All language subtitles for Atari Game Over (ENG subs)

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 gravesite
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 sleigh, 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 ET.

The worst video
game of all time.

It's been described as
the worst video game ever.

ET for ATARI.

Today we're going to talk
about the worst of the worst.

Here's our
top 10 worst games ever.

ET, the Extraterrestrial.

And here's the thing about ET.

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.

Oh do, doodle, loodle do, do.

Son of a bitch,
get out of the fucking hole.

If you grab
a piece of the phone,

the FBI agent
keeps attacking you.

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 game

was that ET fell into pits.

Damnit! Shit!

Oh, come on!

Well, 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 Alamogordo landfill.

The idea that they had so many
of these things, and they were

so unable to seldom
give them away or whatever,

they literally had to
drive them out into the middle

of the desert and
bury them like a dead gangster.

Almost too crazy to believe.

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.

Whenever 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,
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, and
picked up an invisible dot, and

carried it to a 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 Hertzog,

went to Scotland to find
the Loch Ness Monster.

We never did find Nessy, 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 life-long 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.
Burial of the
final resting ground of ET.

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.

It's 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, so.

So, duck under it.
Yeah, I guess that works.

Joe Lewandowski's been
the garbage guru if you will,

for a number of years.

He operated various waste
disposal companies with

Alamogordo and Otero country.

And when it comes to the
ATARI graveyard, I believe he

probably has more direct
knowledge than 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 that dump, and
point to a spot on the ground,

and say this is where it's at.

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?

Is that just me?
That's pretty much you.

It's just me.

So what are these
little boxes here?

Each one of the boxes
represent 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-
No, that's
the problem. Nobody did.

We do today.

Oh, 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 finding 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

of when it actually occurred.

So what we did is just to figure
out, okay, 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 pinned it down to now.

So when you come back here,
they 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 archeologist,

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 ET story, is a very
small part of the ATARI story.

Let me go back some and
explain how ATARI started out.

The video game came because
of the convergence of me working

at an amusement
park in summers while pursuing

an engineering degree
at the University of Utah.

I knew the economics of the
coin operated game business.

They made a lot of money.

Nolan designed these
incredibly elegant circuits,

put together in a way that's
so clever that, you know,

modern engineers
have a hard time, you know,

understanding
or repairing these things.

My partner and I Ted Dabney,
started working on

a ping pong game.

By the end of '72,
we did $3.5 million.

And then we did 19 million.

Then we did 35 million.

You know, it was a hockey stick.

This electronic medium
which was just beginning,

had some traction with people.

And once you played some of the
most sophisticated arcade games

of the day, and understood
that maybe there was a chance

you could duplicate that in
a home game, your eyes got big.

Home video games have been
a success from the moment

a company called ATARI
launched this basic game, Pong,

which has been imitated by
at least 40 other manufacturers.

They're selling
like crazy. 300,000 last year.

This year, 3 million.

Next year, 6, maybe 10, million.

We felt well maybe
this is the time to sell

to a company with deep pockets.

I was in my
office at Warner in 1976.

The phone rang and it
was a guy named Gordy Crawford,

and he asked the question
I've never forgotten.

"Would you guys be interested
in acquiring a technology-based,

fast-growing
entertainment company?"

And I said yes. I didn't
know what I said "yes" to,

but I said yes.

And that lead to my
introduction to ATARI.

ATARI.

Where the future comes from.

What excited me
about ATARI wasn't Pong,

it was the chipset
that lead to the ATARI 2600.

Pong was sort of okay.

You bang up and back,
and up and back,

but this meant you could
constantly change the games.

And that was a
very exciting idea to me.

We introduced the 2600
in 1977, with 9 cartridges.

The home video game
was a very close approximation

of the coin-op experience.

It changed the
mindset of the world.

Turning the television
from a passive medium

into an active medium, that
was what we knew we were doing,

and that was super exciting to
be the pioneers in that field.

It just blew people away.

Nobody knew any of this stuff.

They made it up as they went
and they were good at it.

And it started everything.

It was playing
those games that taught people

the potential of a computer.

ATARI, at some level,

brought the computer revolution.

They started experimentally
hiring smart kids with this idea

that maybe they could
come up with other stuff to do.

And they inadvertently
were trying to create

the job of game designer.

Microprocessor
real-time control programming

is just where it's at.

So there's two kinds of
things you could typically do

with that in the early 1980s.

You can do missile guidance
systems, or like we say,

kill people
for twelve cents a head.

Or, you can make video games,
which I thought

was a much better application
for the whole thing.

What went on at ATARI from the
very beginning was basically

that the engineers are going
to drive this company, because

they weren't just engineers,
they were creative guys.

They're like musicians, or movie
directors, they're artists.

