Atari, a name synonymous with video games. The makers of such hits as Pitfall!, Adventure, Centipede, and Asteroids. Atari’s name and moniker will forever be written down as one of the first, successful video games companies in America. But, how successful? It’s regarded among the gaming community as one the most scandalous and ludicrous actions in gaming history and, in recent years, has taken on a title of urban legend.
During the early 1980s, Atari was the number one video game company in America. Atari had prophesized that they would turn an extreme profit during the time between 1980 and 1985. When Steven Spielberg came to Atari in July of 1982 asking to make a game version of his famous movie E.T., Atari promised him millions of dollars in royalties—even if the game failed—and that they could make the game by September of that year—an impossible deadline. At Christmas, 1982, E.T. The Game released. By the end of 1983, Atari had lost over $500 million and Warner Bros. sold Atari that year—leaving many thinking it was due to E.T.’s commercial failure. It’s rumored that E.T. The Game was so horrible that Atari took all the returned copies of the game and dumped them in a landfill in the New Mexico desert. Obviously, cause for a mass game “burial”. (Kent, 2001)
According to many sources and the gaming community, Atari buried these games in Alamogordo. Based on accounts of pedestrians, utility workers, passersby, and Atari themselves, we know that they [Atari] delivered them to the landfill by truckload. And now, because of the wide-spread popularity of this legend, multiple companies are planning to excavate this landfill. (Hilliard, 2014) (Miami Herald Media Co., 2014) (McQuiddy, Dump Here Utilized, 1983) (McQuiddy, ...
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...ction; Atari was losing money and had to dispose of the games. We also have sources that say Atari did the same thing in the past. Undoubtedly, we clearly see the veracity of the story—it’s true.
Bibliography
Hilliard, K. (2014, March 21). Efforts to Unearth Rumored Atari E.T. Lanfill Move Forward. Retrieved April 8, 2012, from Game Informer Magazine: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/03/21/concerted-effort-to-unearth-rumored-atari-e-t-landfill-cache-moves-forward.aspx
Kent, S. (2001). The Ultimate History of Video Games. New York City, New York: Three Rivers Press.
McQuiddy, M. (1983, September 27). City to Atari: 'E.T.' Trash Go Home. Alamogordo Daily News , p. n/a.
McQuiddy, M. (1983, September 25). Dump Here Utilized. Alamogordo Daily News , p. 1.
Miami Herald Media Co. (2014, April 3). New Mexico Clears Way for Atari Games Dig. Miami Herald .
Atari was the first commercial video game company with hits like ‘break out” and “pong”. For many people pong was the first video game they have ever played. The idea of pong is that there is two rectangles that only move up and down and a little square that bounces around the screen until one of the rectangles miss, once the rectangle miss’ the game is over. This game may seem simple now but it sold 19,000 units so you can say what you want but back then this was the greatest game ever.
An examination of videogames in popular culture is a complicated one. There is a large debate as to what is the very first video game. The supposed earliest known video game was created by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann on a cathode ray tube in 1947. The game was a missile simulator similar to radar displays from World War II, and overlaid sheets of paper were used for targets since graphics were unknown at this time. On May 5, 1951, the NIMROD computer was presented in Britain. It used a panel of lights for its display and was used to play a game called “NIM”. Later, in 1952, Alexander S. Douglas made the first compu...
Ø Greater Baltimore Committee (1997, February) GBC report on gaming: executive summary. Retrieved April 14, 2004, from http://www.gbc.org/reports/gaming/html
Things stay quiet until the 1980’s in which the Atari 2600 debuts. Out of the flood of titles being produced, someone decided that sex sells, even in videogames (geez…what a concept…). So a company by Mystique released Custer’s Revenge. The game had the player control a man named General George Custer going after a Native American maiden named Revenge, hence the title, Custer’s Revenge. Unfortunately, this game did not involve anyone saving a Native American princess; instead, the player has to control Custer and help him cross the playing field safely, while dodging cactus and arrows from Native Americans. Awaiting Custer on the other side of the field is Revenge, and the reward was that Custer gets to have sex with Revenge, on the screen, depicted by a group of flesh colored pixels (as shown on the left).
Quittner, Joshua, and Maryanne Murray Buechner, et al. ?Are Video Games Really so Bad?? Time South Pacific 19 (10 May 1999): 50-55
Instead of the franchises popularity having a positive impact, overtime, it infected the gaming market along with it’s consumers and developers such as Microsoft Game Studios and EA. It has become an aggrandized cancer on the face of video games everywhere, destroying franchises a...
Sometimes it seems like the computer game industry is dying, crushed to death by its own bulk. Every year more and more gaming companies get gobbled up into huge conglomerates like Electronic Arts, companies that mostly put out trash that is technically and visually impressive, but devoid of concept and content. However, there are some small gaming companies that buck the trend. While mostly just small groups of programmers and artists, some are huge unions of fans who, irritated with the dropping quality of computer games, have decided to use the power of the internet to get together and to produce games tailor-made to their personal preferences.
Video games started as arcade machines with simple graphics and even simpler stories, soon evolving into home gaming with The Magnavox Odyssey, the world’s first home-gaming console. It invaded living rooms in 1972, selling 300,000 units. Since then there has been many consoles and games released, some have been huge commercial successes which
“The History of Video Arcade Games.” BMI Gaming. BMI Worldwide, n.d. Web. 6 May 2014.
Video games have come a long way. They have evolved from the simple game of Pong into a complex, multi-platform, multi-genre, multi-billion dollar industry.
Documentaries have the ability to express and tell a real series of events through visual and audible conventions. Within 70 years, video games have risen from nothing to an almost all-encompassing status. Atari: Game Over (Atari), and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (King of Kong) are both oriented around the early years of gaming, focusing on different aspects of the hobby; Atari aims at uncovering the truth as to one of the catalysts to Atari Incorporated’s demise, whereas King of Kong focuses on the competitive nature of gaming. Each documentary uses a variety of distinct methods to express their exposition, interviews, and cinematography.
3. “Video Games” by Chris Jozefowics. Published by Gareth Stevens Publishing 2010. Pleasantville, NY 10570-70000 USA. Produced by Editorials Directions Inc.
Bell, Chris. "Video Games: The Sport of the Future?" The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 26 June 2013. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.
Gates and Allen soon got many opportunities to prove their computer skills. In 1972, they started their own company called 'Traf-O-Data.' They developed a portable computer that allowed them t...
Society in the 1980s saw games as distraction and a waste of time. Arcade games in 1981 were regarded as a reason for cutting classes. Children and the youth were banned from playing arcade games during school hours and past ten in the evening on weekdays, and past midnight on weekends. Laws against children playing in arcades during the banned hours were implemented in order to prevent further disturbances in their studies (Kent 152). Games to the people in the 1980s were merely forms of entertainment that brought about many video game addicts. However, in the early 1980s video game consoles and personal computers were globally popular. This was because most of the machines that had enough power to...