1983, one year after Steven Spielberg’s multi-Oscar winning film ET was released, Atari released the game tie-in that ultimately caused their downfall. Atari secured the rights to ET for an incredible $22million, and after successfully releasing the Raiders of the Lost Ark game tie-in a year previously, the ET game should be another sure fire hit. But unfortunately for Howard Scott Warshaw, the man who was chosen by Spielberg himself to create the Raiders tie-in, was also chosen to make the ET game. But unfortunately for Warshaw, he wasn’t afforded the same amount of time that he was given for the Indiana Jones game, this time he only had five weeks as Atari wanted the game out for Christmas.
At the time, Warshaw relished the challenge, setting up at home, he would spend the next five weeks doing nothing but eating, sleeping and designing the game from scratch. Warshaw wanted to come up with not just another rehashed game but an original, innovative game. After completing the game in such a short time, Warshaw was pleased with what he had achieved. Spielberg even played it and gave it the green light of approval. The game was released and initially sold well, in part due to the hype, but things soon turned sour.
Gameplay issues were cropping up everywhere, from ET being trapped in pits to gameplay crippling glitches. Soon, the shops and distributors started returning the game back to Atari en masse. Atari initially, rather optimistically, made 5million copies of the game. It was this disastrous move by Atari that eventually cost them the entire company, as Atari was sold after losing almost $563million. With the entire back catalogue of Atari now sitting gathering dust, the majority of games in fact being ET, they decided it was probably best for everyone that they simply buried everything, in the desert no less. So on 22nd September 1983, a convoy of trucks drove into the New Mexican desert, all holding Atari’s not so precious cargo, and emptied their contents into a landfill site and buried, to be completely forgotten.
But that wasn’t the case, as word soon got out, scavengers arrived on the scene and unearthed millions of copies of ET and other Atari games that were not supposed to see the light of day again. Then in April of 2014, a documentary film crew turned up to start shooting Atari: Game Over, a film documenting the drastic decline of one of the biggest games developers during the 80s. Directing the film is Zak Penn, who wrote X-Men: The Last Stand and The Incredible Hulk. The film looks to find the truth in the now infamous crash and burn of Atari, and the game that so many hold accountable for the downfall; ET. But it isn’t all because of that ill-fated rushed game, many factors caused the demise of Atari. Inflation and the hugely competitive home video game market all played their part. The film conducts interviews with those who were there at the time who unfortunately went down with the sinking ship. Howard Scott Warshaw himself features in the documentary, giving his side of the story and how he moved on from the experience, even as far as changing his career to a psychotherapist.
Whatever caused the downward spiral of Atari in the mid-eighties, it is clear to see the game tie-in ET will forever be remembered, not necessarily as the worst game of all time, but one that symbolised the demise of one of the biggest games companies, one that lead the invasion of homes, bringing the arcade into living rooms around the world.
Atari: Game Over is available to watch online.