To luck or providence,
or both, they ended up

with this department
of game designers that became

this dream team at ATARI.

These guys who made all
of these classics, Tempest,

and Asteroids,
and Centipede, and Gauntlet,

and you know, think of a game.

The culture was these guys
do what they want to do.

One day I was standing
at the men's room at the urinal.

I looked down, and I saw a
pair of bare feet next to me.

And I looked, and here was
a guy wearing a pair of shorts,

and nothing else.

And I said
something, and they said,

oh yeah, that's so-and-so,
he's a great engineer.

He doesn't like to wear clothes.

The coin-op engineers
at ATARI, they were great.

And, on the consumer side,

Howard was
one of the best programmers.

He was one of the
best of those engineers.

At the heart of the creative
process is the programmer.

I try to create basically a
sensory experience that evokes

a certain feeling in the user.

I mean, I tend
to program from a concept.

I mean,
it was--I was made for this.

I mean, this
was what I was made to do.

January 11, 1981, I showed
up for my first day of work

as a game programmer at ATARI.

So, do you remember the
first day you showed up here?

Absolutely.

My first office mates
were Tod Frye and Rob Zdybel.

And I had an understanding
that there was a lot of dope

that was smoked
at ATARI when we were there.

And so on my first day at work,
I brought a joint because

I didn't want to be, you know, I
wanted to be a courteous guest.

And so I showed them...
Which by the way, it is a good
lesson for our younger viewers.

If people are doing drugs,
bring your own so you fit in.

Todd walks in,
shuts the door, and says,

"I'm going to get high
in here, so if you don't want

to be around this,
you'd better leave."

No, actually here,
I said. I brought a joint.

And he sort
of looked and he went pfft.

I'm going to
smoke some real stuff.

Okay.

That was my introduction.
That was my first day at work.

We wanted people who worked hard
and yet had fun with doing it.

How do we mix up so that
we don't know the difference

between our work and our play?

The company's motto
was we take fun seriously,

but we used to say,
we take fun intravenously.

And they didn't
like that very much.

No, I don't know why.

The party
atmosphere was actually...

A calculated
plan to incentivize.

I would set quotas.

If the quotas were met,
I'd throw a kegger.

They would just roll out in
the car, go to a liquor store,

and they gave
someone a company credit card,

and they came
back with a bunch of booze.

And we consumed it.

Over there's where the hot tub
was, inside on the first floor.

There was some great stuff
that went on in that room.

Over here, here's the hill that,
you know, one day I was wearing

dashiki shirt which
I was very into back then,

and I would do
somersaults down the hill.

I might have had some cocktails
that afternoon at that point.

Did you know
that you were entering

this crazy party atmosphere?

That you'd be...
No. Even though
I was told I was,

I had no expectation
that it could really exist.

The best recruiting tool
we could have for an engineer

was to bring him over
to one of our parties.

Hey, what's happening people?

Hey, how's it going?

What's happening?

And they felt, hey, I'm a nerd.

There are girls here, they're
talking to me. It's good.

That was the culture.

These guys are
the lifeblood of the business,

and they do
what they want to do.

And that's fine.

And some of these things
happened to be over the course

of 3.5 years here that made
the next 25 years really tough.

Because it established
a standard of what

professional life
and life in general could be.

And I never let go
of the thought 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.

It's just very intense.

So what really
happened back in 1983?

People heard the rumors,
but ATARI denied

the dump every took place.

And eventually
people forgot about it.

But with the
growth of the internet,

and all of its best and worst
lists, ET and its burial

went from small-town gossip
to full-blown urban legend.

By the mid-'90s, videos began
to appear online that seemed

to suggest that anyone
with a shovel could 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 waiting
for 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.

So we're looking at like 15
feet down to hit the concrete.

Under the
concrete's mostly dirt.

It's just the--
it's a 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.
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.

Oh.
No.

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.

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 gas comes out.

So, I don't want the
Stephen King novel of we hit the

wrong spot and all of a sudden
we are evacuating Alamogordo.

That is unacceptable to me.

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'd 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 a fun game, and rework it

so that
it would work on the 2600.

And so they said,
"Okay, 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
back story for a game before.

And I thought,
this is my first game.

I want to be involved
in every part of it.

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 space
ships, and mutate, 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 type,
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 the
super-connecting, supercollider

compared to a lot of the games
that were out there at the time.

I remember the first time
I put the cartridge in.

I was like, what it 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 is a trick,
especially in 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'll 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 this trick that lets you--if
you were on this right spot

at the right time in the game,
you know, it was between levels,

these initials came up.

These initials were HSW.

To us,
it was some weird mystery,

like we had to
find out what HSW meant.

And finally
in one of the game magazines,

they published what HSW meant.

