Movie about the Video Game Market Crash

[pineapplehead2]

I know it may be stupid but it just came over my head, what if they made a movie about it, will ppl go and see it, will you see it, i mean is it all that bad idea?

[Cav]

I think it could be interesting if it was done in they style of "Pirates of Silicon Valley."

[Humanoid]

Just don't let Uwe Boll get ahold of it. @_@

*EDIT*
Forgot to add actual content...
It does sound like it could be neat, if done correctly. I would probably go see it.

[pineapplehead2]

maybe even something like a doc on the history channel or something.

[DeputyMoniker]

Yeah, I'd definatly watch it. I know for a fact that I'm the only person in my workplace that would do so. Seriously...thats a straight to video idea.

[Kroogah]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

[k8track]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

[Kroogah]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

Interpretive Dance? OH GOSH PLEASE DO.

[rhiohki]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

Interpretive Dance? OH GOSH PLEASE DO.

Street corner mime act? I'LL THROW SOME CHANGE DOWN!!

[jajaja]

what crash?

[Captain Wrong]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

Interpretive Dance? OH GOSH PLEASE DO.

Street corner mime act? I'LL THROW SOME CHANGE DOWN!!

Supermarionation extraveganza? VIDEOGAME CRASH ARE GO!!!

[MegaDrive20XX]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

Interpretive Dance? OH GOSH PLEASE DO.

Street corner mime act? I'LL THROW SOME CHANGE DOWN!!

Supermarionation extraveganza? VIDEOGAME CRASH ARE GO!!!

Narration by Jameel White aka Steve Urkel? I'm THERE!

[Kroogah]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

Interpretive Dance? OH GOSH PLEASE DO.

Street corner mime act? I'LL THROW SOME CHANGE DOWN!!

Supermarionation extraveganza? VIDEOGAME CRASH ARE GO!!!

Narration by Jameel White aka Steve Urkel? I'm THERE!

Episode of Star Trek where they time travel? MAKE IT SO!

[o2william]

I know it may be stupid but it just came over my head, what if they made a movie about it, will ppl go and see it
I doubt it.


will you see it
Absolutely!


i mean is it all that bad idea?
I don't think there's enough general interest to warrant a movie. I bet even a low-budget documentary would have a hard time making its money back. Maybe if somebody used the crash as a backdrop for a fictionalized story set during the '80s, that could work...

It wasn't a movie, but G4/TechTV's "Icons" program did a half-hour episode about the Crash that's worth checking out.

[Promophile]

I bet even a low-budget documentary would have a hard time making its money back.

I bet it could make money. Video games have only increased in popularity in recent years. Of course it would need to be well done.

[TheRedEye]

I would pirate the SHIT out of this movie.

[Crush Crawfish]

I think it should be done from the perspective of a game cartridge. I beleive it would go something like this:

1st 10 minutes: ET cart is buried underground in landfill

next hour & 50 minutes: ET cart breaks into a never-ending monologue, lamenting its own existance.

I'd see it.

[DDCecil]

I still like my idea about a movie based on modern day video game retail. The little guy (independant owner) winning against the big guy (Evil corportaion), stopping worldwide media piracy (or trying to without avail), and getting the DDR girl - all in one day. Don't forget the huge Space Channel 5-esque Mall dancing scene where we come face to face with the movie's antagonist...

[TheRedEye]

I still like my idea about a movie based on modern day video game retail. The little guy (independant owner) winning against the big guy (Evil corportaion), stopping worldwide media piracy (or trying to without avail), and getting the DDR girl - all in one day. Don't forget the huge Space Channel 5-esque Mall dancing scene where we come face to face with the movie's antagonist...

That sounds awful, honestly. How about a different plot that happens to center around someone who owns an independent videogame store? Make indie stores "cool," the way Kevin Smith made comic books "cool," even though his movies are pretty bad.

[DDCecil]

I still like my idea about a movie based on modern day video game retail. The little guy (independant owner) winning against the big guy (Evil corportaion), stopping worldwide media piracy (or trying to without avail), and getting the DDR girl - all in one day. Don't forget the huge Space Channel 5-esque Mall dancing scene where we come face to face with the movie's antagonist...

That sounds awful, honestly. How about a different plot that happens to center around someone who owns an independent videogame store? Make indie stores "cool," the way Kevin Smith made comic books "cool," even though his movies are pretty bad.

Yeah, that's another idea I kind of had... Kind of like Clerks/High Fidelity minus the Relationship parts.

[NintendoMan]

I would pirate the SHIT out of this movie.

LOL

[WiseSalesman]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

Interpretive Dance? OH GOSH PLEASE DO.

Street corner mime act? I'LL THROW SOME CHANGE DOWN!!

Supermarionation extraveganza? VIDEOGAME CRASH ARE GO!!!

Narration by Jameel White aka Steve Urkel? I'm THERE!

Episode of Star Trek where they time travel? MAKE IT SO!

Broadway Musical? I'LL SPRING FOR FRONT ORCHESTRA!

[DeputyMoniker]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

Interpretive Dance? OH GOSH PLEASE DO.

Street corner mime act? I'LL THROW SOME CHANGE DOWN!!

Supermarionation extraveganza? VIDEOGAME CRASH ARE GO!!!

Narration by Jameel White aka Steve Urkel? I'm THERE!

