Video games have been a growing part of popular culture ever since Pong was first introduced by Atari in 1972. In the late 1970’s, Atari began introducing home video game consoles and revolutionized the gaming industry. After a series of hits including Pac-Man, Pitfall, and Yar’s Revenge, the gaming company had a strangle hold on the burgeoning industry. Writer and director Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk, Last Action Hero) helms this documentary which charts the rise and fall of the Atari company, while simultaneously trying to uncover the urban legend that Atari dumped millions of E.T. cartridges in the New Mexico desert.

 

Atari: Game Over is interesting on many levels. On one level it functions as an exploration of the birth of video game licensing. As the E.T. video game marked one of the first mega-deals between a blockbuster movie and a video game company. The fallout of this deal is still felt today. Thirty years later it is still rare to find a quality game based on a movie license.

Penn also explores a question that many of us weren’t even thinking to ask. What happened to the E.T. game for the Atari 2600? Let me back up a little bit, for those of you that are confused. The Atari 2600 was one of the first home video game consoles. The system had a joystick with one button. That’s right. If you asked someone how to play…any game, the response was typically, “Press the button.”

As with most good documentaries, Atari: Game Over attempts to dig below the surface of the mystery to find the issues that truly matter. The documentary does start off attempting to find out if the games were actually buried 30 years ago, in an unmarked site in New Mexico. Unlike many urban legend themed documentaries, this is particularly rewarding because there are definitive answers. It seems completely bizarre that Atari could bury every known copy of the game deep underground. But sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

Halfway through the film it becomes apparent that the film is really a reclamation project. Penn attempts to tell the story of the man, Howard Scott Warshaw, who for thirty years has been accused of almost single-handedly taking down the Atari corporation, at the time when it was ruling the industry. Penn takes an in-depth look behind the scenes at the different personalities, ranging from the head of Atari to director Steven Spielberg, who were involved in one of the worst business decisions in gaming history. 

Warshaw serves as the tour guide, taking Penn and the audience through the early years of Atari that are ripe for a feature film. Despite being scorned by the same industry that he helped build, Warshaw is remarkably frank and truthful about his run with the company. His willingness to be totally open, even about the less savory elements, makes him the ideal subject to walk the viewer through the events of the fall of Atari and the reclamation of his own reputation.

Atari: Game Over is a documentary that every hardcore gamer should make the time to check out. It has a short running time of just over an hour and Penn packs it with fun information. While it doesn’t offer much visually, the real importance (like most quality documentaries) lies in the history that it is retelling. In this case, the value of the movie lies in how it explains the birth of home console gaming. As we move into the next generation of gaming, it is important to see how things began and how quickly things can change. Go uncover Atari: Game Over.