And it 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 out with the cartridge.

Yar's Revenge
had a lot of firsts,

and that was just one of them.

Yar's Revenge is the
best-selling 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 is 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.

This was an explosion.

Even those of us who were right
in the middle of it, we were

shaking our heads, going,
oh, my God, this is amazing.

We were the most
successful coin-op company.

We were the dominant
consumer company.

And we sat around literally
saying to ourselves,

what are the
categories of games?

What are the
capabilities of the 2600?

Where's this industry going?

Everything that Joe
has put together on this

ATARI graveyard, so far,
seems to be coming true.

I'm in favor of the
ATARI games being dug up

because it is the largest
myth in the gaming world.

I believe that
Joe just thinks that

it'd be an outstanding
event for Alamogordo.

And a way to get us on the map.

On Tuesday, Alamogordo's city
commission approved a deal

to dig in the old landfill
within the next six months.

The city has given it's okay,

and now the state
has given them approval.

Film crews
will be in Alamogordo.

The documentary film crew
will start probing the dump

for their strange
buried treasure at 9:30am.

So, this is an impressive-
looking machine out here.

What the hell is it doing?

What this
drilling rig does, goes down,

straight down,
takes out core samples,

and brings up
whatever's in the ground.

We've narrowed it
down from 300 acres down

to about five to 10 acres.

And so what we're doing now
is trying to get it even closer,

because we're looking for
things like somebody's mail,

you know, the postmarks.
Newspapers. Things like that.

Looking for dates. And we're
looking for September of '83.

Don't you think people
are going to be disappointed

if we dig it up and we don't
actually find the ET games?

I mean, wouldn't that be...

That'd be very
disappointing for all of us.

All the work. Three years
of work put into this.

So what do we do then?

You're just going to dig up
the whole landfill or something?

No, we can't--the
environmental department

will not allow that to happen.

You're saying that there's
a possibility that this could

turn out
to be a giant waste of time.

I think I said it before.

I'll be the car,
I won't bet the house.

Most everybody,
at least in the Western World,

has played a
video game of some kind.

They've gone to an arcade.
They know the ATARI brand.

They certainly know ET.

And so I think
there's a universal curiosity

about this game.

You know, something did happen
those couple of nights in 1983

that I think
it merits serious investigation.

So why did I
decide to go to Alamogordo?

I'm very much interested in the
impact that a particular game

or industry has made within
a cultural and social context.

What's striking
about the ATARI ET game,

in the Alamogordo
landfill is that

they're there
and not in museums.

I think this is what excites
many people who keep

this narrative alive,
is they want to get these items.

They want visible proof.

They want
some kind of tangible evidence

that that dump did take place.

I've been professionally
making games since about '94,

but more than that, I'm somebody
who's been chiefly doing

a lot of historical
work with video games,

trying to preserve video games,
and get people to understand

that video games
are more like art.

And so I've been doing a lot of

video game preservation
and education.

I always thought one day
I'm going to get over there

and I'm going to see,
finally, once and for all,

like, where it's buried.

I almost don't even really
need to know what's in it.

I almost want to
keep that mystery alive.

To me, under that landfill
is actually the burial site

of an entire industry.

Because what affected ATARI
at the time affected everyone.

And, everything
that I thought was going

to go on forever stopped.

And it stopped
almost at that same moment

that these--
whatever's there was buried.

So, for me, I want to
find out what is there.

It's like opening
the Ark of the Covenant.

It's like,
you kind of want to look,

but is my face
going to melt off? I don't know.

I've told my wife that
I will be going to New Mexico.

And she asked me why.
And I started to explain.

And she said, "I don't
need to know. Just go do it."

You want it, Ernest, on screen?

Whatever. Ernest
is my fancy writer's name.

Ernie's what everybody calls me.

Well, actually, all right.
So we'll use your writer's name.

How would you describe yourself?

Screenwriter,
novelist. Gentleman adventurer.

The thing about having an ATARI
for me was it was a simulator.

Like I could
simulate being Indiana Jones,

or simulate being ET.

Having access to
that and coming from a family

of like modest means,
and not having to, you know,

beg for quarters
and just being able to play

as much as you wanted,
that was such a huge part

of my childhood
and fed my imagination.

And that was the inspiration
for Ready Player One, my novel.

The idea of like
what if Willie Wonka had been

a video game designer, and he
held his golden ticket contest

inside his
greatest video game creation.

That all came
from finding those Easter eggs

in all those ATARI games.

I felt like a
little kid this past week.

Like,
getting ready to go to camp.

Alamogordo
and the ATARI graveyard.

For me, it's like holy ground.

And that's when
I realized my DeLorean's

already in New Mexico.

I just have to fly to Santa Fe,

pick up my DeLorean
from George R. Martin.

