial of those cartridges

represents the burial

of that beautiful era.

And that may be what's

interesting about it.

I don't know, I mean,

that's a whole psychology

I'm not going to go near.

But it may be because it is

about the death of Atari.

That's what it is.

We can't control

how the past returns to us.

We may get something

that no longer

resembles an E.T. cartridge.

We may get something

monstrous, something twisted,

something decayed.

We may not even know

what we're looking

at if we unearth Atari's E.T...

Part of me feels

that when you finally crack open

this place, and

you start to look,

it's going to be a lot like

the Ark of the Covenant.

It's just going to

be a bunch of sand.

But another part of

me hopes that what's

found there is going

to lead to a lot more

understanding, and

a lot more discovery

about what really happened.

What's his name?

Joe.

Joe!

They want me to come in?

Let's go.

So what's up?

You guys find something?

I should have

brought my binoculars.

Could you show me?

They're

bringing some stuff

over to the archaeologists'

table right now.

Let's see what's going on.

Can everybody hear me?

We found something.

The archaeologists have

confirmed it's from 1983.

28 feet down.

It's E.T., the video game.

Intact in its box.

Wow.

There you go, Son.

It's an emotional,

emotional event.

They've backed up

this legend with fact,

and it's incredible

to be a part of it.

Good job, Joe.

I wasn't nervous until we

got down to that, where he was

almost reaching his max length.

But yeah, it was a big

weight off my shoulders

when that bucket came

up and E.T. was there.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I didn't think they were

going to find them intact,

I thought for sure they'd

be crushed and ruined.

Now I've got

goosebumps, and it's

not because of the dust storm.

What's this moment

like for you?

Look at all the

excitement that's

been generated

today over something

that I did 32 years ago.

It just... it's an immensely

personal thing.

What it took to make

these games, was a lot.

And this one was

done in five weeks.

That was one of the hardest

five weeks of my life.

So I need a little moment.

I'm just so excited to be here.

A lot of these people are

complaining about E.T.

and never actually even played it.

And I ever since then,

I would talk to people,

and we would talk about

E.T., and I'm like,

well, have you ever

played the game?

And it would come

out that they didn't.

They would just kind of

continue this myth of the game

being really horrible.

It is a good game.

It wasn't the worst

that Atari had to offer.

There was, like... I remember

getting a game called Fire Fly.

That is the worst

game for Atari.

That's what every

should be focusing

their efforts on, not E.T.

Now let me be clear,

the worst game ever made

was obviously Trespasser.

So I just want to

be clear with that.

With the shitload of

just horrible, poorly made

cranked out Atari games,

to call E.T.

the worst one is just...

shameful.

In contemporary game culture

we like trashing games.

I don't mean putting

them in landfills,

but verbally,

trashing game design.

It's become fashionable to sort

of regard E.T. as the worst

video game of all time.

In fact, it makes everybody's

list as the number one.

And I'm going to go

out on a complete limb

here, and say... maybe people

will attack me for this...

but I'd rather play Atari's

E.T. than any Call of Duty.

In context, given the time and

the situation that Howard had

to live in, to

program that game,

it really is an

astonishing master work.

He made an amazing

f***ing game that's

a whole self-contained

world in five weeks,

that's even more impressive.

I don't know any human

being who could have turned

E.T., in the time

frames involved,

into a really successful game.

He should be

applauded for being

able to have done anything in

the time that was allotted.

The scorn should be

heaped upon those

who thought it was even rational

to try to build a cartridge

in a month and a half.

The analogy that people always

use for these first timers...

for people who try

something first...

is the first penguin analogy.

Where the first penguin

who jumps down the hole

through the ice is

the one who invariably

gets eaten by the seal.

But if there wasn't

a first penguin,

then the penguins wouldn't be

going down through the ice.

So, it sucks to be

the first penguin,

but somebody's got to do it.

So it turned

out that Joe Lewandowski

had been right all along.

The games were buried, almost

exactly where he had predicted.

And no mercury filled pigs

popped up out of the ground.

So the legend of

the burial was true.

Or was it?

When the archaeologists

cataloged all the games,

there were a bunch

of E.T. cartridges,

but nowhere near the

millions that were

such a big part of the legend.

In fact, E.T. made up about

10% of the total games found.

The rest included some of

the best games ever made,

Defender, and Centipede,

and Yar's Revenge.

There was even one copy of

Adventure, which I snagged.

The burial wasn't a cover

up, or done out of shame.

It was a warehouse

dump done by a company

in financial distress.

At the time, the Alamogordo

landfill was just

the most practical solution.

E.T. wasn't buried because

it was the worst game ever.

People called it

the worst game ever

because it had been buried.

And as a result, it got

blamed for destroying

an entire industry.

The game and its creator

had taken the rap

for a crime they didn't commit.

The notion that E.T.

caused the demise of Atari

is simply stupid.

It's just stupid.

Atari committed suicide.

It was not homicide.

And it wasn't the

E.T. cartridge.

It was a concomitant effect of

a lot of missteps in technology,

and deployment, and marketing.

Some people say E.T. destroyed

the video game industry.

And I'm sure I've

heard that before,

but it's just really funny.

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