Episode of Star Trek where they time travel? MAKE IT SO!

Broadway Musical? I'LL SPRING FOR FRONT ORCHESTRA!

Japanese documentary with poor English dubbing?
“All their crash are belong to Atari!”
I’m there!

[soniko_karuto]

Movie? HELL no.

Documentary? Maybe.

Claymation infomercial? HECK YEAH!

Interpretive Dance? OH GOSH PLEASE DO.

Street corner mime act? I'LL THROW SOME CHANGE DOWN!!

Supermarionation extraveganza? VIDEOGAME CRASH ARE GO!!!

Narration by Jameel White aka Steve Urkel? I'm THERE!

Episode of Star Trek where they time travel? MAKE IT SO!

Broadway Musical? I'LL SPRING FOR FRONT ORCHESTRA!

will it have bette midler? OMG I'M SO THERE <3!!!~~

[cessnaace]

I know it may be stupid but it just came over my head, what if they made a movie about it, will ppl go and see it, will you see it, i mean is it all that bad idea?

If done right I'd buy it on DVD. Just don't let Michael "Cut-and-Paste Hack" Moore anywhere near the project! :D

Crap game overload caused the crash of '84. Unless you had a PC or Commodore you were sol. :( Of course, I had a PC so I was able to game on. :)

I would love to see a doc on games and game companies gone wrong. Atari? They owned the pre-8 bit era with the VCS (2600). Oh, how the mighty hath fallen! Sega, of course, would make for a very interesting section of the film. Commodore? They were a major force back in the 80's. Now? Gone, but not forgotten. Mattel? They did a quick exit from the industry when the crash hit. When the NES took off, why didn't they give it another go? Intellivision at that time wasn't the dirty word that Atari had become. Coleco? Out of bussiness. 3DO? Out of bussiness. NEC? Out of the market. SNK? Where's the Neo Geo Next? x_x

I could rant on further, but I need to save some of my rant power-ups for some other time. :D

Mark S. Hinds
U.S.A.

[Iron Draggon]

A documentary on A&E or the History channel would be great. But if it was one of those straight-to-video DVD releases, wouldn't it have to be crap to effectively convey its message? Also, they should analyze why the same thing has never happened to the movie or music industry. They churn out way more crap than the videogame industry ever has, and yet we still buy it. The RIAA is kinda experiencing a similar "crash", ever since Napster and the MP3 thing, but it hasn't really happened to movies yet. But that's probably only because the MPAA is so draconian about preventing it from happening. Which seems like all the more reason why it needs to happen to them too. Look how much good has come out of what happened to videogames and music because of that kinda thing. So it needs to happen to movies too. Heck, just the story of Atari alone would make a great movie. Show how they've pissed away their fortunes again and again, and how they always come back with more and more crap that's just as bad if not worse, and they still manage to find enough fools to buy it all. That's a movie in itself. Not meaning to diss Atari, because I love them, but you know what I mean.

[Jorpho]

I've been meaning to see Pirates of Silicon Valley. Certainly, in the case of the video game world, there's enough room for some colorful riffs on the personalities involved. Imagine big moments, like when Tramiel (?) announces that Atari is now a "computer company", or when whatshisname sees Donkey Kong running on the Coleco ADAM, driving the rift between Atari and Nintendo.

However, I think it will ultimately need explosions somewhere.

[NeoZeedeater]

I think a documentary could be interesting although I'm not sure it's a good idea. There are already too many people that think gaming completely died off during the crash. The crash was obviously a big deal but gaming was very alive on console-like home computers, the arcades and places outside North America. It really was an innovative time for gaming that deserves more appreciation and shouldn't be looked at simply from a console perspective.

[cessnaace]

I think a documentary could be interesting although I'm not sure it's a good idea. There are already too many people that think gaming completely died off during the crash.


The crash was obviously a big deal but gaming was very alive on console-like home computers, the arcades and places outside North America. It really was an innovative time for gaming that deserves more appreciation and shouldn't be looked at simply from a console perspective.

True, gaming didn't die completely during the crash of '84. But the death of the domestic console market was HUGE! Coleco, a major toy company, died shortly after '84. Mattel killed it's Electronic Media division to keep the parent company from going under. When Nintendo tried to market their NES no retailer would touch it unless Nintendo agreed to buy back all unsold inventory. Of course, if Atari had agreed to market the NES under it's brand name, as Nintendo had asked them to do, then the NES would never have made it, as the Atari name was mud!


I did buy a few PC games during the time period of '84 to '86. Mostly, though, I frequented the arcades. It was there that I fell in love with Sega. So, in 1986, when I went to buy an NES, I wound up buying an SMS instead. It's a decision that I never regretted. I did buy an NES some months later, but mainly because the SMS library was rather sparse. While Tengen (aka Atari) later ported some of the Sega arcade games to the NES, well, I bought these too. I still think the SMS versions are better though.

Back to the movie idea. I think there is plenty of drama to make the movie interesting, but I'm not too sure that there would be enough of a market to warrent a theatrical release. It most probably WOULD have to be direct-to-DVD. Nothing wrong with that though. In fact, I'd go further and say that there is a market (on DVD) for a series of docs. If advertised in the gaming mags, and given positive word-of-mouth at sites like Digital Press, I'm sure it would sell well.

Oh darn! I used up another rant power-up.

Mark S. Hinds
U.S.A.