He was using it for the
Back to the Future screening.

Drive it down to Alamogordo.

I could stop
at the Very Large Array.

Also hit Roswell.

And then go to Alamogordo
and be there for the excavation

of the ATARI graveyard.

As soon as those, you know,
tumblers clicked into place,

I'm like the most
epic road trip of all time.

I have to go.

It's like I'm Indy
going to Westoros...

To meet Doc Brown...
And then save E.T.

George, thank you so much,
I appreciate it, man.

My pleasure.

Right there. There it is.

This is a good piece of
evidence, because right here...

Is that the date right there?

Right there.

You got Sunday,
October 2, 1983 right there.

That's good, right?
Yeah.

ATARI was from the
23rd to the 29th of September.

So this is like a week later.

No, it's not even a week.

It's like two
or three days later.

Well, I'm not that good at math.

The ATARIs would have been
on the bottom, then garbage

from the following weeks
would have been piled on top.
Right.

This is the following
week. In here.
So where are the games?

No games, no ATARI stuff
at all? No, not yet. Not yet.

Okay.

I love the challenges.

I love the mystery.

I love the--especially
when people say they'll never

be found, or they're not there,

that just makes
the challenge even better.

I put three or four years
of this research planning,

the politics,

the environment department.

I mean, many, many, many
things to get to this point.

Yeah, now, it's very
important that we find them.

So, back in the early '80s,
movie licenses for video games

were just starting
to come into vogue

and I think Raiders
was the first one.

So they needed someone
to do Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I think what happened
was Yars was very successful,

and so they wanted
me to do a big game.

And then it was up to Spielberg.

So, when I went down and met
with Spielberg, and if Spielberg

would have said, you know,
"I don't think he's really right

for the game," they would
have sent someone else.

Can Indiana Jones escape
from the forces of evil?

In ATARIs Raiders of
the Lost Ark adventure game.

What was the reception of the
Raiders of the Lost Ark game?

It was another million seller.

Raiders was huge.

I mean, I can honestly
say I'm the only programmer

in the history of ATARI
where every one of my games

that was released
was a million seller.

The word meteoric comes to mind.

And now,
Stephen Spielberg brings us E.T.

The Extra-Terrestrial.

Spielberg says, well, you know,
my pictures, they open slow.

And, they build, and they
hold, and da-da-da-da-da-da,

and I just looked at him
and I didn't know anything.

I said, not this one.

It was ET.

I said, it's going to open huge
and it's going to stay huge.

Okay, the movie
comes out. It's a huge hit.

And we want to
do the cartridge of it. Okay.

You know, every time you try
to take some kind of a property

and move it into another medium
for a pure profit motive,

you get trouble.

Specifically,
with respect to games,

you know, it's like,
let's go see if we can

exploit this movie as a game.

You know,
maybe we could make extra money

out of a profitable franchise.

Now, there was
a negotiation going on between

the ATARI people
and the people at Universal

about what we're going to pay,

and Steve Ross
who was the CEO of Warner,

got in and for whatever
the reasons, he agrees to a deal

that is so off the chart,
nobody believes it.

But he does it.
It was $20-30 million.

It was some crazy number.

Steve Ross basically was trying
to woo Stephen Spielberg

to come to work
for Warner because he recognized

that Spielberg was a genius.

And, that all
plays into this story.

Well, we acquired
the rights to ET.

And it was--we had to have
the game out for Christmas.

And that's a problem.

One afternoon, I'm sitting in
my office, and a call comes in.

[phone ringing]

And it's Ray Kassar.
And he's calling from Monterey.

So I take the call, and Ray
Kassar comes on the phone,

and he says, "Howard,
can you do ET in five weeks?"

And I said, "Yes, I can."
And he goes, "Okay.

In two days, I want you to be
in San Jose Executive Airport.

There'll be a
Lear jet waiting for you.

Be on that jet.

Be ready to propose
the game to Spielberg."

[dial tone]

During that meeting,
when I flew down on the Lear jet

to go meet Spielberg,
and present the game to him,

even though
I only had five weeks,

I still wanted to innovate.

So I proposed
a 3D world that the game

was going to take place in.

And the huge scope of
what I was trying to achieve.

It walks that line
between really trying to make

something happen, and
venturing into the impossible.

And walking off a cliff.

The emotionality of the game was
supposed to come out through

the interaction
of the characters.

You have the FBI agent, who's
interested in what you have,

that's why the
FBI agent just steals stuff

that you were holding.

You have this scientist
who's interested in who you are.

The scientist actually
carries you back to the city,

because they want to study you.

And Elliott
comes in to save you.

There's time
where you can call Elliott

and he will help you out.

