“The games developer Howard Scott Warshaw has openly embraced the attention his game has received negative or not, he’s just happy it’s still talked about.”

The answer as proven by the documentary crew on the 26^th of April, yes Atari did buried the unsold E.T. cartridge among some other titles. Over 700,000 cartridges were exhumed form the landfill site in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The one thing that I can’t get my head around with all the news coverage on this issue is why this is such a big reveal. A company deposing unsold or faulty merchandise in a landfill is not all that unusual. Of course over time the story has been elaborated on and given an altered narrative. The story of a company so ashamed of their failure that in the dead of night they buried the games in the middle of the desert and sealed it off with concrete to forever entomb the worst video game ever made. The real story is far more mundane that sees a company bury merchandise in a standard landfill close to the company warehouse and seal it with concrete to stop local kids trying to dig it up. In fact if the documentary crew had done a bit of research they would have found a New York Times article archived from September of 1983 that reported on the dumping of the cartridges at the New Mexico landfill site. I have to wonder how Fuel Entertainment the documentary crew behind all this is going to produce a full length feature out of it. Microsoft believes in it so much so that they partnered up with the crew for the event and will be releasing the documentary as part of their new Xbox Originals programme series, set to start up next month.

“What couldn’t be sold in 1983 might find some interested buyers in 2014, with the unearthed cartridges planning to be sold off.”

It’s almost comic how excited the video game community was over the discovery of some rubbish Atari threw out over 30 years ago. What’s next the mystery of what happened to all those Nokia N-gage’s that were shipped but never sold or riffling through the dumpster at Valve to find any mention of Half Life 3. Not to say that the documentary crew’s efforts were wasted but why finding these cartridges was such a massive reveal, puzzles me when all that was exposed was a company following standard procedure in finding a cheap way to dispose of unwanted merchandise.

By Colm O’Sullivan

The post Gaming Sidenote: Atari’s Garbage is Big News Apparently? appeared first on Game Design Ireland.

In 1982 they released Pitfall! on the Atari 2600, the game was a major success although Atari didn’t see any of the money that it generated. Atari had filled a lawsuit against Activision when the company was formed, arguing that the formation of Activision as a third party developer didn’t have a legal basis. In 1982 the court case went in favour of Activision and set a precedence for the establishment of third party developers. Following in the footsteps of Activision a host of new video game companies where established producing games for various consoles with the manufactures having no creative or financial control. Although Activision always produced high quality titles many others looked simple to cash in on the growing video game craze and some saw it as a cheap advertisement opportunity. Companies such as Quaker Oats who where a food manufacture hired developers to make games that often focused more on promoting the companies brand then actual gameplay. The most infamous in this wave of bad games was Chase Chucks Wagon which involved the player controlling a dog and eating dog food, the game was made by Purina a pet food company. At the time Atari had no licencing deals in place with these game developers and had no control on the creative process, any developer could make games for Atari console and not have to pay them any royalties.

“Chase Chucks Wagon started a long tradition of companies using poor and hastily produce video games to market their products”

Atari needed to combat this flood of poor titles with a best seller of their own. The Atari executives felt that a popular movie tie in would be able to recoup their companies loses. The film they looked to was Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. The licence for the film was obtained in July of 1982 with Atari later reported to have paid nearly $25 million for the rights. The developer Howard Scott Warshaw was then only given 5 weeks to build the game in order to release in time for the Christmas season. The game is often cited has one of the worst in the industry with poor gameplay, limited graphics and a non-existent narrative leading to the games failure. In the same manner as they had anticipated great success for their Pac-Man port again with E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial they overestimated how well the game would sell. The game did sell at 1.5 million units which was seen initially as a success but with over 3 million unsold cartridges once again Atari had gambled and lost. The unsold units rumoured to have been buried in a New Mexico landfill. It was the beginning of the end for Atari with the company continuing to struggle in an industry that was evolving at an ever increasing pace. Although Atari had the most high profile failures other video game manufactures failed to cope with the changing dynamics of the industry. Magnavox and Coleco both pulled out of the video game industry and others like Imagic went bankrupt and collapsed. The period of the early 80’s saw the industry grow out of control with companies forming and collapsing all in the hope of cashing in on the video game craze.

