Has anyone watched Atari: Game Over?

[thisIsLoneWolf]

Has anyone watched the new documentary about Atari and the legend of those buried ET carts?
I for one enjoyed it, and thought it was pretty well made. It was also nice to see HSW defended for the bit of a bad wrap he got for his involvement.

What did you guys think?

[fluid_matrix]

Is there any other way to watch than on the Xbox? I'd like to watch it, but until their is another way....

EDIT:
n/m. Figured I needed an XBL Gold account to watch. Was able to watch on my laptop just by logging into my account. Good movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much better than AVGN: The Movie.

[Greg2600]

It's free as long as you have a MS account like Hotmail/Outlook. However, I cannot get the movie or most any movie to play for me on XB Video. My friend couldn't either.

[OldSchoolGamer]

I don't have an Xbox and I refuse to install MS SilverLight again just to have the privilege so I will go without or check it once it is available through "other" means.

[RPG_Fanatic]

I forgot about this, so yesterday I checked to see if it was free on my Xbox one and it was. It wasn't bad, I'd recommend watching it at least once.

[retroman]

I watched it and also liked it.

[charitycasegreg]

I just got done watching 'Video Games The Movie' and have a slight obsession for video games again. They explain the 80s crash and the burial of those E.T. carts, but it only takes up 5 minutes of the 1.75 hour documentary. Definitely going to check out the Atari documentary. If only I had an Xbox...

[JeremiahJT]

I watched it a couple of days ago and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really well made and it was free also. My favorite part is probably when Howard Scott Warshaw got choked up after they found the first cart.

High Score came up as a suggestion so I went ahead and used some of that $6 credit Xbox handed out to watch that documentary also. It was not as professional a production as Atari: Game Over, but I still enjoyed it.

[treismac]

Just finished watching it. Good stuff to be sure. Thanks for the thread, thisIsLoneWolf. My biggest gripe is that not enough time was spent explaining the cause of the Crash. Too many systems manufactured for an already saturated market was the only concrete non-E.T. explanation given apart from generalities (i.e. bad business practices, series of repeated missteps, etc.).

[tom]

The crash of 1984 and why it happened was explained in EG March 1984, and also in issues of Digital Press (There was no 1983 crash as it is wrongly written about on Wikipedia)
Here's what Alan Miller (of Activision) had to say about the subject:



You can read the whole interview here at DP fanzines

[Nz17]

Well guys, it would have been helpful if you had linked to where the Atari: Game Over movie can be watched. For everyone else, there ya go.

[Niku-Sama]

yea thanks for that

wonder if my Hotmail account is still active....

[Greg2600]

I cannot get it to play on my PC. I've been told MS Live has been hit with a ton of attacks lately, and much of it is shut down.

[WCP]

I liked all the parts where they were talking about the history of Atari. Didn't really care too much about the actual digging done in the desert.

I did get slightly emotional however when HSW was tearing up about it, outside the dig. He was basically talking about how the most exciting time of his career was basically buried out in that desert, and that he never got back what he had at Atari for those few years when it was really going on.

Still, at least the guy lived the life most of us dream of, for a few short years, even though he probably never got all that much money for all of his efforts.

[Nz17]

I didn't like this video and had to stop watching after 11 minutes.

The director was a jerk, disrespecting the games which were based on his movies and some of the people helping him with the dig; the director said how the man who knew the dump only wanted to dig up the game and didn't care about E.T. and its history, but he (the director) supposedly did care and was going to get to the bottom of its history and how so many carts ended up buried in a landfill. He made it all seem so mysterious and nebulous, like nobody knew the true story and it was just a bit more than an old wives' tale. Gee, I don't know, Mr. Director, how about you read the dozens of interviews, many of them hosted on D.P. itself, which go over the details of the series of events with a fine-toothed comb? From the film's concept, to its funding, to its execution, it was all about spectacle, a "fluff piece" that didn't need to be but which was created anyway and was stretched out to be a full-length film about an hour long in duration... which was about 45 minutes too long.

Most of the movie's speakers & clips kept saying how E.T. was the worst (or at best, one of the worst) games of all time. Those statements made me angry. I have played far worse games than E.T., such as many of those for DOS and Android. E.T. can be a good game, but you need to read the instruction manual and follow its directions. The game is from an era before there was enough storage space for tutorials and instructions in a game, so you need to be smart and read the manual, possibly using it for reference as you play. If you just jump in without knowing what you are doing, of course you will get frustrated!

The only good parts of the movie were the interviews with those who were actually involved with Atari at the time, and they didn't make up enough of the movie. I score "Atari: Game Over" 1 Fhqwhgad out of 10 Fhqwhgads.

[Mayhem]

Yeah, there is a bit of a build-up like that, and the film states essentially what other people say about ET et al. At the end of the film however, there is a voiceover, and it essentially states that yes, ET was buried there, but so was a lot of other stuff, and no, it isn't the worst game ever, and no it didn't cause the crash all by itself.