And so those are the kind
of things that I had that

I thought created
possibly some sentiment, but.

And at one point,
Spielberg says to me, he goes,

"you know, couldn't you do
something more like Pac Man?"

No, Steven, we need
to do a game that's fresh.

We need to do something that's
really worthy of this movie.

Simply how you can
make a complicated game.

It's how complicated
a game can you make subject

to the constraint
of easy learnability.

My job is to produce a cartridge
that is going to sell for ATARI.

A typical VCS game at the
time took five or six months.

And this was
going to be in five weeks.

You might think, no, nobody
can do a game in five weeks.

Like most people in
the department would think.

But I don't think that way.

I think yeah, I can do that.

The word hubris comes to mind.

I mean, whatever it is
I might have been full of,

I was overflowing
with it at that point.

Because if the game can't
make the Christmas market,

the game is a total waste.

They're going
to miss their window.

So that was the big thing.

It was the
$22 million bet, that you could

turn the game
around in that time.

I had a development station
moved into my home so I could

be basically working on
this game almost 24 hours.

We found that there was
a good probability of success

if we took a coin operated
game and just ported it over

to a game
that we could play on the VCS.

ET didn't have that.

Hello?

Somebody out there?

ET?

The video game?

Wow.

It's the video game that
lets you pretend you're ET.

Okay. So the game's
done, and one of the

conditions I asked for was that
Steven Spielberg is the one

who approves the final game.

So, Steven
Spielberg played the final game

and approved it for release.

Howard, who is a
certifiable genius, went off

and about a
number of weeks later,

came back with a
concept and a game plan.

And I was amazed at
how difficult it was,

yet at the same time,
how much fun it was to play.

I've seen the final game.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's my favorite.

Of course, I'm biased.
I made the movie.

So, Steven Spielberg
thought it was okay.

So I thought, all right.
I'm good with that.

And...

Not that I'm
blaming him for anything.

No, of course not.

But...

But it's his fault.

The video game that
lets you help ET get home.

Just in time for Christmas.

After ET was released there was
a great sense of relief

that we'd actually
made the schedule.

And everything was good.

And then
the game went out into market,

and it was very high
on the billboard list.

And again, things were good.

I got ET, I think
it was Christmas of 1982,

if I remember correctly.

And I thought it was like
I was going to be the guy

on the street who had ET
before everybody else.

Turns out everybody
I knew got ET that Christmas.

After a while, people
start going by me in the halls,

people from other buildings,
people from marketing,

and management,
and they're saying things like,

you know something, Howard?

You did a great job.
We don't blame you.

That was really
something what you did.

You really came
through for us there.

And we don't want you
to think we think anything else.

This really isn't about you.

Don't feel bad.
It's okay. It's cool.

I'm going like what the
hell are they talking about?

ET was a really hard game.

It was the kind of game
that was brutal, unfair,

didn't make a lot of sense.

I grew up in London
and there was a video game store

in my town
that let you rent them.

I don't know what
the rental was,

like 50 pence for a weekend.

But I still remember feeling
like I wasted my money,

because it just--it was bad.

People aren't liking it.
And people aren't like it a lot.

And what made
it particularly bad

was my memory
of the movie was so great.

I loved the movie.
Everyone loved the movie

when it came out.
It's a great movie.

Still is a classic movie today.

And so this massive chasm
existed between the quality

of the movie and the quality of
the game that it was based on,

I think just made
it seem that much more like

a slap in the face.

Okay, well, maybe
it won't sell six million,

maybe it'll only sell
four million or three million.

That'll be okay.
And then there's like returns.

People are returning the game.

They made too many. How many
they made, I don't even know.

They made like
4 million cartridges.

That means there could be
millions of carts coming back.

So what do you do with
useless, worthless product?

How do you get rid of it?

Bury it.

That's a pretty good answer.

Well, a career change
is not anything new for me.

I've been through a number
of different careers.

I actually went and got a
California Real Estate license

and then a broker's license.

And I did that for a while.

And I did that just long
enough to know this was like

the last thing
in the world I wanted to do.

And now,
I am a licensed practicing

psychotherapist in California.

And, I'm a very unique
therapist in that I have

a Masters in Engineering,
and I also have

a Master of Arts
in Counseling Psychology.

I mean, I'm the
Silicon Valley therapist.

I'm very good at translating
between English and Nerd,

and this is the
first time since I left ATARI,

that I feel I'm doing
what I really love doing.

So, it took me 30 years
to get back to a place

that I don't feel I'm a step
down from where I used to work.

And that's many,
many different jobs.

I know this dig is coming up,
and I'm going to be there.

I'm going to be
standing right there.

And I'm going to literally
watch my past being dug up.

And that's a weird kind
of thing to anticipate.

My hopes are one way
and my expectations are another.