“Spielberg had originally asked Atari to make a Pac-Man like game, instead the developer felt that such a game would be to derivative”

The crash if often referred to as the North American video game crash as the European and Asian markets felt little effect during this period. The European market was less interested in console gaming, with the personal computer being a much popular gaming device. Companies like Commodore and Sinclair having great success with their respective devices the Commodor64 and ZX Spectrum. In Japan a well establish toy manufacture was having great success with its new gaming console the Nintendo Famicom. The company would soon take advantage of the failing American console market and change how third party developers and console manufactures would work together. Nintendo would rebrand the Famicom console as the Nintendo Entertainment System and lead the way in the console market for the rest of the decade.

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“For a time Ireland was the centre of manufacturing for all of Atari’s European consoles”

Although now in decline the 2600 would see some further revisions over the next few years. The 2800 was an attempt to break into the Japanese market. It was released in October of 1983 just months after the launch of a relatively unknown company’s console, the Nintendo Famicom. Nintendo’s console provide to be tough opposition in the Japanese market with Atari struggling to gain a foothold. A low cost version of the Atari system branded the 2600 Jr. was the last iteration of the console and was launched in the US and Europe in 1985. Nintendo’s re-branded Famicom system released to the American and European markets in the same year. It was a runaway success and Atari had finally lost their place as the dominate video game company in the industry. Commodore continued to push Atari more towards the PC Market with the Atari ST home computer being a relative success for the company. The 2600 would continue to release game infrequently with KLAX being the last game licensed for the console in 1990, although third party games would continue to be developed. The console was officially retired by Atari in 1992 after 30 million units being sold and the end to a unmatched 14 year lifespan, with the PlayStation 2 coming close with a 12 year run before it was discontinued. Atari where the pioneers of the video game industry leading the way in innovation and development, however that success clouded their judgement when it came to facing the harsh realities of the video game market. The company would finally come to an end in 1996 nearly 25 years after it started out as the first video game company in the industry. The company saw a brief revival in the new millennium but in January of 2013 the company filled for bankruptcy finally bring an end to Atari, the name that started it all.

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Development for the console started back in 1973 with Atari acquiring Cyan Engineering to carry out the initial R&D on a the next generation of consoles. The team brought with them a project codenamed “Stella” which would become the basis of the new Atari console. However at the time Atari simply didn’t have the money to finance such a project, which lead to Nolan Bushnell selling the company to Warner Communications for $28 million in 1976. As part of that deal Warner agreed to fund development of the new console, this was a critical point in the history of the company and could be seen as the start of the bubble that would eventually burst and see the downfall of the Atari. At the same time Fairchild Semiconductor released their own console the VES (Video Entertainment System), which would cause Atari to have some stiff opposition even before they had their device on the market.

“The development codename “Stella” wasn’t named after a women but an Atari engineer’s bike.”

When Atari released their console in September of 1977 they initially branded it as the VCS (Video Computer System) to compete with Fairchild’s console, they themselves would later rename their console to the Channel F. None of which mattered as the two where in a fierce bout of price cutting in order to corner the market. When it was launched it was priced at $199 which is over seven hundred dollars in today’s money, which made it an expensive system and less attractive then the slightly cheaper Channel F. In its first year the VCS sold only 250,000 units, mainly due to the drought in the industry after the proliferation of Pong systems still on the market. The next year saw a major upset for Atari as its co-founder Nolan Bushnell left after dismal sales and disagreements with the owners, with nearly 300,000 unsold units leading Warner to covering Atari’s massive loses. However the following year saw a massive boost to the company, programmers began to truly harness the power of the console to produce better games and Fairchild believing there was no future in the industry pulled out of the market leaving Atari no real completion. 1979 saw the VCS sell over a million units, with the licensing and eventual port of the popular arcade game Space Invaders the next year, quickly doubling those sales figures. As the console would enter the next decade it would see its highest number of sales and also it biggest failures.

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