And I don't know
what it's going to be.

I really don't know
what it's going to be.

I don't know what
it's going to mean to me when,

if something
comes up. If it's there.

Part of punk archaeology
is that sense of community,

and the fact that
we're helping each other out

to address the issues
that we're interested in.

And most of the time we're
doing it on a volunteer basis.

It's going to be interesting
to see how they decide

to excavate in order to
clear a better area, you know,

so that we can get at more
of the content that we need.

One of the
people down there did confirm

finding a
Donny and Marie poster.

Yeah, yeah, which is awesome.

Well, basically because
we're going to treat this

as a salvage excavation,
we will dig a trench.

We'll go through and excavate
the material in the pits that

we dig, at which point we'll
send them up to the tables,

we'll sort through the material,
we'll weigh it, we'll count it,

identify it,
and you know, that's the plan.

So what's happened so far today?

Basically we've started digging
on the hole, and the trucks

have already started
going through the train.

So just so people understand
and probably right now

I'm cutting to
an awesome diagram of this.

There's like 20 feet
of garbage that's on the top

of wherever
the games are buried.

Garbage and dirt.
Sorry, garbage and dirt. Right.

In the diagram,
it's going to be pretty clear.

And so that all
has to be taken away.

Right. Yeah.

We'll get the vast majority
of the hole excavated out.

And so far have
we found anything?

Found any ATARI games or?

No, nothing. Nothing yet.

And Son, I mean,
you seem pretty nervous.

Right.

Are you?

Oh yeah. Terrified.

Terrified. Okay.

Um, I've got to be honest.

I'm nervous as shit.

I don't know if that'll
help motivate you guys, but.

Yeah, that did it for us.

Yeah. We need to
get back to work, yeah.

Great, let's go.
Go team. Way to go.

Son, calm down, buddy.

People say nerd or geek.

I say enthusiast.

I love things.

And I love people
who love things.

Like, if you just spend all your
time focusing on all the amazing

like art and entertainment
that's being made,

there's so much
of it happening now,

you can't even take it all in.

It's like the dig.

When I tell people, the right
kind of people, about it,

they're like, I can't believe
that's finally happening,

and that you're going
to get to be there.

You know,
I get--look, goosebumps.

Goosebumps. Talking about it.

Local video game shop in Austin,
Texas, Game Over Video Games,

they gave me every copy they had
of every one of Howard's games.

Little known fact.

ET has the very first
official video game Easter egg,

ever in a video game.

Warren Robinett had the
very first one in Adventure,

but he did that
without anybody knowing.

Howard asked if he could put
Easter eggs in the game,

and ATARI said yes.

If you go find the geranium

and you make
the geranium regenerate,

it turns into
Yar from Yar's Revenge.

And he flies away.

First time that happened
to me when I was 11 years old,

I shit myself.
And then if you do it again,

it turns into Indy
from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

So Howard hid
characters from this game

and this game in this game.

Hello.
Hi.

Good afternoon,
and welcome to The Lodge.

Well, it's great to see you.
Are you guys just checking in?

Absolutely.

Great. Can I get the last name?

Warshaw. W-A-R-S-H-A-W.

Howard.

That's me.

So it's the day of the actual
dig, and my wife and I

are in a van
on our way to the landfill.

It was a strange feeling.

I mean, I was like nervous, and
I didn't really understand why.

But I just had this sense,
just like a tingly thing,

that something
is going on here today.

And as we pull
into the landfill,

there are already people there.

And then there's more people.

And we go on,
and there's more people.

And it just keeps
going and going.

This just sort of felt like
a religious pilgrimage to me.

Called up some friends, said,
hey, can we get down there?

I asked my brother
in law if he wanted to go.

Heck, let's
do this. Check it out.

And my wife, said, whatever.

It's one of those weird
monumental video game-based

events that only
comes around once a century.

This is our generations
urban legend.

Billions of cartridges
out in the desert.

Growing up, you always read
the little rumors about it.

I grew up playing an ATARI,

which my babysitters
had given me.

And I actually had the ET game.

My friend and I, she and
I would actually just for fun

on the weekends, drive
around trying to figure out

where would these
ATARI games be buried.

The fun of the legend.

It's like looking for
the Loch Ness monster.

What did you think when you
played the ET game last night?

It was awesome.

Because in my opinion,
I like terrible games.

They come back and relive the
feeling I got off those games

is something I couldn't pass up.

I just want to know
about the urban myth,

see if it's
really buried out here.

I just came out here to
be part of video game history.

Had to see whether
it's true or not.

You have to be a special
kind of nerd to be able

to want to drive
28 hours for a video game.

The myth that ET the video game
for the ATARI 2600 was

the worst video game of
all time, it would be so great

to debunk that,
because it's just not true.

And also to redeem Howard Scott
Warshaw, because he's an amazing

video game designer
and his game was great.

Cool car.

Yeah, I like that.

ET's in there.

This morning, coming to a dump
in a small town in New Mexico,

there were people lined
up waiting to get in.

When's the last time
you saw a line of people

waiting to get into a dump?

It totally took me by surprise,
but in a delightful way.

You never go to a dump, unless
you're throwing something away.

And here we are, trying to
find treasure, buried treasure.

I think they'll find something.

The cartridges
had to go somewhere.

Why not here?

It is a lot of open space.

Great place to dump
a million cartridges.

There's a definite possibility
that there is games.

This is archaeology
for the time I grew up.

So nostalgia that came out
of that era is pretty high.

[wind howling]

Now the wind
is really picking up.

On cue.

On cue.

The weather here
in Alamogordo is awesome,

if you like sandstorms,

and an impending
doom-filled cloud of white.

[wind howling]

Whoa!

Oh, this is getting brutal.

Yeah. Sorry.

This is brutal.
It's getting very windy--

Basically what's happening is
the white sands are blowing in

from white sands,
and covering everything,

and it's really shitty.

Just think, this is
like a historic wind today.
Really?

That's what somebody told us.

To think that we're
in the middle of a sand storm.

Really?
This is what's going on?

And for me, it was almost
like the big sandstorm

right at the opening
of Close Encounters,

and the people were wearing
the goggles and their bandanas.

Everybody's like gather around,
because they found something

and they can't believe
what they found.

Are we the first?

This is Tony Johnson
from Denver, Colorado,

who ran up to me in my glory.

He's like, I found
something! I found something!

And Tony, it's going
to go down in history,

because he found the first
evidence of ATARI hardware.

Whoa! Whoa! That's pretty neat.
Right there it is, my man.

Ladies and gentlemen,
we have an announcement.

So, Tony, tell us
what you just found.

An ATARI 2600 joystick top.

[cheers/applause]

So, Tony,
where did you find it?

Walking to the bathroom.

[laughter]

So it was a surface find?

Surface find.

Yeah, like we know
what a surface find, right?

Well, surface find
is just something

that you're walking around,

you're looking
down at the ground,

you see something
interesting, you pick it up.

It's totally out
of archaeological context.

What are the odds that that
like blew out of the hole?

Actually,
I think that's pretty good.

I mean, the wind is blowing
fiercely in that direction.

You know, the stuff's
coming out of the bucket.

You know, we've been finding
a lot of interesting things

that date from around that time.

Anything from ATARI?

Nothing from ATARI yet.

How can you authenticate this?

Can you carbon date it?

[laughs] No,
it's much too recent for that.

There are really two things that
we could be dealing with

when taking a
look at these cartridges,

if they're actually there.

First thing is that
they just loaded the trucks

with these cartridges
and then they dumped them.

And that's
the best possible scenario,

because you can pull them out,

and I'll bet you most
of them will be playable.

You know, they've just
been in there since 1983.

Trash bags.

Stroh's beer cans.

Wood. Tons of wood.

We're right about where
we need to be, but there's still

no ATARI detritus at all.

We've been here
for a while already.

It's tedious.

The wind's horrible.

We're wondering if they're
going to find anything or not.

I don't think
there's anything in that hole

except rattlesnakes
and scorpions.

If it's buried,
it's probably for a reason.

It should stay buried.

I wasn't thinking
that something was

really messed up until late '83.

To me, ATARI was never
going to go away.

It was this thing that
was just part of my life.

And the thought that
there could ever be a day where

there was no ATARI or no ATARI
2600 never crossed my mind.

ET comes out
and ET is not so great.

And somewhere
toward the end of the year,

I'm starting to wonder,
are we making our numbers,

which leads to one
of the worst nights of my life.

On December 7, 1982,
I get a call from Dennis Groth,

who was the CFO of ATARI.

And he says,
"Manny, here's the new budget."

And it's a huge shortfall
from what we'd been told.

Warner Communications
said today that it's once

booming ATARI business
lost another $180 million

in the third quarter
for total losses this year

of more than
half a billion dollars.

I was starting to see
enough signs in the company

that things
were starting to unravel.

It was unraveling hard and fast.

And we didn't
have any ready solutions.

Several ATARI executives,
including ATARIs Chairman,

Raymond Kassar,
sold Warner stock shortly

before the negative
earnings announcement,

and the decline
in the price of the stock.

Kassar denies any
wrongdoing or impropriety,

but a number of
stockholders have sued Warner.

So they got rid of Ray Kassar,
and they brought in a guy

from Phillip Morris,
and when he came in,

ATARI had 10,000 employees.

And within about
four months or five months,

ATARI had 2,000 employees.

I really got that we
had lost 80% of our staff.

In the short run, the market
is frequently irrational.

In the longer run,
hopefully it's rational.

The wild upside ride was over.

I did not understand the
extent of the downside ride

that was coming.

This is slipping away.

The train is derailing.

It's not going to keep riding.

And what am I going to do next?

It was a big emotional blow.

It was my baby.

And I hated to see it abused.

New Media Magazine
credited ET with destroying

the video game industry.

That's interesting.

I think that's really
interesting that I could be

single-handedly
responsible for toppling

a billion dollar industry.

ET comes out, the industry dies,
Howard's associated with that.

And I think
that's affected his career

and what people
will remember him for.

And that's pretty bad.

The fact that a guy's career
got destroyed because he did ET,

given the circumstances
surrounding doing ET is--

it's completely unfair.
I mean, it's sad.

That'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 really fell 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 ET 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 ET.

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.

Shit.

Do you see what I see?

What's his name?

Joe!

Joe!
Joe!

What's that?
What is that right there?

They want me to come in?

Let's go.

So what's up?

Did you guys find anything?

I should have brought
my binoculars.

Can 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 from 1983,

28 feet down...

It's ET, the video game.

Intact. In the box.

[applause/cheers]

It's an emotional event.

They 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 ET was there.

Congratulations to you.

Thank you.

I didn't think you were
going to find them intact.

I thought for sure
they'd be crushed and ruined,

but now I've got goosebumps.

And it's not because
of the dust storms.

What's this moment like for you?

Look at all the excitement
that's being generated today

over something
I did 32 years ago.

It's 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--was 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
who were complaining about ET

had never
even actually played it.

And ever since then,
I would talk to people,

and they would talk about ET.

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 were, like, I remember
getting a game called Firefly.

That is the
worst game for ATARI.

That's what
everybody should be focusing

their efforts on, not ET.

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 ET 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 ET

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,

and maybe people
will attack me for this,

but I'd rather play
ATARIs ET than any Call of Duty.

You know, 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 fucking 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 ET

in the timeframes 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 that 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 would
be going out through the ice.

So,
sucks to be the first penguin,

but somebody's got to do it.

So, it turned out
that Joe Lewandowsky

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
catalogued all the games,

there were
a bunch of ET cartridges.

But nowhere
near the millions that were

such a big part of the legend.

In fact, ET 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.

ET 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 ET
caused the demise of ATARI

is simply stupid.
It's just stupid.

ATARI committed suicide.
It was not homicide.

And it wasn't the ET cartridge.

It was a concomitant effect of
a lot of missteps in technology,

in deployment, in marketing.

So, people say ET destroyed
the video game industry.

I'm sure I've heard that before,
but it's just really funny.

You know, the behavior pattern
that created the conditions for

the ET failure is what destroyed
the video game industry.

The cause of the fall was
ATARI trying to sell yet another

10 million ATARI 2600 into
a market that was saturated.

ET didn't destroy ATARI.

It wasn't good,
but it didn't destroy ATARI.

That's one of
those things people say.

And the reality of life
is if enough people say it,

it becomes the truth for people.

A simple answer that
is clear and precise will always

have more power in the world
than a complex one that is true.

Here's another ET 6-pack.

What I would like to see
happen is I would like to see

whatever remains or recovered
will then find their way

into a museum
in the service of game industry.

Well, you know, the city of
Alamogordo owns the games

and what have you
that came through there,

by virtue of the fact
they're in our landfill.

We might be able
to sell them on eBay.

So, if another terrible
video game needed to be buried,

would you be prepared to
let it be buried in Alamogordo?

Absolutely. Come on down.

We'll bury your game.

ATARI was the
first great consumer company

to come out of Silicon Valley.

It was exciting.
It was different.

It was the first
engagement that our generation

had with computer.

So a generation
grew up being introduced

to the computer
age by ATARI games.

We brought a whole massive
new entertainment medium

into public consciousness.

So for a whole generation,
we are the definition

of the video game era.

And it's cosmic.

These guys
really never got their due

for really starting
the whole industry.

Three lives
was invented by a person.

Flying a ship around
was invented by a person

who had to
figure out what that was.

And it was so good
that it was copied everywhere.

And because it was copied
everywhere, because it's so

ubiquitous, it's impossible to
remember why it was so special.

I think ATARI's
legacy is that we started

the Silicon Valley ethic
of engineers as rock stars.

Didn't exsist before.
I think the casual culture,

meritocracy didn't exist before.

I believe these are
underpinnings of the things

that makes and continues
to make Silicon Valley

a special place in the world.

And, I think that ATARI
will continue to endure

as an icon of innovation.